Migration to https
-
Hi there,
For several reasons we consider to switch from http to https. My question about this:
- Does this change impact organic search results since the URL changes? Is a simple 301 on the highest level enough to keep all of our positions with every page?
Are there any other possible issues we might think about before deciding?
I'm talking about a webshop with over 50k indexed pages and lots of running marketing channels all setted up based on the http URL structure.
Thanks in advance.
Marcel -
Hi Kevin & TorontoV,
Thanks for your responses, and your warning signs concerning a migration to https. We recently launched a new website and we are going to 'migrate' this one first before taking any action on our main webshop. Since we had'nt received any backlinks until now on the new domain, there is no thread for this one.
@Kevin: I'll definitely follow your advice not migrating until Google gives a countdown message for our main domain.
Thanks again!
Marcel
-
Ey Kevin, we experienced the same thing. our blog traffic got decimated after moving to https and I can see some other sites that did the move and also went into instant nosedive in Semrush. How are the results now?
we are considering moving the blog back.
Marcel, you too. did you do the move and what were your results?
I have a hunch that it is not the "positive" thing all the preachers claim it is.
-
Patrick, everybody should definitely check external links. We had hundreds of linking domains to our site, but after the switch to HTTPS we lost them all. Google now shows only one single linking domain in GA. Our rankings for performing key words have dropped six to ten spots from our page one 1-4 rankings in less than a month. Indexed pages went from nearly 300 to only six in the same time. Structured data records show a drop from nearly 220 to only 17.
Since Google recommends this, we'll give this another month or two, but if this Google recommendation switch to HTTPS doesn't start showing positive results, we'll surely switch back. My recommendation for now is to only use HTTPS for pages that transmit sensitive data.
Marcel, wait until Google gives the countdown notice to HTTPS like they did with mobile before you migrate your whole site.
Background: I run a Magento 1.9.2/WordPress 4.2.3 multilingual site on LEMP with fine-tuned Google PageSpeed module, Magento FPC on dedicated Memcached instance, and Redis session caching. I know what I'm doing here, but if anyone has suggestions please do share. https://www.88k.com.tw
-
Hi Andy & Jonathan,
Thanks again. I'm going to use this information when we are ready to migrate.
Cheers,
Marcel -
Hi Marcel,
301s can be done in the htaccess, just make sure as Patrick noted above that your site does not link to http version but directly to the https. You will want to avoid redirecting people from one version to another without need.
Another thing that might be important. Webmaster tools might require you to add another property as if I'm not mistaken it considers http and https as separate entities, it will be good to set it up and monitor both versions to notice that you don't have strange errors during and/or after the migration.
-
Is the htaccess code enough and does it fix a correct 301 redirect?
You also wouldn't specify a direct 301 when forwarding http to https. You can read about this within the Apache wiki here.
-Andy
-
Hi Andy & Jonathan,
Thanks for your response. This helps me a lot :).
Actually we do a lot of 3rd party advertising. I realize that we need to change all scripts but also URL's in tools of 3rd parties. This will be an important process I need to execute carefully.
Is the htaccess code enough and does it fix a correct 301 redirect?
Tnx!
Marcel -
Hi there
Along with the great points above, I would check your internal links, as well as your sitemap, to make sure URLs now reflect the https:// structure. Don't worry about updating your external backlinks.
If you have any major structure or URL structure changes, I recommend reading this migration guide.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
Hi Marcel,
A switch to https shouldn't hurt but would most likely have a positive impact on your baseline. Which is significantly more important than any loss in traffic. That said if you do the strategy properly and you redirect all the pages to the equivalent in https it should be fine (assuming you are not changing URLs and/or content).
What you might want to be wary of is the following.
1. Make sure that your CMS is able to automatically serve all your assets in https. So if you have images which are linked directly with
http://domain.com/image.jpg
you'd have to run a script to change the http into an https.2. Any third party scripts / images also need to be run over https. As you have a web shop I don't think you're doing some kind of third party advertising but check in case you have any other http content.
Any of the above two will mark your site as unsafe, which will deter visitors and possibly be a negative flag to google.
Good luck on the migration.
-
Hi Marcel,
Please have a look at this similar post here. You will find lots of useful information.
http://moz.com/community/q/moving-main-site-from-http-to-https-seeking-quick-items-to-consider
****Does this change impact organic search results since the URL changes? ****
In theory, it should be a positive move. Last year Google advised this was to be a new positive ranking signal.
Is a simple 301 on the highest level enough to keep all of our positions with every page?
I would advise you do this through htaccess. The code below should work fine for you. However, add it and then do your testing.
RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R,L]
Are there any other possible issues we might think about before deciding?
Check how internal images are referenced and don't continue to point to http. The same goes with external resources like Google Fonts.
-Andy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Our site recently switched from http to https. Do I still need to setup a redirect for the incoming links pointing to http?
Our site recently switched from http to https. If you type in the http://www.websitename.com then it will automatically go to https://www.websitename.com ... my question is... do I still need to create a redirect in the htaccess file to ensure we don't lose all the links currently pointing to the http version of the website?
Technical SEO | | ninel_P0 -
Keeping external links after moving from http to https?
Hi, Does anyone have experience moving a website to https? I am about to do so. I have 84 linking root domains and around 2k+ external links. If i move a website to https will these links be lost? And how to keep these links? Many thanks, Dusan
Technical SEO | | Chemometec0 -
Changed site to https now GWT and analytics - do I Know have to re-add it
Hi had the previous version (wordpress) site in GWT working just fine - now everything seems to have stopped. Do I have to treat this as an entirely new site and now add a new account for the https version? Many thanks,
Technical SEO | | AndreavanEugen0 -
HTTP to HTTPS Transition, Large Drop in Search Traffic
My URL is: https://www.seattlecoffeegear.comWe implemented https across the site on Friday. Saturday and Sunday search traffic was normal/slightly higher than normal (in analytics) and slightly down in GWT. Today, it has dropped significantly in both, to about half of normal search traffic. From everything we can see, we implemented this correctly. 301 redirected all http requests to https (and yes, they go to the correct page and not to the homepage 😉 ) Rewrote hardcoded internal links Registered/submitted sitemaps from https in Bing and GWT Used fetch and render to ensure Google could reach the site and also was redirected appropriately from http to https versions Ensured robots.txt does not block https or secure We also use a CDN (though I don't think that impacts anything) and have had no customer issues with accessing or using the website since the transition.Is there anything else I might be missing that could correlate to a drop in search impressions or is this just a waiting game of a few days to let Google sort through the change we've made and reindex everything (it dropped to 0 indexed for a day and is now up to 1744 of our 2180 pages indexed)?Thank you so much for any input!Kaylie
Technical SEO | | Marketing.SCG0 -
Site Migration Questions
Hello everyone, We are in the process of going from a .net to a .com and we have also done a complete site redesign as well as refreshed all of our content. I know it is generally ideal to not do all of this at once but I have no control over that part. I have a few questions and would like any input on avoiding losing rankings and traffic. One of my first concerns is that we have done away with some of our higher ranking pages and combined them into one parallax scrolling page. Basically, instead of having a product page for each product they are now all on one page. This of course has made some difficulty because search terms we were using for the individual pages no longer apply. My next concern is that we are adding keywords to the ends of our urls in attempt to raise rankings. So an example: website.com/product/product-name/keywords-for-product if a customer deletes keywords-for-product they end up being re-directed back to the page again. Since the keywords cannot be removed is a redirect the best way to handle this? Would a canonical tag be better? I'm trying to avoid duplicate content since my request to remove the keywords in urls was denied. Also when a customer deletes everything but website.com/product/ it goes to the home page and the url turns to website.com/product/#. Will those pages with # at the end be indexed separately or does google ignore that? Lastly, how can I determine what kind of loss in traffic we are looking at upon launch? I know some is to be expected but I want to avoid it as much as I can so any advice for this migration would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Sika220 -
Will SEO Moz index our keywords if the site is ALL https?
We have a site coming into beta next week. Playing around with SEO Moz, I had trouble getting the keywords to rank at all. Was this because the site is entirely https? If yes, what else can SEO Moz NOT do if the site is all https? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | OTSEO0 -
Blocking https from being crawled
I have an ecommerce site where https is being crawled for some pages. Wondering if the below solution will fix the issue www.example.com will be my domain In the nav there is a login page www.example.com/login which is redirecting to the https://www.example.com/login If I just disallowed /login in the robots file wouldn't it not follow the redirect and index that stuff? The redirect part is what I am questioning.
Technical SEO | | Sean_Dawes0 -
Managing SEO during web site migration
We have an old web site which currently has good traffic and search ranking. However, the old design is not helping us convert traffic into customers and we have decided to re-design the web site. Due to challenges resolving 4XX issues in the current setup, we will be moving the site to a new CMS and hosting provider. The domain will remain the same. The plan is to create exactly the same pages in the new CMS, as what we have today. And to use the same URLs for each page. Content will remain the same in step one. We will only apply a new layout and design. Besides keeping the URLs the same as in the old system. What else should we be aware of when doing a web site migration, that might impact our search ranking?
Technical SEO | | petersen0