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
-
Is 301 redirects a deal breaker for Migrating content or moving to new software?
I have this forum with about 2 million posts for 16 years on root of the domain. I am looking to switch softwares but the top ones won’t help setup 301 redirects. But I can still migrate all my members and all my content (threads/posts), would Google still reindex all our content or if we don’t setup redirects would it really kill our entire traffic for a long time or maybe just a month or so? I really want to migrate to software that isn’t forum based but rather something that offers courses, chat, live video streaming, subscription based etc. and this is the only way to do so OR to set it up on an entirely new domain OR subdomain but to me that is like starting all over from scratch? I could archive the forum to read only and set it up on subdomain or another root domain - then on the archived forum setup banners and a pop up linking to the new site or new subdomain? . This is such a hard decision for us as the current forum we have had for so many years has lost members posting from 1k a day to just a handful a day, our fb group though gets 1k a day so I’m trying to revive a site into something more modern and has all the training features we can offer as well.
Technical SEO | | vbsk1 -
Traffic goes down after migration from aws to Microsoft azure cloud service
After migration of web application from aws ec2 instance to Microsoft azure web App service, we observed that we lost our 50% traffic. Our site custom domain is ihealthmantra.com and azure web App has default domain azurewebsites.net . Azure WebApp service has drawback that default domain gets in picture after mapping to my custom domain .We have mapped azure webAPP host name to our custom domain as CNAME record in DNS Table . Now same site working with two domains i.e ihealthmantra.com as well ass azurewebsites.net . As we seen this issues we made 301 redirection from azure default domain to our custom domain, Still no change in traffic.Google is now showing external links from azurewebsites.net to healthmantra.com . We are totally confused now . We don't know what exactly affected to our search traffic . Please Help us.
Technical SEO | | DivyaDubey0 -
Http:// vs Https:// in Og:URL
Hi, Recently, we have migrated our website from http:// to https://. Now, every URL is in https:// and we have used 301 permanent redirection for redirecting OLD URL's to New Ones. We have planned to include http:// link in og:url instead of https:// due to some social share issues we are facing. My concern is, if Google finds the self http:// URL on every page of my blog, will Google gets confused with http and https:// as we are providing the old URL to Google for crawling. Please advice. Thanks
Technical SEO | | SameerBhatia0 -
Our homepage url has been 301'd to the new https version - as our MD wanted us to have the secure protocol
Hello Mozers I'm just checking whether it is good practice to 301 the main homepage url to its https version. Will this have any detrimental effect on ranking and DA?
Technical SEO | | Catherine_Selectaglaze0 -
Wordpress migration
Hi i wonder if anyone can help. I have migrated my site to a new host, with a temp domain name i.e., http://www.test1.com The current site is still live on another host with the domain name http://www.perfecttest.com The temp site is now ready to do live. but we want to use the domain perfecttest.com a. What is the process to move the domain to the new host and to change the test1.com to be perfecttest.com. I kneo that we need to change the domain perfecttest.com nameserver to point to the new host but i am sure there must be more that need to be done inorder to not have issues. Your help will be grateful T
Technical SEO | | Taiger0 -
Authority site drastic ranking drop after google https switch. Please Help!
Hi Mozers. Since Google switched to the https version, our company website (http://we.register.it) indexing switched to the https version (https://www.register.it). After that the ranking on Google dropped for almost every keyword. The site is very old and got a great authority and PR 7. It ranked for same keywords for very long time On each page from years there is the correct meta rel canonical. No spam, and WMT is ok. Could you please help? The internal links are all in http, and in https. If you are https are in https (they are all relatives) No changes have been made and the subdomain is in that way from 8 years: the main url has always been http://we.register.it Google started this indexing switch around the 15 October
Technical SEO | | luca_cash0 -
Migrating a better performing domain to a less well performing domain
I have a customer who has many domain names and assets but she's wanting to consolidate some of them to help her simplify things for her customers but mostly she wants to build up her website through which she sells products. Grief Reflection - www.griefreflection.com is a personal journal that she's keeping to process the impending death of her husband and it's also linked to her business website which sells healing from grief types of products. Storybooks for Healing - www.storybooksforhealing.com is the website through which she sells workbooks and memory books for people who want to keep the memory of their loved one alive after they've gone. I've setup both of these domains as campaigns and have been looking at the metrics for both. The grief reflection blog out performs the storybooks for healing website. If we merge the two then the Grief Reflection blog would likely become a subdirectory under www.storybooksforhealing.com and be more fully integrated which she thinks will help her visitors not get confused while navigating her website. www.griefreflection.com has 12,637 links while www.storybooksforhealing.com has 1,462. Also, Google has indexed 380 pages of Grief Reflection and only 100 pages for Storybooks for Healing, though that may be because there are fewer pages to index. Grief reflection also has a 4.36 mozRank and 5.30 mozTrust, where Storybooks has 4.13 mozRank and 5.15 mozTrust. Should I counsel her to keep these domains separate? If not, would simply setting up 301 redirects from the www.griefreflection.com domain name to the new subdirectory under www.storybooksforhealing.com be the way to go? Thank you ever so much for any wisdom anyone can provide.
Technical SEO | | ChristiMc0 -
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