Help, site traffic has dropped significantly since we changed from http to https
-
Heya, so I am just in charge of the content on the site, and the SEO content, not the actual back-end stuff.
A little under 2 weeks ago we switched to https, and our site traffic has been down a lot ever since. When I SERP check our keywords, they don't seem to have dropped in rankings pages.
Here is what I got when I asked our dev guy if 301 redirects were put in:
I did not add any redirects so all of the content is accessible on both unless individual links get hardcoded one way or the other. The only thing in place is a Cloudflare plugin which rewrites links in cached pages to match the way its accessed, so if for example you access a page over https you don’t get the version cached with a bunch of http links since that will throw up mixed content warnings in the browser. Other than that WP mostly generates all its links to match whatever protocol you are accessing the current page with. We can make specific pages redirect one way or the other in the future if we want to though...
As a startup, site traffic is a metric we track to gouge progress, and so I really need to get to the bottom of if it was the change from http to https that has causes the drop, and if so, what can we do about it?
Also, in case it is relevant: the bounce rate is now sky high (ave. 15% to 64% this last week!)
Any help is very welcome! Site: https://mobileday.com
Thank you!
-
Hi MobileDay! Did these answers help?
-
John gave you some fantastic answers.
He just told you exactly what you need to do a couple things I thought I could share with you.
When adding HTTPS this I found this reference invaluable
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/the-zen-guide-to-https-configuration/
Then from checking out your existing 301's you are in need of a canonical that everything that is https or http redirects to a secular canonical URL. https://mobileday.com use https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/canonical/ you want the canonical to have the absolute link. Do a search and replace.
|
Like this
NOT
rel="canonical" href="//mobileday.com/" />
|
In order to be sure that you are redirecting properly use
https://varvy.com/tools/redirects/ to check your redirects
then sign up with a free account on
it will continually monitor your robots.txt, Canonicals redirects everything for free it's awesome. the tool displays redirects from www and non-www versions of a url using both http and https.
you definitely need to 301 your site to one canonical URLSEE a bigger photo below and available via the URL herehttp://i.imgur.com/mI7PM6s.png
www
No redirect
Final status code: 200
no www
No redirect
Final status code: 200
www (https)
1 Redirect
https://www.mobileday.com
** 301 redirect**
https://mobileday.com/Final status code: 200
no www (https)
No redirect
Final status code: 200
Here is a reference showing is fairly normal to lose ranking when you add HTTPS hopefully you did contact Google's search console your site should be added there a total of four times and you pick the canonical of the four sites
- http://www.mobileday.com
- http://mobileday.com
- https://mobileday.com <- this is where to point the other 3 urls
- https://www.mobileday.com
You will want to pick your chosen canonical which appears to be https://mobileday.com
Considering you're using cloudflare you can create rewrites as well as 301 redirects inside of the CDN/WAF using page rules
Please keep in mind that when you're setting up the HTTPS:// for the first time using a low time to live or server caching time with cloud flares (HSTS),
https://blog.cloudflare.com/enforce-web-policy-with-hypertext-strict-transport-security-hsts/
is going to keep you from making mistakes that cannot be reverted for whatever the remainder of the value is. Whenever you do set it up in cloud flare I recommend you set it for 24 hours see how it works use this to add your site to browsers https://hstspreload.appspot.com/
- https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200168306-Is-there-a-tutorial-for-Page-Rules-
- https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-pagerules-url-forwarding/
- https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-pagerules-fine-grained-feature-co/
Rule Patterns
A pattern is the definition of what URLs a rule should act on. It can be as simple as a verbatim match, or complex with wildcards. For purposes of Page Rules' patterns a URL can be composed of:
<scheme>://<domain>:<port><path &="" query=""></path></port></domain></scheme>remember to check everything before making the browsers forward to https automatically and do it for a short time first.http://web-sniffer.net/&
https://tools.deepcrawl.co.uk/fetch-as-deepcrawl/
Are great tools for this job so is screaming frog SEO Spider
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
I sincerely hope I was of help,Thomas -
Hi MobileDay -
Well, sounds like you have some issues on your hands! Hopefully I can help sort it out.
First, get those redirects in place! There is no reason for users to be able to access it on both non-secure and secure. If you made the move to implement HTTPS, you want your users there as it helps with trust. Also, you're spreading your link equity. It looks like the search engines are ranking HTTPS, but that also means that the links going to any and all http pages are likely not being counted towards HTTPS. This is likely hurting your longtail traffic, which only you can see in Analytics.
Second, your canonicals are relative and not correct. It's rel="canonical" href="//mobileday.com/" />, which I am surprised to see since you are using Yoast SEO (so I guess you are on Wordpress). A quick way to help fix your duplicate content issues is to a) make those absolute and b) point them to where you want the crawlers to go (I suspect HTTPS).
A canonical is a band-aid though and the search engines do not always respect them. The right fix is a 301.
Also, more things to check:
- Are the URLs in your sitemaps HTTPS or HTTP? They should be the one you want to rank.
- You should declare where your sitemaps are in your robots.txt file (I don't see them here - http://mobileday.com/robots.txt or here - https://mobileday.com/robots.txt)
- I assume you have both HTTP and HTTPS verified in Search Console. Look at if your impressions have dropped on HTTP and see what is going on with HTTPS. This will tell you a lot.
- Regarding bounce rates, what else changed? I wonder if there is an issue with your HTTPS implementation and it's not working correctly on some mobile devices (or desktop browsers). Dig into your Analytics to see which platforms and browsers have a high bounce rate, and solve from there. You should also check to see if it's a specific page type that is bouncing a lot to see if there is an issue with that page type.
Good luck!
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
-
Site redesign - 301 Redirects
I've just overhauled a website, leaving lots of former posts in the dust. I've set up a 404 redirect to the home page so that if anyone goes to one of those old pages they land on the home page instead of a dead 404. But, there's a couple urls from the old site I'd prefer to redirect to similar pages. These urls have forward slashes and I don't know how to get the slashes in when I copy it over to the new site. This is probably something easy, but I'm baffled. This www.lawbarron.com/personal-injury/whip-its-nitrous-oxide/ becomes this when I copy it www.lawbarron.com/personal-injury-whip-its-nitrous-oxide Can someone help me out?
Web Design | | julie-getonthemap0 -
Major URL changes in new site launch
Hey Guys - we recently launched a new website for a client. Prior, all of their URLs were dynamic via an old-school Cold Fusion CMS. We basically had to rewrite 90% of the sites URLs (site is like 300 pages). The new URLs are SEO friendly and the on-page SEO is strong; but the page rank/authority is starting from scratch from these pages and placement has decreased more most of the new pages with competitive keywords. We set up all of the 301 redirects properly and are actively monitoring in Google Webmaster Tools. **Anything else I can do to lessen the pain and get these pages higher page rank/authority sooner rather than later?**Thanks for all of your help.
Web Design | | NobleStudios0 -
Live website is an addon domain - Need site old development url inaccessable from live domain
Hi everyone, I have a website which is built in Joomla 2.5. The development site is located at www,abc.com/subdomain/. We have set the site live using an addon domain which is www.xyz.com. The problem is, www.abc.com/subdomain/ is still accessible and being crawled by Google. How is the best way to make the development url inaccessible? Any help would be appreciated!
Web Design | | DougHosmer0 -
Image sliders & site speed
We are having a new website designed using WordPress and the Genesis framework. We wanted to include header image sliders on a number of internal site pages, but our designer says that sliders on more than just the home page will slow down the site significantly. How much could they slow down the site, and what can be done to minimize their effect on site speed?
Web Design | | GordyH0 -
Bar Codes for Event Sites
A client is requesting bar codes for simple tracking of event attendees. Their need is to be able to verify at the door someone has registered and then have that data link to the registrant to show who did/did not attend, etc. We looked at QR code solutions (seems bar code makes more sense at this point) and now are at a point where we need input from any who have experience with either system and could potentially make a recommendation. A person would sign up for this once a year event (no charge, informational) on the site and be able to print off their registration ticket to bring to the event. If it could also be downloaded to iPhone/Android that would be a plus as well. When they come through the door the code is scanned and registrant is in. Simple. They currently keep a database of past attendees and only use it for general area the attendees are from and how many show over time, etc. Since we do not want to reinvent the wheel, we were hoping a mozzer might have insight. thanks, Robert
Web Design | | RobertFisher0 -
Wordpress or Joomla member function - HELP!
Does anyone know of a plugin/theme/template that would allow me to create a site with the following features: 1 section of content that is public 1 section of content that is only for registered members and that is hidden until you log in. A registration page A sign up form
Web Design | | MassivePrime0 -
Redesign of an ecommerce site
I was just wondering how we should deal with filters and pagination with our ecommerce website. We can do nofollow or noindex, follow or canonical for both filters and pagination. Which one we should choose and why? By the way we are trying to create more sub categories to avoid too many pages but we have 1,000s products and we still end up with a quite high amount of pages. I've read a few conflicting seomoz QA about this issue. Many Thanks
Web Design | | Jvalops0 -
Setup of three major retail sites.. need advice.
I recently have taken a new position responsible for three large national retail sites which are all owned by one parent organization. Through a series of acquisitions, these three major brands have been brought under one umbrella and a brand consolidation is likely not to happen within the next 2-4 years. I have a number of questions I’m hoping to get some feedback on, but first a little more background is necessary. A year ago (before my time) the three sites were over-hauled, but were designed to use one common custom CMS and all of the navigation and nearly all the content is the same (with some exceptions, such as tags, url, etc.). All of the brands have identical products and services; however, each one services a different demographic in the US. The design was intended for ease of management, but is terrible for seo. Additionally, without the geographic reference, they all compete for the same keywords. They have now begun a very large ecommerce project utilizing an ATG platform. The initial direction is to use one platform for all three brands, but keep them on separate domains and with the use of basic switching, replace nominal content such as logos and references of the brands for each of the domains. I’m concerned with this approach and would like to hear your feedback.. When optimizing a page for one keyword set, are they likely to be filtered due to dup content? The argument that management has is that all three current sites rank very well for one keyword on all three sites. They feel it won’t be an issue due to this. One option, that is currently still available, is to tri-band one ecommerce site, but it would have to be on an entirely new domain. The other three domains are very well established and are PR6s. Management, and even I, is afraid to abandon these other domains, but having a single domain would allow us to have unique content and really leverage all efforts to one domain. Thoughts? Any knowledge or thoughts what kind of impact having three domains on one ATG platform will be? Thanks much! John If you feel it will help, please message me and I can share the urls... Also, how would you handle a company blog in this case?
Web Design | | kavaliauskas0