Should I use https schema markup after http-https migration?
-
Dear Moz community,
Noticed that several groups of websites after HTTP -> HTTPS migration update their schema markup from, example :
{
"@context": "http://schema.org",
"@type": "WebSite",
"name": "Your WebSite Name",
"alternateName": "An alternative name for your WebSite",
"url": "http://www.your-site.com"
}becomes
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "WebSite",
"name": "Your WebSite Name",
"alternateName": "An alternative name for your WebSite",
"url": "https://www.example.com"
}Interesting to know, because Moz website is on https protocol but uses http version of markup. Looking forward for answers
-
Thank you very much for the answer.
-
Thanks for your great question!
Schema.org has stated that using either is fine. Here is their longer form answer from their FAQ page on which to use:
"There is a general trend towards using
'https'
more widely, and you can already write'https://schema.org'
in your structured data. Over time we will migrate the schema.org site itself towards usinghttps:
as the default version of the site and our preferred form in examples. However 'http://schema.org' -based URLs in structured data markup will remain widely understood for the forseeable future and there should be no urgency about migrating existing data. This is a lengthy way of saying that both'https://schema.org'
and'http://schema.org'
are fine."That being said...I think I'll go switch Moz.com to https now. Think they will keep http:// around for a while, though. Especially considering SEOs who implemented Schema before https and G doesn't want to penalize site owners for not knowing any better? <- My personal thoughts on this.
Thanks again!
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
-
Need explanation of Schema
Can someone explain me what it is and what is it used for. From my understanding it is something used by computers to understand language. In other words it is what you can say about an entity. For example a person works, is born somewhere but if I write Mr X flies to as human we do understand but as a computer the computer doesn't understand. Is that what schema is for ? telling me what I can say about an entity using specific verbs so that computers can understand. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Bad if Hosting Company Performs Domain Migration
InMotion Hosting hosts our domain. At the moment, we use domain "A". Domain "B" redirect to domain "A" . Domain "B"" better represent our brand and we want to redirect domain "A" to "B". Our website is designed in Wordpress. It contains about 750 pages. At the moment we do not have an SSL certificate. I would like to add the SSL certificate at the same time we migrate the domain. The data we collect on the site are company name, phone number, email address etcetera. No transactions. I was told that the Auto SSL free certificate is fine and that there is no need to pay for a certificate. Is this correct? My developer has told me that installing an SSL certificate would take about 8 hours. And that migrating the domain would take 24 hours, plus or minus 5 hours. My developer is very professional, and usually does a great job but this seems costly considering a $24/hour labor rate. It also seems like an inordinate amount of time. Several well rated (100% approval) Upwork developers are willing to perform this job for less than $200. Huge differential!! Also, Inmotion Hosting is willing to migrate the site and install the certificates for free. But pay nothing and the quality is usually questionable. Any thoughts?? Also, I have a lot to lose in terms of SEO if something goes wrong. Are there any specifications that I should insist on to make sure the migration proceed smoothly? What do I need to modify on Google Analytics once the migration is done. Any steps I should take to ensure the maintenance of page rank? Thanks!!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Domain Level Redirects - HTTP and HTTPS
About 2 years ago (well before I started with the company), we did an http=>https migration. It was not done correctly. The http=>https redirect was never inserted into the .htaccess file. In essence, we have 2 websites. According to Google search console, we have 19,000 HTTP URLs indexed and 9,500 HTTPS URLs indexed. I've done a larger scale http=>https migration (60,000 SKUs), and our rankings dropped significantly for 6-8 weeks. We did this the right way, using sitemaps, and http and https GSC properties. Google came out recently and said that this type of rankings drop is normal for large sites. I need to set the appropriate expectations for management. Questions: How badly is the domain split affecting our rankings, if at all? Our rankings aren't bad, but I believe we are underperforming our backlink profile. Can we expect a net rankings gain when the smoke clears? There are a number of other technical SEO issues going on as well. How badly will our rankings drop (temporarily) and for how long when we add the redirect to the .htaccess file? Is there a way to mitigate the rankings impact? For example, only submitting partial sitemaps to our GSC http property? Has anyone gone through this before?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Satans_Apprentice0 -
Re: Inbound Links. Whether it's HTTP or HTTPS, does it still go towards the same inbound link count?
Re: Inbound Links. If another website links to my website, does it make a difference to my inbound link count if they use http or https? Basically, my site http://mysite.com redirects to https://mysite.com, so if another website uses the link http://mysite.com, will https://mysite.com still benefit from the inbound links count? I'm unsure if I should reach out to all my inbound links to tell them to use my https URL instead...which would be rather time consuming so just checking http and https counts all the same. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | premieresales0 -
HTTPS 301 Redirect Question
Hi, I've just migrated our previous site (siteA) to our new url (siteB) and I've setup 301 redirects from the old url (siteA) to the new (siteB). However, the old url operated on https and users who try to go to the old url with https (https://siteA.com) receive a message that the server cannot be reached, while the users who go to http://siteA.com are redirected to siteB. Is there a way to 301 redirect https traffic? Also, from an SEO perspective if the site and all the references on Google search are https://siteA.com does a 301 redirect of http pass the domain authority, etc. or is https required? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | opstart0 -
Using cononical tag instead of 301
I've got a bit of an odd situation... My business partner and I split up, and he's going to keep the company name. The website that I built for the company has some links to it, and I've managed to build up some DA and PA. I want to get the link juice over to my new website. My former partner doesn't care about the link juice, he just wants a website that he can show people. SO, I can't do a 301 or 302, because that would take down the existing site. Can I just use a canonical tag that refers link power to my new website? Would this be harmful in any way? What should I do to accomplish getting the link power without a redirect, and without contacting each person who has given us a backlink?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zing-Marketing0 -
Dealing with non-canonical http vs https?
We're working on a complete rebuild of a client's site. The existing version of the site is in WordPress and I've noticed that the site is accessible via http and https. The new version of the site will have mostly or entirely different URLs. It seems that both http and https versions of a page will resolve, but all of the rel-canonical tags I've seen point to the https version. Sometimes image tags and stylesheets are https, sometimes they aren't. There are both http and https pages in Google's index. Having looked at other community posts about http/https, I've gathered the following: http/https is like two different domains. http and https versions need to be verified in Google Webmaster Tools separately. Set up the preferred domain properly. Rel-canonicals and internal links should have matching protocols. My thought is that we will do a .htaccess that redirects old URLs regardless of the protocol to new pages at one protocol. I would probably let the .css and image files from the current site 404. When we develop and launch the new site, does it make sense for everything to be forced to https? Are there any particular SEO issues that I should be aware of for a scenario like this? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GOODSIR0 -
Do you use a different tactic to optimize for Bing?
Google is king, but it seems as though there is a significant source of traffic and revenue from Bing. What is the preferred strategy? Optimize for Google and hope it filters to Bing? An obvious concern would be that if we change tactics to please Bing, we could stand to lose our rankings with Google. Any opinions/thoughts/feedback/suggestions would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NaHoku0