Https & http

[moon-boots]

I have my website (HTTP://thespacecollective.com) marked on Google Webmaster Tools as being the primary domain, as opposed to https. But should all of my on page links be http?

For instance, if I click the Home button on my home page it will take the user to http, but if you type in the domain name in the address bar it will take you to https.

Could this be causing me problems for SEO?

[moon-boots]

Thank you!

[LoganRay]

Yes, you should have both active in Search Console, but set the HTTPS to the preferred.

[Hurf]

You will continue to have both http and https variants active in Google Search Console (you should also add the non www variants and set www as your preferred version).

You do not set anything up within GSC to direct HTTP to HTTPS (to tell Google that you are changing protocols), this is all done via redirects as Logan suggests. Here's a great page which should help clarify this for you:

http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/68435/moving-from-http-to-https-google-search-console

[moon-boots]

Thanks for the additional info but I think you missed my question. Please see the attached image.

I have HTTP and HTTPS set up on Google Search Console. Which one should I be using, or should both be active?

Screen%20Shot%202017-02-23%20at%2016.15.22.png

[LoganRay]

Yea, as the bots hit the URLs on your sitemap, it forces them to step through the redirect, which is what you want. They won't notice the new location if you don't point it out to them, and this is the most efficient way to do so.

*To be clear, since this gets confusing in, the URL of the location of your XML should be HTTPS://thespacecollective.com/sitemap.xml, but the URLs listed in it should be HTTP.

Also, add this line to your robots.txt file, as the first line or last line, doesn't really matter:

Site: https://thespacecollective.com/sitemap.xml

[moon-boots]

Thanks Logan. Now I have two sites set up in the Google Search Console, http and https. The http version has the sitemap and pretty much everything set up, should I just keep using this even though the site will now be https?

[LoganRay]

When you set up the 301 redirect rule that sends HTTP requests to HTTPS, Google will notice that. Leave your XML sitemap the way it is (with HTTP URL references) for 30 days. This will give them sufficient time to crawl your XML sitemap and learn your new protocol as they hit the redirects. Once most of your indexed pages have switched to HTTPS, you can update your XML to include the secure URLs.

[moon-boots]

Thank you for the links, I have read through each and have decided to change to HTTPS as you advise. I've done everything with the exception of informing Google that the new site is https as opposed to http. How do I make them aware?

I have set up http and https in Webmaster Tools, but how do I tell Google which one is relevant in order to stop any duplicate content issues?

[Hurf]

From what I understand, you're already decided to split your traffic between HTTP and HTTPS. If this is correct, I would urge you to reconsider and redirect all traffic toward HTTPS versions as there are more issues to consider other than duplicate content, particularly as you are an e-commerce store. The latest (and future) versions of Chrome and Firefox will more clearly highlight unsecured connections. This is from Google's security blog: (https://security.googleblog.com/2016/09/moving-towards-more-secure-web.html?m=1)

"In following releases, we will continue to extend HTTP warnings, for example, by labelling HTTP pages as “not secure” in Incognito mode, where users may have higher expectations of privacy. Eventually, we plan to label all HTTP pages as non-secure, and change the HTTP security indicator to the red triangle that we use for broken HTTPS."

Chrome is the world's most popular browser, used by over 50% of all internet users. If your site is displaying a red triangle with the words 'Not Secure' next to it on ANY page on your site is going to turn visitors away. If over half you your visitors are receiving such a message the consequences will not be good.

Google are pushing users toward HTTPS (https://moz.com/blog/https-tops-30-how-google-is-winning-the-long-war) so I would suggest that it's a mis-step to swim against the tide.

There are also other minor benefits to serving all of your pages via HTTPS; it's a minor ranking signal and better support for browser compression, among others.

Here's another article that covers the recent changes.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-is-requiring-https-for-secure-data-in-chrome/183756/

However you proceed, I hope this goes smoothly for you.

Good luck.

[moon-boots]

Perfect, thank you. I'm doing this as we speak!

[LoganRay]

Rolling back to HTTP for non-checkout pages is an option as well. The main point I was trying to make was to not have both versions of your URLs accessible/indexable.

[moon-boots]

Thanks for this Logan. Surely it makes more sense for me to simple change my website to HTTP and just keep Cart/Checkout, etc. as HTTPS? I see changing to HTTPS as a big risk and a lot of unnecessary work for very little benefit.

[LoganRay]

Hi,

Both versions HTTP and HTTPS of your site will render, that's a problem. Since you've got an SSL and it's been applied to the home page, you should make your entire site secure. Once you've done that, you'll want to apply a redirect rule that sends all HTTP requests to the HTTPS version. Because you're not currently doing that, you're running the risk of duplicate content issues. Once you've done that, yes, you should set the primary domain in Google Search Console (WMT) as HTTPS. There's a few other steps you'll want to take as well - Cryus Shepard wrote a great post detailing all necessary steps for secure migration, I highly recommend reading that.

Additionally, when people on your site are bouncing back and forth between HTTP and HTTPS, it's destroying your data integrity in Google Analytics. Going from a HTTP page to a HTTPS page breaks the session, and starts a new one that will be attributed to direct traffic. You can see how this would quickly become a nightmare for accurate analysis and measurement. If you follow the steps in Cyrus' post, your GA data should return to normal because users won't be going back and forth from secure to non-secure.