How to Evaluate Original Domain Authority vs. Recent 'HTTPS' Duplicate for Potential Domain Migration?
-
Hello Everyone,
So our site has used ‘http’ for the domain since the start. Everything has been set up for this structure and Google is only indexing these pages. Just recently a second version was created on ‘httpS’. We know having both up is the worst case scenario but now that both are up is it worth just switching over or would the original domain authority warrant just keeping it on ‘http’ and redirecting the ‘httpS’ version?
Assuming speed and other elements wouldn’t be an issue and it's done correctly.
Our thought was if we could do this quickly it would be easier to just redirect the ‘httpS’ version but was not sure if the Pros of ‘httpS’ would be worth the resources.
Any help or insight would be appreciated.
Please let us know if there are any further details we could provide that might help.
Looking forward to hearing from all of you!
Thank you in advance for the help.
Best,
-
Yes I would recommend moving to https over the curent http it will be very unlikely that you have an issue with google and The end-users will feel much more secure.
If you are doing this on a bespoke site ( not very common CMS or made by hand)
I know tools like letsencrypt.com give you a free certificate so will CloudFlare.com so if you're trying to have HTTP/2 , HSTS, forced https & a cert you can use for free version and it will do everything you need for https cost (free-$5,000) (any reverse proxy CDN or WAF) stackpath.com ($20) incapsula.com ($59) sucuri.net WAF ($19) Armor.com ($600-7,000) WAF only (under $200) Speedyrails.com has always had deals on cloudflare (35-40% off) if you're going to use it.
if you use a EV cert or just want to have a regular certificate I strongly recommend looking at third-party sites you can save a lot of money.
I like DigiCert and GlobalSign personal most of the others are on the Symantec what was VERISIGN you can definitely get away with getting one for $5-100 on namecheap but remember to search for the best price on Google.
They tend to make the job a lot easier and my personal opinion is that every person should actually do have WAF for their sites they like.
-
I'm happy to be of help!
-
You're welcome
-
Thank you both for the help, this is great. We were asking more in relation to choosing between which version to make the priority. It seems like you would recommend switching over to ‘https’ even though all of our pages being indexed are ‘http’? - Just wanted to make sure we understood you correctly.
We will make sure to go through all of the documentation you sent over before moving as well.
Please let us know if there is anything we could provide further details for that might help.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Thank you again for all the help.
Best,
-
This will help too
http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-optimization/http-https-migration-checklist-google-docs/
& use http://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/https-vs-http/
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^443$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]</ifmodule> -
As Romans stated you will need to go into search console and add all four properties. Then pick which one you want to be your canonical or Chosen URL.
-
On the Search Console Home page, click the site you want.
-
Click the gear icon, and then click Site Settings.
-
In the Preferred domain section, select the option you want.
-
HTTP://
-
HTTPS://
** The to do list. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6332964**
** make certain that you force https:// on your hosting environment or WAF/CDN**
**Check it using a **Redirect mapper
- https://varvy.com/tools/redirects/
- If you get lost and need to fix something
- https://online.marketing/guide/https/
- https://www.deepcrawl.com/blog/news/2017-seo-tips-move-to-https/
Add HSTS once everything is definitely working.
Make sure everything is working correctly before Google crawls it use
all the best,
Tom
-
-
There is no a big deal, to avoid duplicate content just make the appropriate redirects, and register both properties on search console the 'http' and 'https' version and then set the right version on this case https.
Go to Search Console > Add a property > https version > Verify
then go Site settings and set the new version of your website, with those simple steps you will have everything up and running.
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
-
Should you 'noindex' Checkout Pages?
Today I was reviewing my Moz analytics and suddenly noticed 1,000 issues with pages without a meta description. I reviewed the list and learned it is 1,000 checkout pages. That's because my website has thousands of agency pages from which you can buy a product, and it reflects that difference on each version of the checkout. So, I was thinking about no-indexing (but continuing to 'follow') these checkout pages, but wondering if it has any knock-on effects I may be unaware of? Any assistance is much appreciated. Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Luke_Proctor0 -
Could duplicate (copied) content actually hurt a domain?
Hi 🙂 I run a small wordpress multisite network where the main site which is an informative portal about the Langhe region in Italy, and the subsites are websites of small local companies in the tourism and wine/food niche. As an additional service for those who build a website with us, I was thinking about giving them the possibility to use some ouf our portal's content (such as sights, events etc) on their website, in an automatic way. Not as an "SEO" plus, but more as a service for their current users/visitors base: so if you have a B&B you can have on your site an "events" section with curated content, or a section about thing to see (monuments, parks, museums, etc) in that area, so that your visitors can enjoy reading some content about the territory. I was wondering if, apart from NOT being benefical, it would be BAD from an SEO point of view... ie: if they could be actually penlized by google. Thanks 🙂 Best
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Enrico_Cassinelli0 -
'?q=:new&sort=new' URL parameters help...
Hey guys, I have these types of URLs being crawled and picked up on by MOZ but they are not visible to my users. The URLs are all 'hidden' from users as they are basically category pages that have no stock, however MOZ is crawling them and I dont understand how they are getting picked up as 'duplicate content'. Anyone have any info on this? http://www.example.ch/de/example/marken/brand/make-up/c/Cat_Perso_Brand_3?q=:new&sort=new Even if I understood the technicality behind it then I could try and fix it if need be. Thanks Guys Kay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eLab_London0 -
We sold our site's domain and have a new one. Where do we go from here?
We recently sold our established domain -- for a compelling price -- and now have the task of transitioning to our new domain. What steps would you recommend to lesson the anticipated decline from search engines in this scenario?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | accessintel0 -
Page and Domain Authority
How much Page and Domain Authority we need to look for to secure a backlink.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ross254sidney0 -
Domain vs Subdomain for Multi-Location Practice
I have a client who has 2 locations (Orlando & Tampa) and would like to keep the current domain for both locations (DA 29). We want to target additional cities within each service area (Orlando & Tampa). Each service area would target 2 cities on the main pages and 4-5 cities with "SEO" pages which contains unique content specific to the given city. Would I be better off creating sub domains (www.orlando.domain.com & www.tampa.domain.com), creating subfolders (www.domain.com/orlando, etc) or keeping the domain as is and create SEO pages specific to each city? We want to spread the domain authority to both locations.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Red_Spot_Interactive0 -
How Long Before a URL is 'Too Long'
Hello Mozzers, Two of the sites I manage are currently in the process of merging into one site and as a result, many of the URLs are changing. Nevertheless (and I've shared this with my team), I was under the impression that after a certain point, Google starts to discount the validity of URLs that are too long. With that, if I were to have a URL that was structured as follows, would that be considered 'too long' if I'm trying to get the content indexed highly within Google? Here's an example: yourdomain.com/content/content-directory/article and in some cases, it can go as deep as: yourdomain.com/content/content-directory/organization/article. Albeit there is no current way for me to shorten these URLs is there anything I can do to make sure the content residing on a similar path is still eligible to rank highly on Google? How would I go about achieving this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NiallSmith0 -
Duplicate content, website authority and affiliates
We've got a dilemma at the moment with the content we supply to an affiliate. We currently supply the affiliate with our product database which includes everything about a product including the price, title, description and images. The affiliate then lists the products on their website and provides a Commission Junction link back to our ecommerce store which tracks any purchases with the affiliate getting a commission based on any sales via a cookie. This has been very successful for us in terms of sales but we've noticed a significant dip over the past year in ranking whilst the affiliate has achieved a peak...all eyes are pointing towards the Panda update. Whenever I type one of our 'uniquely written' product descriptions into Google, the affiliate website appears higher than ours suggesting Google has ranked them the authority. My question is, without writing unique content for the affiliate and changing the commission junction link. What would be the best option to be recognised as the authority of the content which we wrote in the first place? It always appears on our website first but Google seems to position the affiliate higher than us in the SERPS after a few weeks. The commission junction link is written like this: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-1428744-10475505?sid=shopp&url=http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/vango-calisto-600xl-tent.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gavinhoman0