Https redirect
-
Hi there,
a client of mine is asking me if Google would penalize to redirect from all the http urls to https (they want to change the security protocol).
I assume it is going to work as a classic 301, right? so they might lose some authority in they way, but I am not 100% sure. Can anyone confirm this? does anyone has a similar experience?
thanks a lot!
-
Hi Michael,
What did you and the client end up deciding? Do you have any lessons learned or anything interesting to share? We'd love to hear it!
-
Do all the pages need to be https or just some of them? I'm not a huge fan of working with all https sites, but appreciate sometimes it's necessary.
Some things you may want to look at - http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/solving-duplicate-content-issues-with-http-and-https
As with any redirect you're losing some juice, but if it needs to be done it should just be the same as a normal redirect. This should be safe:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]I never see many top sites using https exclusively, even paypal has it's http version in the SERPs (though redirects you to the https immediately) because nobody links to the https version. Well, not nobody, but you get what I mean, nobody immediately thinks to put that 's' in there so there's lots of links to the http version.
Both are fine to use though.
-
If the 301 redirection is correctly implemented (a 301 redirection for each single http page to the https page), this should be OK. From a theorical point of view, you may loss around ~10% of the linkjuice from existing backlinks. However, I personally never noticed a negative impact of my rankings on this kind of massive website redirection.
Here are a just few things I would recommend you pay attention to:
- Make 100% sure you correctly implement your 301 redirections.
- Once you've correctly implemented your 301 redirections, submit an XML sitemap of your old URLs (starting with standard http://) to ask Google to recrawl your old URLs and see that they have been 301-redirected to https://* URLs. This will make Google update its index more quickly.
- Also make sure your https website doesn't require resources (such as images, javascripts, css files) that are not served in https. If your HTTPS pages require resources served in HTTP, Internet Explorer will popup a warning message asking for the user if he wants to display resources which are not secured.
My two cents.
J.
-
Switching to https by using a 301 redirect will probably cause a temporary dip in traffic, but this should only be temporary.
It would make sure that you use a "rel=canonical" tag on the pages just to be clear to Google that the HTTPS version is what you want users to see.
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
-
IP Redirect causing Indexing Issue
Hi, I am trying to redirect any IP from outside India that comes to Store site (https://store.nirogam.com/) to Global Store site (https://global.nirogam.com/) using this methodThis is causing various indexing issues for Store site as Googlebot from US also gets redirected!- Very few pages for "store.nirogam.com/products/" are being indexed. Even after submission of sitemap it indexed ~50 pages and then went back to 1 page etc. Only ~20 pages indexed for now.- After this I tried manually indexing via "Crawl -> Fetch as Google" - but then it showed me a redirect to global.nirogam.com. All have their "status -> Redirected" - This is why bots are not able to index the site.What are possible solutions for this? How can we tell bots to index these pages and not get redirected?Will a popup method where we ask user if they are outside India help in solving this issue?All approaches/suggestions will be highly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pks3330 -
Redirecting 301 or 302?
Hi, I think the part of this question has been already discussed, but not exactly the same, I think. My site requires authentication for member page. When a user try to go to member area, we redirect to 3rd party to do the authentication. 1. user clicks a link to www.mysite.com/member/contents.html
Technical SEO | | HypermediaSystems
2. www.myauthenticate.com/login?h=somehashuniquehash454859428778545 (enters id/pass)
3. login success => redirect back to www.mysite.com/member/contents.html We are doing it 302, temporary redirect. But moz crawler error seems to suggest we should do it 301.
So my question is:
A. Should we do it 301???
B. If we do 301, what happens to myauthenticate.com? since it has hashtag, I am afraid it could create a lot of duplicate contents on myauthenticate.com side... Thank you so much for your help in advance...0 -
Importance of 301 Redirects
Hello, I have been brought in at the last minute to consult for an e-commerce client who is about to relaunch their website. The site currently receives 8000 visits a month, 3100 of which are from organic search. They have a few thousand product pages. The web development firm they are using is changing all of the old product page urls and using 'search engine friendly' urls for the new site, which is expected to launch in a few weeks. However, they did not/are not planning on including 301 redirects from the old URLs. Other than simply stating 'this will be bad for your SEO', what would be a correct way of explaining to the client how much of a problem it will be if their new site launches without 301s. For example, is this a big enough issue to delay the launch of the site / get in a contract dispute with the web developer?
Technical SEO | | stageagent0 -
301 redirect of a subdirectory
Hello! I am working on a website with the following structure: example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3. The page "example.com/sub1" does not exist (I know this is not the optimal architecture to have this be a nonexistent page). But someone might type that address, so I would like it to redirect it to example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3. I tried the following redirect: redirect 301 /sub1 http://example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3. But with this redirect in place, if I go to example.com/sub1, I get redirected to example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3/sub2/sub3 (the redirect just inserts extra subdirectories). If someone types "example.com/sub1" into a browser, I would "example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3" to come up. Is this possible? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | nyc-seo0 -
Does bait and switch redirecting affect SEO?
Yeah, the question might be an odd one, but I'm new to SEO. Currently we've been considering creating links to certain pages on our site that instantly redirect to a landing page like this (referring to it as bait and switch redirecting): http://www.ecornell.com/certificate-programs/human-resources-management-training/advanced-certificate-in-strategic-hr-management/crt/ILRASHRC1/?lp=http://info.ecornell.com/executive-certificate-in-hr-leadership%3Fls=xxx%26of=xxx This essentially causes the user to "hop" from the content page directly to the landing page. Now, the content page is indexed otherwise, so I'm wondering if time on page (which is basically 0) or anything else might affect page rank. Also, if this is something we shouldn't do, that'd be great to know too. It feels sort of dirty, but I can't find any resources telling me it's bad, or how it would affect pagerank. I've read about pagejacking, but this doesn't seem to fall into the same category. Thanks! Alan
Technical SEO | | amccarty0 -
Redirects in site map
I have a site with the ace/sef ( creates friendly URLS) in a large data base site. It creates a site map dynamically. Yet I realize one issue which I am trying to think through. I recently changed my urls to include an ID number example: homepage/houses/1134-big-blue-house The prior url was: homepage/houses/big-blue-house the original url above redirects to the new one with the ID like I want. However the site map has both URLS in it which go to same page I am not sure but it seems rather stupid to have the new URL and OLD redirected URL in the site map. Yet beside stupid I am wondering if this is duplicate content and will cause a penalty from the google bot. What is your opinion ?
Technical SEO | | aimiyo0 -
Domain redirection and seo implications
We have an existing site that is a subdomain but we recently acquired an exact match domain. Will building links to the exact match domain and having the domain point at our existing subdomain work or should we convert the entire site and redirect our existing subdomain to the new domain? What I'm trying to figure out is how to maximize the benefit here and how the existing mass of links pointing to our existing subdomain (shop.domain.com) can be used. New domain: keywordshop.com Existing URL: shop.domain.com
Technical SEO | | CHarkins0 -
How long should you keep 301 redirects?
Hi, Back in 2009 I decided to update an older site from .htm and .shtml to .php. In order to minimize the impact I would go in every month and do a 301 redirect on the .shtml page to the new .php page. So I have many that range from 2009 through 2010. I had left the old 301's because I felt they would only be used if needed but I would think I should clean up my .htaccess by removing the old 301 redirects if they are not needed. How long should you keep this type of 301 redirect? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Force70