Fundamental HTTP to HTTPS Redirect Question
-
Hi All
I'm planning a http to https migration for a site with over 500 pages. The site content and structure will be staying the same, this is simply a https migration.
Can I just confirm the answer to this fundamental question?
From my reading, I do not need to create 301 redirect for each and every page, but can add a single generic redirect so that all http references are redirected to https. Can I just double check this would suffice to preserve existing google rankings?
Many Thanks
-
Hi Sean / Others
Can I just add one last question to this post?
I'm not certain about the canonical tags. Although I don't need to add redirects for everypage, do I need to add a canonical tag to each page?
Is there a way of doing this for all pages?
-
Awesome, thank you so much!
-
Hi Sean
Thank you so much, that is brilliant much appreciated.
I'm new to this forum, just to double check I've ticked the thumbs up and also "good answer", I think that show the appreciation that you can on this forum?
-
Hi there!
You're absolutely correct, you would just need a domain-level server redirect to take all http URLs to their https equivalent.
Best practice is to ensure you've also got the non-www. version of the website covered in that same redirect too, to avoid any chains. You'll see what I mean if you run your domain through this > https://varvy.com/tools/redirects/
Depending on what stack you're using, here are the 2 guides. One for htaccess and one for IIS:
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10489895/http-to-https-through-htaccess
- https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/kaushal/2013/05/22/http-to-https-redirects-on-iis-7-x-and-higher/
You shouldn't need to, but just to be on the safe side, I would also add canonical tags to the http pages, pointing to their https equivalent prior to putting the server level redirect in place. This is to ensure that you won't be causing yourself issues if the redirect fails for any reason. Details here:
Once you've got your redirection planned in, make sure you set up a Google Search Console account for the https version to ensure there are no crawl issues and to check that the http version of the site stops receiving traffic.
That should just about cover it!
Hope it all goes well,
Sean
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
-
301 Domain Redirect from old domain with HTTPS
My domain was indexed with HTTPS://WWW. now that we redirected it the certificate has been removed and if you try to visit the old site with https it throws an obvious error that this sites not secure and the 301 does not happen. My question is will googles bot have this issue. Right now the domain has been in redirection status to the new domain for a couple months and the old site is still indexed, while the new one is not ranking well for half its terms. If that is not causing the problem can anyone tell me why would the 301 take such a long time. Ive double and quadruple checked the 301's and all settings to ensure its being redirected properly. Yet it still hasn't fully redirected. Something is wrong and my clients ready to ditch the old domain we worked on for a good amount of time. backgorund:About 30 days ago we found some redirect loops .. well not loop but it was redirecting from old domain to the new domain several times without error. I removed the plugins causing the multi redirects and now we have just one redirect from any page on the old domain to the new https version. Any suggestions? This is really frustrating me and I just can't figure it out. My only answer at this point is wait it out because others have had this issue where it takes up to 2 months to redirect the domain. My only issue is that this is the first domain redirect out of many that have ever taken more than a week or three.
Technical SEO | | waqid0 -
One more redirect question
If there are two URLs like below: example.com/toys/batman-toys
Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby
example.com/birthday/batman-toys Both have the exact same everything, except URL key. The first example ranks for all KWs and search terms in the SEs. Does having the second page hurt my ranking potential for the first page? Should I redirect the 2nd page to the first or just leave it? As always, thanks for your help.0 -
Https Duplicate Content
My previous host was using shared SSL, and my site was also working with https which I didn’t notice previously. Now I am moved to a new server, where I don’t have any SSL and my websites are not working with https version. Problem is that I have found Google have indexed one of my blog http://www.codefear.com with https version too. My blog traffic is continuously dropping I think due to these duplicate content. Now there are two results one with http version and another with https version. I searched over the internet and found 3 possible solutions. 1 No-Index https version
Technical SEO | | RaviAhuja
2 Use rel=canonical
3 Redirect https versions with 301 redirection Now I don’t know which solution is best for me as now https version is not working. One more thing I don’t know how to implement any of the solution. My blog is running on WordPress. Please help me to overcome from this problem, and after solving this duplicate issue, do I need Reconsideration request to Google. Thank you0 -
Do I need Redirects?
I've recently changed my old static website to a WordPress one. I'd like to know what do do (if anything) about my old links. For example a page on my old site was: www.iainmoran.com/corporate-magician.html - now I'm using WordPress, the url is:
Technical SEO | | iainmoran
www.iainmoran.com/corporate-magician/ My question is, do I need to set up redirects on these old pages (which no longer exist or will Google eventually re-crawl my site and update the links themselves? I'm using the Yoast SEO Plugin for WP and it creates a sitemap, which of course will have my new pages on. But don't want Google to penalise me for having broken links, etc. Many thanks, Iain.0 -
301 Redirect Questions
I have a site I built on a wisiwig editing platform that will not allow a 301 redirect. The site has already been remade and I need to point it to another domain. To do the redirect, can I change it to another domain host that will allow a 301 or will that make me loose the authority of the site? I may not be able to move the content of the site. Please help.
Technical SEO | | photoseo10 -
Redirecting Domains
Hi Everybody, My clients owns a lot of domains related to his website. I redirected them to the website. So his website is: www.vallnord.com but if you type Vallnordski, vallnordsnow, etc etc they will go to the website, but they will not change the url and will keep vallnordski, vallnordsnow instead of going to vallnord.com Not very clear actually, so if you have 20 seconds to type them you will see it very clear. I was wondering if this was a good practice or it is better to actually redirect someone completely (If they type vallnordski.com take them to vallnord.com)? Is redirecting a good SEO practice? Regards, Guido.
Technical SEO | | SilbertAd0 -
301 Redirect
Need a little bit of help on this one. I have a product page which actually has 3 products on the page in question: www.example.com/products I thought it would be best for each product to have a page on its own: www.example.com/product-1 www.example.com/product-2 www.example.com/product-3 however my question is: The page with the 3 products www.example.com/products where should the 301 go to? Can you do a 301 to all the new product pages? Hope that makes sense Kind Regards,
Technical SEO | | Paul780 -
Redirect Multiple Domains
This is a follow-up question from one posted earlier this month. I can't linked to that because it's a private question so I'm trying to summarize it below. We have a number of domains – about 20 - (e.g. www.propertysharp.com) that point to our main domain ip adress (www.propertyshark.com) and share the same content. This is no black-hat strategy whatsoever, the domains were acquired several years ago in order to help people who mistyped the websites url to reach their desired destination. The question was whether to redirect them to our main domain or not. Pros were the reportedly millions of incoming links from these domains - cons was the fact that lots of issues regarding duplicate content could arise and we actually saw lots of some pages from these domains ranking in the search engines. We were recommended to redirect them, but to take it gradually. I have a simple question - what does gradually mean - one domain per week, per month?
Technical SEO | | propertyshark0