Homepage 302 Redirect For SSL
-
Hi All,
My site, http://domain.com, currently has a 302 redirect from http://domain.com to https://domain.com.
The reason we have an SSL cert is because we have a registration and log in form on the homepage (as well as log in options in the top bar of every page on the site - email/password).
My question is:
When taking SEO best practices into account, would we be better having a 301 redirect from http://domain.com to https://domain.com as most of our inbound links are directed to http://domain.com.
Thanks for any help!
-
Hi Mike,
We used the SEOMoz crawl test tool that provided the results.
The below stats are for the http://domain.com and the https://domain.com (we have a 302 from the http:// to the https://. Results are exactly the same.
<colgroup><col span="4" width="65"></colgroup>
| Internal Links | Linking Root Domains | External Links | Page Authority |
| 216 | 58 | 259 | 45 |
| 216 | 58 | 259 | 45 | -
What tool are you using to get your backlink profile?
Can you provide your domain?
Mike
-
It does not matter from an SEO standpoint whether you link to https or http from your homepage to a secondary page.
What does matter is that you only have one version. You do not want to have http://domain.com/second-page and https://domain.com/second-page on your website.
Hope this helps.
Mike
-
Hi Mike,
Thought you might find this interesting:
I was checking my crawl stats and it appears that the http://domain.com and the https://domain.com pages have returned the exact same backlink and page authority results. As mentioned, we currently have a 302 redirect in place here so I'm not sure how the https has managed to stack up the same page authority and backlinks as the http. Any idea?
-
Hi Mike,
That makes perfect sense. One last question that I'd really appreciate your knowledge on:
We go ahead and set up a 301 redirect from http://domain.com to our https://domain.com homepage.
On the homepage, we have a number of links to other pages on the site that are publicly visible. For these links on the homepage, would you advise that we set up a 301 redirect from https://domain.com/second-page to http://domain.com/second-page or is there any problem with keeping the tier 2 pages as https://domain.com/second-page.Thanks again Mike - much appreciated.
-
-
If you currently have a 302 in place directing http to https, you are only utilizing the backlinks of the https version. Once you implement a 301 from http to https, you will be gaining the backlinks that the http version has pointing at it and directing them to the https version.
-
No. If you need to use https, you need to use it. It is not looked down upon or more difficult to rank for or any of that... merely personal preference or need based.
Does that answer your question?
Mike
-
-
Hi Mike,
Thanks a lot for the response there. Just two quick follow ups:
-
Would we be losing any juice or search ranking already established with http://doman.com if we now set up a 301 redirect to https://domain.com (given that the site has been operating for over a year in its current form)?
-
Is there any negative side to setting up a homepage 301 redirect to an SSL homepage (https://domain.com)?
Thanks again for your help.
-
-
If I were you, I would change the 302 redirect to a 301.
A 302 redirect tells search engines that it is a temporary redirect and to not pass any link juice, because it is a temporary redirect and will be changing.
A 301 redirect tells search engines that it is a permanent redirect and to go ahead and allow link juice to flow from one page to another, because it is a permanent redirect and will not be changing.
Make sense?
Hope this helps.
Mike
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
-
Googlebot being redirected but not users?
Hi, We seem to have a slightly odd issue. We noticed that a number of our location category pages were slipping off 1 page, and onto page 2 in our niche. On inspection, we noticed that our Arizona page had started ranking in place of a number of other location pages - Cali, Idaho, NJ etc. Weirdly, the pages they had replaced were no longer indexed, and would remain so, despite being fetched, tweeted etc. One test was to see when the dropped out pages had been last crawled, or at least cached. When conducting the 'cache:domain.com/category/location' on these pages, we were getting 301 redirected to, you guessed it, the Arizona page. Very odd. However, the dropped out pages were serving 200 OK when run through header checker tools, screaming frog etc. On the face of it, it would seem Googlebot is getting redirected when it is hitting a number of our key location pages, but users are not. Has anyone experienced anything like this? The theming of the pages are quite different in terms of content, meta etc. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sayers0 -
How to get rid of two 301 redirects?
I have two 301s from http://www. to https://non-www version of my site. I wonder how can get rid of one so it will look like this: 301-200 instead of 301-301-200 All other combinations work fine and give me 301-200 status codes. Thank you very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lovemozforever0 -
301 Redirects... Redirect all content at once or in increments?
Hello, I have been reading a lot about site migration and 301s and sometimes get confused with conflicting suggestions from different sources... So, in a site migration. Should I 301 redirect all old URLs to the news at once or little by little? I've see this Google handout that suggests doing it all at once (minute 13)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Koki.Mourao
https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cfco632lor7bl55j3tg1g8332l0 But also have read the opposite in other forums...0 -
SSL for SEO?
To obtain an SEO benefit from an SSL is there any particular type or brand which is recommended or has a track history? It seems you can pay anything between $20 and $???? (For that matter whatever you want to pay!). Any experience gratefully accepted! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Fetch as Google - Redirected
Hi I have swaped from HTTP to HTTPS and put a redirect on for HTTP to redirect to HTTPS. I also put www.xyz.co.uk/index.html to redirect to www.xyz.co.uk When I fetch as Google it shows up redirect! Does this mean that I have too many 301 looping? Do I need the redirect on index.html to root domain if I have a rel conanical in place for index.html htaccess (Linix) - RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^xyz.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia
RewriteRule (.*) https://www.xyz.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^$ index.html [R=301,L]0 -
Homepage with a lower PR?
Can anybody give me an example of 2-4 sites that have lower PR on the homepage and a higher PR on secondary pages (about us, etc)? And is there a way to search for such sites in Google? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VinceWicks0 -
Redirects 301
Hello guys, I have a doubt. If I reedirect a url with a pagerank of 2 to a new URL, will I loose the PR? My problem is that I have a long url in one page wich is not effective to target a keyword that Im persuing. Im climbing in Google, however I want to 1º place and I dont think that with this long URL I will make it. Advices? Cheers! Pedro M Pereira
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroM0 -
302 redirect
Aloha, I do a small study of 302 redirects. I wonder if you have any examples of sites where the use of a 302 is made.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | android_lyon
For example, to ski resorts: where there is a summer version and a winter version. In this case, the field of 302 will return the version of the relevant season. ex: http://www.valmorel.com/ >> 302 >> http://www.valmorel.com/fr/hiver/accueil-hiver.html I wonder if the use of 302 is the right solution.
What do you think? D.0