URL Re-Writes & HTTPS: Link juice loss from 301s?
-
Our URLs are not following a lot of the best practices found here: http://moz.com/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls
We have also been waiting to implement HTTPS.
I think it might be time to take the plunge on re-writing the URLs and converting to a fully secure site, but I am concerned about ranking dips from the lost link juice from the 301s. Many of our URLs are very old, with a decent amount of quality links.
Are we better off leaving as is or taking the plunge?
-
Thanks all...Much appreciated!
Looking at the examples below, does anyone think this move could result in a negative effect?
**From: **http://www.xyzwidgets.com/widgets/commercial-widgets/small_blue_widget.htm
**To: **https://www.xyzwidgets.com/small-blue-widget
**From: **http://www.xyzwidgets.com/info/videos/general/what-are-widgets.htm
-
If youre going to be updating your URLs for best-practices, I would incorporate the conversion to https as well - do it all in one shot, as you've said.
Just ensure you're implementing 301 redirects properly. Not doing so can have disastrous results.
-
In addition to what Robert just said. If you add a 301 now to format url properly, and later add a second 301 to move to HTTPS, you will add redirect to redirect losing that little bit of page juice twice.
-
The only downside to that approach is if there is no benefit to moving to HTTPS, you have wasted time (if that was the only reason for you doing so). However, if you are using 301's either way, you may as well move to HTTPS - it won't hurt you and it might help you.
-
My thinking is that the potential for increase in CTR in the SERPS can have a greater affect than the potential 301 harm.
I notice many of you are still waiting for the jury to be a bit more conclusive on whether to move to HTTPS. However, if I'm redirecting all pages using Moz's bes practice, shouldn't I just take the HTTPS plunge at the same time? Is there any reason not to?
-
301's of any kind can result in a slight decrease in "link-juice" moving forward, although it can be hard to determine exactly how much (not a large amount relatively speaking). That being said, as Massimiliano stated, I haven't personally come across this scenario in my work.
The HTTP/HTTPS debate is still going and as Ray said, it might be best to adopt a "wait and see" strategy.
Of these things, you have pointed out that your urls do not follow best practices stated in the link - it is likely that new urls combined with 301 redirects to HTTPS will not hurt your rankings and may in fact help you. As Ray stated, it is about cost and whether you think the potential rankings are worth the time, effort and money you will spend making it happen.
-
In my experience the power of proper url, with the right keywords in the right place, is so great I wouldn't wait a second before to fix them.
Again based on my experience I never noticed a decrease in ranking due to 301.
I recently moved three websites from http to https and I didn't notice any decrease in ranking I could associate with the redirect.
Of course since we daily work on improving ranking is hard to distinguish a small decrease due to 301 from the general improvement.
-
The benefit in the ranking influence for http / https sites is still unclear. Many SEOs are still holding off on this conversion to see what its impact, hopefully measurable, may end up being.
Moz has a great post on Https necessities and practices here: http://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl
If it is going to be an intense project (costs an mount of money that makes you question its worth), I would hold off until more information is exposed about https as a ranking factor. If the conversion is easy, then I would get it implemented now and reap any benefits that come from https.
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
-
What to do when migrating to HTTPS?
Hi guys, I am planning on migrating an entire http domain to https. For it to be successful and making sure that Google indexes these new https URLs and not losing any SEO juice, do I simply make sure all legacy URLs get 301 redirected to those new https URLs? Finally what is a server side 301 redirect? What are all the kinds of 301 redirects if there are multiple kinds? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art1 -
Will I lose Link Juice when implementing a Reverse Proxy?
My company is looking at consolidating 5 websites that it has running on magento, wordpress, drupal and a few other platforms on to the same domain. Currently they're all on subdomains but we'd like to consolidate the subdomains to folders for UX and SEO potential. Currently they look like this: shop.example.com blog.example.com uk.example.com us.example.com After the reverse proxy they'll look like this: example.com/uk/ example.com/us/ example.com/us/shop example.com/us/blog I'm curious to know how much link juice will be lost in this switch. I've read a lot about site migration (especially the Moz example). A lot of these guides/case studies just mention using a bunch of 301's but it seems they'd probably be using reveres proxies as well. My questions are: Is a reverse proxy equal to or worse/better than a 301? Should I combine reverse proxy with a 301 or rel canonical tag? When implementing a reverse proxy will I lose link juice = ranking? Thanks so much! Jacob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jacob.young.cricut0 -
Does link juice pass along the URL or the folders? 10yr old PR 6 site
We have a website that is ~10yrs old and a PR 6. It has a bunch of legitimate links from .edu and .gov sites. Until now the owner has never blogged or added much content to the site. We have suggested that to grow his traffic organically he should add a worpress blog and get agressive with his content. The IT guy is concerned about putting a wordpress blog on the same server as the main site because of security issues with WP. They have a bunch of credit card info on file. So, would it be better to just put the blog on a subdomain like blog.mysite.com OR host the blog on another server but have the URL structure be mysite.com/blog? I have tried to pass as much juice as possible. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasonsixtwo0 -
Bad links
Well just set up SEO Moz to find out someone thought it funny to build a load of links to our site http://bluetea.com.au/ with the anchor txt "Buy Cocks" .... PLEASE PLEASE let me know how much I should worry about this and how can I get rid of it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Intrested0 -
How much link juice could be passed?
When evaluating a site to decide whether or not to peruse a link, how do you decide if it is passing enough link juice to peruse the matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | runnerkik0 -
Best time to choose a canonical URL & 301 redirect
I have taken on the task of getting a fairly huge eCommerce site more SEO friendly & have just realized that no URL has been chosen as our preferred domain. Should we designate a preferred domain now or wait until after the first of the year since we are hitting our busy period right now?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Winoman0 -
Pagination Question: Google's 'rel=prev & rel=next' vs Javascript Re-fresh
We currently have all content on one URL and use # and Javascript refresh to paginate pages, and we are wondering if we transition to the Google's recommended pagination if we will see an improvement in traffic. Has anyone gone though a similar transition? What was the result? Did you see an improvement in traffic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Natural Link Profile, low and high value links, really?
I cant really get my head around this one. I've read a few times when building links make sure you pick up so low value links as well. So here is an example (and lets say each link takes half hour to get): I got 5 hours of link building and this is what I have managed to get with the time. 1. 10 high value links all with PA/DA 50-60+ 2. 5 high value links with PA/DA 50-60+ AND another 5 low value links with PA/DA 10-. Surely #1 beats #2 hands down?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0