HTTPS & 301s
-
Hi
- We have like most set up a redirect from HTTP to HTTPS.
- We also changed our website and set up redirects from .ASP pages to PHP pages
- We are now seeing 2 redirects in place for the whole of the website.
http.www.domain.com > https.www.domain.com (1) >> oldwebpage.asp >> new webpage.php (2)
The question is: Is there anyway of making the redirect 1 and not 2?
thanks
Enver -
Just to make sure I understand. Can you clarify the sequence of the changes and for how long? Do you know if one set of URLs has links to it or was ever indexed.
Let me explain.
It sounds like you had a site that was using http and was an asp site. So you had URLs like
http://www.website.com/file.asp (we will call this URL type A)
You then converted to https so the URLs were like
https://www.website.com/file.asp (we will call this URL type B)
You then updated to a PHP site so now with URLs are like this
https://www.website.com/file.php (we will call this URL type C)
You can setup 301s to go from A to B and then another set to go from B to C. Your question is can you setup a 301 to go from A to C, the answer is yes. You should do this. Anytime you can reduce the number of hops the better.
What you need to think about is, well, that about the A to B and the B to C redirects? Well, I would say at a minimum, you need to eliminate the A to B 301s as you have now decided to skip the "B" and go right to C. That works. What about the B to C 301 redirect? It depends. If you had version B of the website out for a while, and it was indexed by Google and you have links that are built to B version URLs, then yes, you need to leave the B to C redirects. You don't want to lose any of that equity.
Likewise, let's say you have a version D of the site that comes out a year later. You have lots of links into the C version of the site.
https://www.website.com/file.html
You then need the A urls to 301 to the D URLs (and get rid of the A to C 301s), you need the B URL to 301 to the D URLs and so on. In other words, go through another process of cleaning up the 301s and reducing the hops.
Why do all this. Two reasons. There will still be links to the A, B, C versions of the site. Google will still find them and crawl them and you want to get credit for those links to your site. Also, Google keeps an internal log of URLs and will check them from time to time, even if no one is linking to them. You want Google to find the right URL. In either case, if Google hits a version A URL, it would then have to go to version B via a 301 and then to version C. It can do it, but it would rather have 1 hop.
Side note. Try not to use global 301s, where you just 301 a bunch of pages to the home page. That does nothing for you as far as link equity. Try and make the 301s a 1 to 1 relationship as much as possible.
Take a look at this video and this backs up what I just said. The number of hops is discussed at about 3 min in. The whole video is worth watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA
-
I'm not sure I understand. What is wrong with the ASP -> PHP redirect?
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
-
Do you still loose 15% of value of inbound links when you redirect your site from http to https (so all inbound links to http are being redirected to https version)?
I know when you redesign your on website, you loose about 15% internally due to the 301 redirects (see moz article: https://moz.com/blog/accidental-seo-tests-how-301-redirects-are-likely-impacting-your-brand), but I'm wondering if that also applies to value of inbound links when you redirect your http://www.sitename.com to https://www.sitename.com. I appreciate your help!
Technical SEO | | JBMediaGroup0 -
HTTPS Migration & Preserving Link Equity
Hey All — I’m working with a site that is migrating to HTTPS and had a couple questions. I read Moz’s ‘SEO Tips & Tricks for HTTPS’ post but want some clarification on a couple items. Aside from using https canonicals... 1. What is the best way to preserve link equity from inbound links? Site wide 301 Redirect in .htacess? 2. What is the best way to redirect internal links from http to https? The site uses absolute internal links. THX!
Technical SEO | | JJLWeber0 -
Hi Mozers, is the AMP project is supposed to be an SEO factor on mobile platforms? Also, can it be used on ecommerce sites such as Magento or Shopify as well? Thanks!
It stands to reason that Google will favor early adopters of Accelerated Mobile Pages, but it seems heavily geared toward news publishers so far. What about regular Wordpress sites, or ecommerce sites like Shopify, should AMP be pursued on that type of CMS?
Technical SEO | | CalamityJane771 -
Http to Https Backlink Value
We updated our website from http to https and I wanted to know how backlinks were affected by this. The new site redirects all old http links to the https home page. How does this affect more specific backlinks like http://www.mysite.com/about ? The old http://www.mysite.com/about is now being directed to https://www.mysite.com . Do I need to set up redirects to pass value to my new pages?
Technical SEO | | nat88han0 -
Mass 301s
Hi All, im trying to find a way to do a mass list of 301s instead of just doing them individually, does anyone have any ideas or tips into how i can do this?
Technical SEO | | Kennelstore0 -
https v http is there any difference in rankings what is the best for a online chemist store?
Have a client that has a https site do you think its better than http for this kind of site and is there any studies done regarding any difference in rankings?
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve0 -
Switching to HTTPS
I'm trying to get my server PCI Compliant and they want me to switch the forums at http://www.usacarry.com/forums/ over to https because of the logins. Could this possibly affect my existing rankings?
Technical SEO | | USACarry0 -
Any Insights On HTML5 Parallax Sites & SEO?
Looking for any insights regarding experience with optimization and HTML5 websites that use parallax scrolling making the website only one page (single unique URL). If done right, I've seen a number of these sites with great UX, clean design and nice layouts, but it comes down to only being able to optimize a single page. Does Google view single page sites as less authoritative? I'll open the floor to any comments at all about this. Thanks in advance Mozzers.
Technical SEO | | PHDL0