Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Switching from HTTP to HTTPS: 301 redirect or keep both & rel canonical?
-
Hey Mozzers,
I'll be moving several sites from HTTP to HTTPS in the coming weeks (same brand, multiple ccTLDs). We'll start on a low traffic site and test it for 2-4 weeks to see the impact before rolling out across all 8 sites.
Ideally, I'd like to simply 301 redirect the HTTP version page to the HTTPS version of the page (to get that potential SEO rankings boost). However, I'm concerned about the potential drop in rankings, links and traffic.
I'm thinking of alternative ways and so instead of the 301 redirect approach, I would keep both sites live and accessible, and then add rel canonical on the HTTPS pages to point towards HTTP so that Google keeps the current pages/ links/ indexed as they are today (in this case, HTTPS is more UX than for SEO).
Has anyone tried the rel canonical approach, and if so, what were the results? Do you recommend it?
Also, for those who have implemented HTTPS, how long did it take for Google to index those pages over the older HTTP pages?
-
Thanks Eric, I appreciate the response.
-
Regarding the GCLIDs, you'll want to update your Google AdWords campaigns and anywhere else you can updated the URLs to the new HTTPs version of your site.
Whenever you use a 301 Permanent Redirect you typically lose the referrer data, so that's why you're going to see issues with the referrers.
-
I would definitely use the 301 permanent redirects and NOT use the canonical tag for this. Also, don't forget to verify the HTTPs version of your site in Google Search Console, as well. We recommend getting a few new links to the HTTPs version of the site, as that will help with indexing and crawling.
-
The best way to mitigate this problem would be to update the destination URLs in your Adwords Campaigns. You can do this in bulk relatively quickly using the Adwords Editor desktop application.
-
Hi Logan,
I have a question related to this topic. We have something similar in place, but we are struggling as the 301 redirect from http to https sometime kills the gclid parameter that AdWords uses to track clicks coming search or display campaigns.
Have you heard about this before? Do you any practical solution to this?
Cheers,
Kilgray Translation Technologies
-
No problem!
-
Thanks Logan!
-
Hi Steven,
You'll definitely want to apply 301 redirects to any site that you move to HTTPS. For most sites, this can typically be done with a single redirect rules that essentially replaces http with https, so you won't have to comb through each URL and apply one-to-one redirects.
No need to worry about losing link juice, Google views these types of 301s differently than a typical 301, and all authority will pass through them.
Canonical should also be applied, this will help search engines learn your new URL structure and ensure they index the new HTTPS URLs.
Cryus Shepard wrote a great post with all the necessary steps for a secure migration, check it out here: https://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl
Good luck!
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 Redirects to relative URLs not absolute a problem?
Hi we recently did a migration and a lot of content changed locations see: https://d.pr/i/RvqI81 Basically, the 301 goes to the correct location but its a relative URL (as you can see from the screenshot) rather than absolute URL. Do you think this is a high priority issue from an SEO standpoint, should we get the developer to change the redirects to absolute? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cathywix0 -
Default Wordpress 301 Redirects of JS and CSS files. Bad for SEO & How to Fix?
Hi there: We are developers with some digital marketing expertise, but a current issue has us perplexed. An outside SEO firm has asked us to clean up a large number of 301 redirects. Most of these are 'default' Wordpress behavior that relate to calling the latest version of a JS or CSS file. For instance, a JS file is called with this: https://websitexyz.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js?ver=4.9.1 but ultimately redirects to this: https://websitexyz.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js. We are being asked to prevent the redirect from happening by, presumably, calling the ultimate file to begin with. The issue is that, as far as we know, there's no easy way to alter WP behavior to call the ultimate file to begin with. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Does removal of internal redirects(301) help in SEO
I am planning to completely remove 301 redirects manually by replacing such links with actual live pages/links. So there will be no redirects internally in the website. Will this boost our SEO efforts? Auto redirects will be there for incoming links to non-existing pages. Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Setting up 301 Redirects after acquisition?
Hello! The company that I work for has recently acquired two other companies. I was wondering what the best strategy would be as it relates to redirects / authority. Please help! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Colin.Accela0 -
Is a 301 Redirect and a Canonical Tag on Uppercase to Lowercase Pages Correct?
We have a medium size site that lost more than 50% of its traffic in July 2013 just before the Panda rollout. After working with a SEO agency, we were advised to clean up various items, one of them being that the 10k+ urls were all mixed case (i.e. www.example.com/Blue-Widget). A 301 redirect was set up thereafter forcing all these urls to go to a lowercase version (i.e. www.example.com/blue-widget). In addition, there was a canonical tag placed on all of these pages in case any parameters or other characters were incorporated into a url. I thought this was a good set up, but when running a SEO audit through a third party tool, it shows me the massive amount of 301 redirects. And, now I wonder if there should only be a canonical without the redirect or if its okay to have tens of thousands 301 redirects on the site. We have not recovered yet from the traffic loss yet and we are wondering if its really more of a technical problem than a Google penalty. Guidance and advise from those experienced in the industry is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ABK7170 -
Multiple 301 redirects for a HTTPS URL. Good or bad?
I'm working on an ecommerce website that has a few snags and issues with it's coding. They're using https, and when you access the website through domain.com, theres a 301 redirect to http://www.domain.com and then this, in turn, redirected to https://www.domain.com. Would this have a deterimental effect or is that considered the best way to do it. Have the website redirect to http and then all http access is redirected to the https URL? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasondexter0 -
Yoast & rel canonical for paginated Wordpress URLs
Hello, our Wordpress blog at http://www.jobs.ca/career-resources has a rel canonical issue since we added pagination to the front page and category-pages. We're using Yoast and it's incorrectly applying a rel-canonical meta tag referencing page 1 on page 2, 3, etc. This is a known misuse of the rel-canonical tag (per Google's Webmaster Blog - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html, which says rel-canonical should be replaced with rel-prev and rel-next for page 2, 3, etc.). We don't see a way to specify anywhere in Yoast's options to correct this behaviour for page 2, 3, etc. Yoast allows you to override a page's canonical URL, otherwise it automatically uses the Wordpress permalink. My question is, does anyone know how to configure Yoast to properly replace rel-canonical tags with rel-prev and rel-next for paginated URLs, or do I need to look at another plugin or customize the behavior directly in my child theme code? This issue was brought up here as well: http://moz.com/community/q/canonical-help, but the only response did not relate to Yoast. (We're using Wordpress 3.6.1 and Yoast "Wordpress SEO" 1.4.18)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aactive0 -
301 redirect from .html to non .html?
Previously our site was using this as our URL structure: www.site.com/page.html. A few months ago we updated our URL structure to this: www.site.com/page & we're not using the .html. I've read over this guide & don't see anywhere that discusses this: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection. I've currently got a programmer looking into, but am always a bit weary with their workarounds, as I'd previously had them cause more problems then fix it. Here is the solution he is looking to do: The way that I am doing the redirect is fine. The problem is of where to put the code. The issue is that the files are .html files that need to be redirected to the same url with out a .html on them. I can see if I can add that to the 404 redirect page if there is one inside of there and see if that does the trick. That way if there is no page that exists without the .html then it will still be a 404 page. However if it is there then it will work as normal. I will see what I can find and get back. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, BJ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seointern0