Http to https for large ecommerce - our steps taken (any others recommended?)
-
**Here is the message from our technical team for the http to https migration; are there any other http to https migration steps recommended? **
Http to https migration steps (for this large ecommerce site):
We implemented HTTPS (HTTP over TLS) protocol today (5/4/2017).
- Applied a patch to ensure that HTTPS pages did not have NoIndex, NoFollow and tested before and after .
- Added new IIS HTTPS Redirect to enforce HTTPS from HTTP and changed others, including the WWW redirect
- Changed HTTPS only for Cookies as required as per new PCI vulnerabilities
- Changed the Basepage HTML template to use Relative Paths or Absolute URLs with HTTPS only (to prevent mixed content)
- Created and ran a SQL Script to cleanup 16 tables from HTTP to HTTPS (about 20,000 of them, including internal URL links, site settings, etc)
- Ran Google Sitemap Generator to create new sitemaps with HTTPS
- Added new HTTPS instance of the site into Webmaster Tools, then added verification code to master page, verified and then submitted the sitemaps to Search Console (QUESTION: will historical data in Google Console/ WMT be preserved for https?)
**Follow up steps for http to https migration for large ecommerce: **
- From this point forward, to avoid “mixed content”, the Marketing team must use either Relative Paths or Absolute Paths with HTTPS only in any customization (i.e. Basepage) or any new link, such as created in Content Management (i.e. Long Description). Any mixed content will make the website look not secure to customers and search engine spiders – so it is very important to be disciplined and diligent about this.
- Contact Salesforce to change the protocol to HTTPS only. Meanwhile, to prevent mixed content, we put in a temporary custom javascript change as workaround – but this should not be permanent especially as to the next upgrade will remove it – so we need Saleforce to make a change ASAP.
- We did not change Blog site (on sub domain), but we should even though it is only a Content site because it will not be signaled as Secure. This means we need to have someone make the changes to WordPress to enforce HTTPS and then change any links.
In terms of impact to page ranking due to Google’s treatment of HTTPS over HTTP and due to some impact to page speed – we will need to monitor closely to see how indexing, organic traffic and page ranking goes and take any additional actions as necessary.
-
You can try the service of Salesforce with the help of Axis consulting. I have tested it on my site.
-
Aleyda Solis has a pretty solid http to https checklist: http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-optimization/http-https-migration-checklist-google-docs/
-
It looks like you followed a pretty good plan, the only thing I would recommend at this point would be to make all of your 301 redirects are 1 to 1. What I mean is, go over your 301 redirects to remove redirect chains, so you will update all of your old redirects that are pointing directly to the new https pages instead of chaining those redirects.
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
-
Adding https version of website: how best to redirect
If I have 4 versions of my site http://www
Technical SEO | | bhsiao
http://
https://www
https:// What is the best way to redirect without losing seo positions? i have been mainly using http://www but have recently added my ssl so https works also. I heard at Moz Con that I should get the https working. All of my marketing and ads are going to http://www 301 redirect 3 of them? Which 3? If https is becoming important, should that be my main url? will it hurt my seo to switch? Thank you so much in advance!0 -
301 Redirecting http to https
In the Moz Site Crawl issue, I was seeing an error that said we were temporarily redirecting our homepage to https URLs. So I changed the code in htaccess to make it 301 redirect but I'm still getting the same error. I implemented it last week and we just had a new crawl yesterday. Here is the new code: RewriteEngine on
Technical SEO | | Heydarian
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^heritagelawmarketing.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.heritagelawmarketing.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC] Does anyone know why I'm still getting 302 redirects? Thanks0 -
Http -> https redirections / 301 the right way
Dear mozers, Thank you for your time reading the message and wanting to help! So, we have moved our WordPress to https and redirected all the content successfully via htaccess file. We used a simple 301 redirect plugin, which we are using to redirect old URLs to the new ones. The problem today is, the redirections in the plugin are not working for http version. Here is an example: htaccess redirect: http --> https Plugin redirect domain.com/old --> domain.com/new but, the url http://domain.com/old is not redirecting to https://domain.com/new while https://domain.com/old does redirects to https://domain.com/new What can you suggest as a solution? Thank you in advance! P.S. I don't think having 2 redirects for each version of the URL is the smartest solution Best wishes, Dusan
Technical SEO | | Chemometec0 -
Just Launched New Site - First Steps to Get it to Rank?
Good Morning Mozzers... We just recently launched a brand new site and now the fun part begins: trying to get it to appear in the SERPS. I'm wondering if you guys can share your best and most proven secrets/tricks to get brand new sites to rank in Google.... For example, what are the first directories you add the site to? What are some links you try and aquire first? Looking for some tips and ideas for a brand new site. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Large amounts of ranking data
Hello all, I am currently conducting some keyword. I need to check a websites rankings for around 1000 keywords. I currently use chrome on a Mac. This presents a problem, because all of the APIs I've seen are for excel on windows. Does anyone have any ideas of how to do this on a Mac & Chrome? Thanks, Chris
Technical SEO | | chris.kent0 -
My company is changing ecommerce platforms. What are image URL considerations?
My company is switching from osCommerce to Magento. What should I do about my image URL's? Should I try to recreate the filenames and directory paths from the old site on the new one? How bad is it for our SEO if I can't do that?
Technical SEO | | Kyle_M0 -
Re-Platforming our ecommerce site. What am I missing?
Hello, We're going to be moving our niche ecommerce site with a catalog of over 4,000 products over to a new ecommerce platform (magento). All url structure will be changing although about 70% of the content will be staying the same such as meta info and product page content. We'll be doing 301 redirects of all old url's to new url's and we'll have a new google sitemap submitted immediatly. So my question is.. What MORE can I do to keep our site from dropping in the search engines while our site is being re-crawled? Does anyone have any experience regarding what normally happens during a website replatform such as this? Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | DannyQR0 -
HTTP Compression -- Any potential issues with doing this?
We are thinking about turning on the IIS-6 HTTP Compression to help with page load times. Has anyone had any issues with doing this, particularly from an SEO or site functionality standpoint? We just want to double check before we take this step and see if there are any potential pitfalls we may not be aware of. Everything we've read seems to indicate it can only yield positive results. Any thoughts, advice, comments would be appreciated. Thank-you, Matt & Keith
Technical SEO | | MWM37720