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
-
Will this 301 redirects help me?
Hello, recently, I found out about all the SEO advantages from 301 redirects. I had 3 websites that are now expired, their topic was Counter Strike 1.6 servers. All of these websites were registered 9 years ago and have few good backlinks (from website with 1%-3% spam score and DA 30+). Now I have one website that is not only about Counter Strike 1.6 but also many other Steam shooter games. If I revive these 3 old domains and 301 redirect them to my new one, will it help me with SEO and increase my ranking on Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bonito19930 -
Best Strategy for FAQ & Canonical?
I have an FAQ database setup on my site and there's about 30 questions in 6 categories so 5 questions per category which is a pretty good page size for one category. I'm trying to determine the best strategy for publishing them from both a user and SEO standpoint. From a user standpoint, I want to have one page per category. Dumping them into a page with all 30 questions is not user-friendly and some categories are very unrelated to others. I should note that Google did already index a page that does have all the questions on it, but I was just planning on changing that page to just have 6 links to each of the category pages so then I don't have to bother with 301 redirect or removing the pages in the site's Search Console. There's also an option to to link the questions for the entire FAQ or from the category list to one page with just that question and answer. So my thinking at this point is to as I said, just change the page that has all 30 questions to a list of the categories and link to category pages having the questions for that category and disable the individual question pages. Or would it be beneficial from an SEO page to have google index the individual question pages and link back to the category page and put a canonical tag on the category pages? In other words the question then becomes, index the category pages or index the individual question pages? The other issue is the answers for some of the questions are lengthy, multiple paragraphs, and the FAQ has the option to have a hide/unhide feature on the answers so you can easily see all the questions first then expand the answers on the ones you are interested in. However I thought I heard Google discounts (doesn't ignore) content that is by default hidden on page load. I guess this would then give a reason for going with the indexing of the individual question pages. But it seems to me, you can't put the canonical tag on the category pages and point it to the individual question page. And if you put the canonical tag on the individual question page linking it to the category page, then the individual page won't necessarily get indexed will it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MrSem0 -
Http to Https implementation - What happens to the backlinks?
UPDATE: Found a source that says that Google recognizes the redirects, so it should be fine leaving backlinks as is - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-link-https-20552.html Hi again Mozers, When a site's protocol is changed from http to https, what impact would it have on the backlinks? Especially, when the backlinks doesn't contain any protocal mentioned. Thanks in advance Malika
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika10 -
Appropriate use of rel canonical
Hey Guys,I'm a bit stuck. My on-page grade indicated the following two issues and I need to find how how to fix both issues.If you have a solution, could you please let me know how to address these issues? It's all a bit intimidating at the moment!!Thank you so much..****************************************************************************************************************************************Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL. Recommendation: We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply. No More Than One Canonical URL Tag The canonical URL tag is meant to be employed only a single time on an individual URL (much like the title element or meta description). To ensure the search engines properly parse the canonical source, employ only a single version of this tag. Recommendation: Remove all but a single canonical URL tag
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StoryScout1 -
Impact of SSL - switching from http: to https: on organic rankings?
Hello, just paranoid, but thought i'd ask. We are installing an SSL certificate on a site ranking very well organically in all the engines. This will change our site from http:// to https://. Is there an risk to our rankings in doing so? What might I need to consider? Changing my htaccess redirects to https: instead of http;? Any ripple effects from switching to a secure site? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seagreen
Greg0 -
301 redirect hell.... How do you de-commission an old site
Hi SEO experts: We operate a vacation rental website and around 1 year ago moved to a different platform. Because our pages are arranged by location (what we refer to as Locales) we need to put 301 redirects for all the old locale pages. So for example: www.example.com/__Skeggness.cfm redirects to www.example/com/vacation-rentals/locale/skeggness But here's the problem: We can't seem to get Google to drop those old __{locale_name}.cfm pages... even after over 12-months of the new site going live! Other clues we've noticed: The old underscore URLs show up in our SERP sub-links Sometimes google shows the new page title and description but attributes it to the __{locale_name}.cfm URL (aghh!!!) One suggestion we received was to use the URL removal tool in Google WMT.... But given we have 1,000's of locales i don't see that as being affective. Questions: Any suggestions on how to get Google to drop these old URLs and use the new ones? Is this situation hurting our SEO? Or do you think its benign... and I should just take a deep breath.... and relax at little more...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AABAB0 -
Changing a parent category and 301 redirecting
I have a set of three pages that are subpages of a parent. The structure is as follows: mysite.com/directory/personal-widgets mysite.com/directory/commercial-widgets mysite.com/directory/widgets-services The partent page name "directory" really isn't working for where I want these pages to evolve. So I want to change it to "guides" In a world without worrying about google, I would simply change the parent page to guides, so they look like this, and be done with it: mysite.com/guides/personal-widgets But, the obvious problem is that I have external links to the page now. And the pages have a nice PR. And they also have Facebook page Likes and I don't know if I'll lose those. I know that if I should do this I should redirect the pages to the new pages of course. My question is: Will redirecting the old URL to the new URL with a 301 cause anything negative to happen that I might not be expecting? Does Google dislike Redirects for any reason, or understand they are sometimes necessary?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
301 redirect
I have 2 websites, lets call them Website A and Website B. Website A is a commercial website, website B is a 7 years old blog. Website B has many natural, high quality BL, including some from Nytimes, etc. I want to integrate the blog (B) into the commercial website (A). The idea behind this thought is to compress the two websites, it is easier to have everything in one place. I will do this with 301 redirect via Webmaster tools, htaccess etc. The uRL structure will remain the same: eg: websiteB/post-title/ -> websiteA/post title What will happen with my quality BLs? Is there any chance to be penalized by Google? What will happen with the PR of the 2 sites? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasmin281