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,
Greg -
What's your plan for the new pages? Are you going to support both http and https browsing of your site for all pages? If so Streamline Metrics answer is spot on.
Or are you switching all your pages from http to https? Do realize that having all secure pages means the browsers won't be able to cache anything from page to page, and makes page sizes slightly larger, so your page load times will suffer for every page view. This is a major reason why most sites are non-secure for as many pages as possible, and are only secure for pages that need it. I'd strongly consider doing this, or supporting both http and https (with canonical tags) if possible.
-
Yes, you should configure your site so that the HTTPS version does not get crawled by the search engines. One way is to do it via .htaccess but another way is to automatically insert a canonical tag to all of the HTTPS versions so the search engines know not to crawl and index the secure versions. Here's a snippet of code that I've used before -
$currenturl= $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
//Check if it is using the secure https port which is 443
if ($_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] == “443″) {//connected to secure port, formulate the http canonical version
$canonicalversion=”http://”.$currenturl;//echo the canonical version to the HTML as link rel canonical tag
echo ‘’;
}
?>
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
-
Webpage is not ranking
https://www.nextheadphone.com/oneodio-a10-hybrid-review/ I just published a new article. Keyword is : OneOdio A10 Hybrid Review Before writing the article, I researched that This is Easy keyword. I should rank as soon as I publish the article. After publishing the article my Current rank is #32 Why its not ranking? Any idea
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NextHeadphone0 -
Lost ALL my rankings
Dear experts, We have suddenly lost all our positions on our keywords, I’m talking for example from position 2 to 35 in one huge drop ☹ . Even when you search for our name and domain name namely “KV16”, the main page does NOT come up. (We do however still get the local business / map result on the right side!) I have looked in google search console, but nothing to see here – no penalty. However, I need to mention, that we just now, after the issue, setup the google search console – so maybe that is why there is no information about a penalty!? (If the problem is a penalty, btw we have not been doing any link building!) One year ago, we made a permanent redirect from our old site, www.kontoret-gammeltorv.dk, because we moved our coworking office, to a new location, and needed a new name – (because the old name is referring to a location, hence no longer made sense.) This worked flawlessly, and we got all the link juice, and the new site ranked just as good as the old one. Aprox four months ago, we made some changes to the site, where we amongst other things, changed the title description on the frontpage, focusing more on another keyword – and doing this we unknowingly change the permalink to the frontpage (in WordPress). I have read that this can do some real damage, however its so long ago, that it seems unlikely to be the cause!? Please help!? Thanks a million, in advance. Cheers, Christian pJp4Uyx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Christian_T0 -
Why am i ranking better in canada?
hi, some of my keywords with high volume are ranking on first page in canada, but in the states i am on 3rd pages first result. what factors are contributing this disparity. what can be done here in this case. is it because of my links and tld distribution or some server location thing. what should i do to rank better in the US? i have shared hosting server in singapore.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam09schulz0 -
Redirect chains from switch to HTTPS
Hi, We have a client who recently switched their site to https:// The rule to force redirect non-secure URLs to https is in their .htaccess file: RewriteEngine on if non-SSL and one of these, redirect to SSL RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roundabout
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.clientdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] However, they also have simple redirects below this rule that redirect one page to another, such as: Redirect 301 /old.php https://www.clientdomain.com/new.php This is causing redirect chains like this: (A) http://www.clientdomain.com/old.php > (B) https://www.clientdomain.com/old.php > (C) https://www.clientdomain.com/new.php Is there any way to rewrite the rules in .htaccess to get rid of these redirect chains? So that URL A goes directly to URL C? Thank you!1 -
Tabbed content impact
Hi all, I know historically tabbed content has been devalued, what's the situation currently? I've heard a lot about mobile first changing this. This is a design that has been produced by our designers: https://i.gyazo.com/35f655c7ba2bc89a87b9476e4a14534d.png Each tab contains approx 1000 words and previously has been a unique article. Would love to know your thoughts on this design and the benefits/losses of doing it like this. Thanks, Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasHarvey0 -
Bing Ranking Factors
Question... I have a few clients that rank well for Google (first page) but are not ranking as well on Bing (page 5). Any suggestions on what to do to increase Bing ranking? I understand that Google and Bing use different algorithms, but just curious how you can increase ranking. Appreciate your input. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Ranking History Reports
I like that every week I can go into my campaign and see how I did. If I want to keep tabs (reports) every week and continuous record keeping how would I do that? For example, I want to see how we did last month on a particular keyword, should I set up to run a report every week for that keyword and have it emailed to me. Is that the only way to do that or does Moz keep previous history somewhere else? Thanks. PS Another website I help out on recently had a huge jump in pageviews this month. I don't track them in SEOMOZ currently is there anyway to figure out where that traffic is coming from? I am guessing perhaps they moved up in Google. Is there a way to see previous history? i.e. they are 33 last month for a certain keyword?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenhornet770 -
Schema.org helps ranking?
Hello everybody! I want to know if Schema.org has any impact on ranking? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seomasterbrasil0