What's the best way to deal with an entire existing site moving from http to https?
-
I have a client that just switched their entire site from the standard unsecure (http) to secure (https) because of over-zealous compliance issues for protecting personal information in the health care realm.
They currently have the server setup to 302 redirect from the http version of a URL to the https version. My first inclination was to have them simply update that to a 301 and be done with it, but I'd prefer not to have to 301 every URL on the site.
I know that putting a rel="canonical" tag on every page that refers to the http version of the URL is a best practice (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394), but should I leave the 302 redirects or update them to 301's. Something seems off to me about the search engines visiting an http page, getting 301 redirected to an https page and then being told by the canonical tag that it's actually the URL they were just 301 redirected from.
-
Doing both covers all the bases. I can't recall who it was that did the test (@TonyAdam on Twitter I think) but the test involved rel=canonical and 301s being implemented, and the discovery was that rel=canonical was acknowledged faster than the 301s. And at the very least, doing both won't hurt.
-
Thanks for the fast response Alan. So should I not put rel=canonical tags on the page that refer to the http versions of the URL and just do the 301's and suck it up?
-
Jason,
I've got financial clients with the same paranoia mentality. Maybe they went to the same security conference. As unpleasant as it is to perform 301 redirects, it's the right thing to do. Unless you think 3 months from now a new compliance officer will recognize the foolishness of the implementation and reverse it. Leaving 302s dangling isn't healthy.
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
-
My Website's Home Page is Missing on Google SERP
Hi All, I have a WordPress website which has about 10-12 pages in total. When I search for the brand name on Google Search, the home page URL isn't appearing on the result pages while the rest of the pages are appearing. There're no issues with the canonicalization or meta titles/descriptions as such. What could possibly the reason behind this aberration? Looking forward to your advice! Cheers
Technical SEO | | ugorayan0 -
Https to http
Two versions of the same page are being served at the moment. Certain pages on the site redirect to the https version whilst others don't. I am being flagged for duplicate content because of this. Is this a simple fix? As in just redirect all to the https version and set the preferred version in WMT?
Technical SEO | | TAT1000 -
Godaddy and Soft 404's
Hello, We've found that a website we manage has a list of not-found URLS in Google webmaster tools which are "soft 404's " according to Google. I went to the hosting company GoDaddy to explain and to see what they could do. As far as I can see GoDaddy's server are responding with a 200 HTTP error code - meaning that the page exists and was served properly. They have sort of disowned this as their problem. Their server is not serving up a true 404 response. This is a WordPress site. 1) Has anyone seen this problem before with GoDaddy?Is it a GoDaddy problem?2) Do you know a way to sort this issue? When I use the command site:mydomain.co.uk the number of URLs indexed is about right except for 2 or 3 "soft URLs" . So I wonder why webmaster tools report so many yet I can't see them all in the index?
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
The best way to do Interstitial (ads)
Hello, I want to ask you guys what's the best way do to Interstitial without penalty?
Technical SEO | | JohnPalmer
and feel free to give me samples from another major websites. Thanks!0 -
100's of Footer Links... what is the safe play?
Hello, One of my clients wants to know what you guys think is the best solution. He sells 100's of templates a month that have a footer link on it pointing to our homepage. Anchor links are "keyword" & "Brand Name" Some are different than others. Do we update the templates so those are no-follow links in the footer? Do we just make all the links to: Brand Name and have them follow? I understand Brand Name is the business name but I am also afraid that Brand name is so close to the money making keyword in the industry and Google might think we are trying to game the system. Looking for your expert opinions!
Technical SEO | | MoosaHemani0 -
Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?
Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | inlinear
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
Holger0 -
Best Way To Handle Expired Content
Hi, I have a client's site that posts job openings. There is a main list of available jobs and each job has an individual page linked to from that main list. However, at some point the job is no longer available. Currently, the job page goes away and returns a status 404 after the job is no longer available. The good thing is that the job pages get links coming into the site. The bad thing is that as soon as the job is no longer available, those links point to a 404 page. Ouch. Currently Google Webmaster Tools shows 100+ 404 job URLs that have links (maybe 1-3 external links per). The question is what to do with the job page instead of returning a 404. For business purposes, the client cannot display the content after the job is no longer available. To avoid duplicate content issues, the old job page should have some kind of unique content saying the job is longer available. Any thoughts on what to do with those old job pages? Or would you argue that it is appropriate to return 404 header plus error page since this job is truly no longer a valid page on the site? Thanks for any insights you can offer.
Technical SEO | | Matthew_Edgar
Matthew1 -
Duplicate content and URL's
Hi Guys, Hope you are all well. Just a quick question which you will find nice and easy 🙂 I am just about to work through duplicate content pages and URL changes. Firstly, With the duplicate content issue i am finding the seo friendly URL i would normally direct to in some cases has less links, authority and root domain to it than some of the unseo friendly URL's. will this harm me if i still 301 redirect them to the seo friendly URL. Also, With the url changed it is going to be a huge job to change all the url so they are friendly and the CMS system is poor. Is there a better way of doing this? It has been suggested that we create a new webpage with a friendly URL and redirect all the pages to that. Will this lose all the weight as it will be a brand new page? Thank you for your help guys your legends!! Cheers Wayne
Technical SEO | | wazza19850