Homepage 302 Redirect For SSL
-
Hi All,
My site, http://domain.com, currently has a 302 redirect from http://domain.com to https://domain.com.
The reason we have an SSL cert is because we have a registration and log in form on the homepage (as well as log in options in the top bar of every page on the site - email/password).
My question is:
When taking SEO best practices into account, would we be better having a 301 redirect from http://domain.com to https://domain.com as most of our inbound links are directed to http://domain.com.
Thanks for any help!
-
Hi Mike,
We used the SEOMoz crawl test tool that provided the results.
The below stats are for the http://domain.com and the https://domain.com (we have a 302 from the http:// to the https://. Results are exactly the same.
<colgroup><col span="4" width="65"></colgroup>
| Internal Links | Linking Root Domains | External Links | Page Authority |
| 216 | 58 | 259 | 45 |
| 216 | 58 | 259 | 45 | -
What tool are you using to get your backlink profile?
Can you provide your domain?
Mike
-
It does not matter from an SEO standpoint whether you link to https or http from your homepage to a secondary page.
What does matter is that you only have one version. You do not want to have http://domain.com/second-page and https://domain.com/second-page on your website.
Hope this helps.
Mike
-
Hi Mike,
Thought you might find this interesting:
I was checking my crawl stats and it appears that the http://domain.com and the https://domain.com pages have returned the exact same backlink and page authority results. As mentioned, we currently have a 302 redirect in place here so I'm not sure how the https has managed to stack up the same page authority and backlinks as the http. Any idea?
-
Hi Mike,
That makes perfect sense. One last question that I'd really appreciate your knowledge on:
We go ahead and set up a 301 redirect from http://domain.com to our https://domain.com homepage.
On the homepage, we have a number of links to other pages on the site that are publicly visible. For these links on the homepage, would you advise that we set up a 301 redirect from https://domain.com/second-page to http://domain.com/second-page or is there any problem with keeping the tier 2 pages as https://domain.com/second-page.Thanks again Mike - much appreciated.
-
-
If you currently have a 302 in place directing http to https, you are only utilizing the backlinks of the https version. Once you implement a 301 from http to https, you will be gaining the backlinks that the http version has pointing at it and directing them to the https version.
-
No. If you need to use https, you need to use it. It is not looked down upon or more difficult to rank for or any of that... merely personal preference or need based.
Does that answer your question?
Mike
-
-
Hi Mike,
Thanks a lot for the response there. Just two quick follow ups:
-
Would we be losing any juice or search ranking already established with http://doman.com if we now set up a 301 redirect to https://domain.com (given that the site has been operating for over a year in its current form)?
-
Is there any negative side to setting up a homepage 301 redirect to an SSL homepage (https://domain.com)?
Thanks again for your help.
-
-
If I were you, I would change the 302 redirect to a 301.
A 302 redirect tells search engines that it is a temporary redirect and to not pass any link juice, because it is a temporary redirect and will be changing.
A 301 redirect tells search engines that it is a permanent redirect and to go ahead and allow link juice to flow from one page to another, because it is a permanent redirect and will not be changing.
Make sense?
Hope this helps.
Mike
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
-
URL Too Long vs. 301 Redirect
We have a small number of content pages where the urls paths were setup before we started looking really hard at SEO. The paths are longer than recommended (but not super crazy IMHO) and some of the pages get a decent amount of traffic. Moz suggests updating the URLs to make them shorter but I wonder if anyone has experience with the tradeoffs here. Is it better to mark those issues to be ignored and just use good URLs going forward or would you suggest updating the URLs to something shorter and implementing a 301 redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | russell_ms0 -
Does the url in for your homepage impact SEO
Is there any harm to SEO having a homepage url that is not clean like www.domain.com. For example citi uses https://online.citi.com/US/login.do Does that matter in any way? Would a company like citi benefit from changing to www.citi.com as their homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kcb81781 -
301 redirection pointing to noindexed pages
I have rather an unusual situation where a recently launched affiliate site does not have any unique content as its all syndicated content. For that reason we are currently using the noindex,nofollow meta tags to keep the pages out of the search engines index until we create unique content for the pages. The problem is that due to a very tight timeframe with rebranding, we are looking at 301 redirecting (on a page to page basis) another high authority legacy domain to this new site before we have had a chance to add unique content to it and remove the noindex,nofollow tags. I would assume that any link authority normally passed through the 301 would be lost in this scenario but Im uncertain of what the broader impact might be. Has anyone dealt with a similar scenario? I know this scenario is not ideal and I would rather wait until the unique content is up and noindex tags are removed before launching the 301 redirect of the legacy domain but there are a number of competing priorities at play outside of SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LosNomads0 -
301 redirects within same domain
If I 301 redirects all urls from http://domain.com/folder/keyword to http://domain.com/folder/keyword.htm Are new urls likely to keep most of link juicy from source url and maintain the rankings in SERP?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bull1350 -
Is 301 redirect suggested on pagination pages
Hi - Due to pagination the default page of site is coming in 2 url with - ?page=1/ sub-url and /sub-url is 301 a recommended solution due to this pagination urls Also - is it required to create separate title and meta description of every pagination page We are taking specifically in context of our discounts and offer section http://www.mycarhelpline.com/index.php?option=com_offers&view=list&Itemid=9
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Should I redirect secondary keyword page
I have a reasonably high authority home page and have decided to optimise the home page to target a competitive keyword that previously had a specific page that was optimised on an internal page of my site that I have spent time building links to. The internal page has over 200 links to it so should I 301 redirect this internal page to the home page. Will that increase the auhority of the home page further? Or should I keep the internal page as a 'secondary' page for that keyword?. If I do have two pages don't I risk confusing google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Are there any negatives to channeling my links through a 301 redirect?
I'm channeling 1000's of links through another url with a 301 redirect. I've thought this through and can't see any downside to doing this, but I want to get your opinion. Can you see any downside to doing this? With regards to passing anchor text, PR, PA, etc? Since this is done with sites all the time when they change urls, I can't see Google being able to penalize me for this....can you? What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brian-M0 -
Am I losing link juice with 302-redirected faceted navigation?
My site has faceted navigation that allows shoppers to filter category page results by things brand, size, price range, etc. These pages 302 redirect to the same page they came from, which already include canonical meta tags. I added the rel="nofollow" attribute to the facet links and added the line "Disallow: /category_filter/" to robots.txt. One of our SEO consultants told me that this is likely diluting the potency of the page's link juice since they are divided among all the page's links, including the links I am instructing crawlers to disregard. Can anybody tell me whether I am following the best practices for links that redirect to the same page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TahoeMountain400