Do https sites rank as well as http sites?
-
2 Questions:
Question 1 - We currently have our entire site running on https (the http pages 301-redirect to the https versions). Assuming that the https pages load as quickly as the http versions, is it a problem that the entire site is https?
The only official answer I've been able to find is this 2011 video where Matt Cutts basically says "I don't know" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeFo4ytOk8M
Question 2 - Is there any problem with having half our site running on https only (with the http pages redirected), and the other half (our blog) running on http only (with all https blog pages redirected to the http versions)?
Thanks in advance for any input!
Justin
-
Very helpful info, thanks!
-
Hi Justin,
Cutts has said more recently that there should not be any problem going the all https route, although he notes to try it out first on a 'lower traffic domain' if possible(!). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4801641 Quite a few popular sites are heading this way (twitter, fb, paypal for example)
Assuming that is correct and you are not seeing any ranking/indexing issues with the site currently in https, there should not be an obvious reason to worry.
For your second question, again there should be no issue with running the blog on a non https url, but you would do well to avoid having links to the https version of the blog that are then 301 redirected to the http version. So making sure all your internal links to the blog are already http would be a good idea and ideally all links from the blog back to the site would already be https.
Beyond the page loading times, https urls can often have gotcha moments where certain elements of the page (js or css links, image urls etc) can be non https and produce warnings in some browsers which is bad for user experience. Sometimes the pages these errors occur on can be pretty deeply hidden so good to be methodical. Also need to keep in mind that your robots.txt and sitemap should also be served on the https protocol and make sure that your sitemap is not automatically generating https urls for all the site (blog included) which can potentially create unneeded confusion.
Hope that helps!
-
Hi,
There won't be any problem with your site if you use Https, and for blog Http. These two protocols servs as a request and response from the servers. If you use ""http"" then the communicating data will not be secured, if you use https (http includes secure socket layer) you data will be safe, main thing it will not effect to SEO part. for more information you can read http://theprofessionalspoint.blogspot.in/2012/04/http-vs-https-similarities-and.html
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
-
site speed
i use mid-quality pic and... but my site speed is low
On-Page Optimization | | zlbvasgabc
any suggestion?
my site is:
https://bandolini.ir/0 -
Implementing nofollow tag affect ranking
if a blog that is performing well on the first page at an average position of 4 for an informative term. The blog contains a lot of outbound links, adding nofollow tag to all of them affect the current ranking? There are few other same cases. Here is the link - monk.webengage.com The was a lot of other optimization done on the page but the ranking did not improve at all. Is the issue with my domain authority or is it due to higher backlink to other competitive domains.
On-Page Optimization | | Web-Engage0 -
Can you reference http and https in a sitemap.xml?
I have a site where some pages (in Spanish) are https. The english pages are http. Can you tell me if it's okay to have both in the sitemap.xml?
On-Page Optimization | | RoxBrock0 -
Acquired Old, Bad Content Site That Ranks Great. Redirect to Content on My Site?
Hello. my company acquired another website. This website is very old, the content within is decent at best, but still manages to rank very well for valuable phrases. Currently, we're leaving the entire site active on its own for its brand, but i'd like to at least redirect some of the content back to our main website. I can't justify spending the time to create improved content on that site and not our main site though. What would be the best practice here? 1. Cross-domain canonical - and build the new content on our main website? 2. 301 Redirect Old Article to New Location containing better article 3. Leave the content where it is - you won't be able to transfer the ranking across domain. Thanks for your input.
On-Page Optimization | | Blenny0 -
My report is showing duplicate titles.. for http://www.mysite.com/ & http://mysite.com
Is this because I setup my campaign wrong in seo moz or should I have my site setup differently to forward all traffic without the www to the www version? Or vise versa? Thanks for any advice!
On-Page Optimization | | Fridaythe15th0 -
Competitor rank
Hi We have been doing SEO on one of our properties for 4 years now. We had a new competitor jump in and is now ranking above us within 6 months. I verified various parameters including link backs/etc. but cannot see as to why Google would rank them above our page despite us following all ethical SEO practices/updating content etc. Do you guys have an experience/thoughts on this? P
On-Page Optimization | | Parvesh0 -
Modifying Well Established & Well Indexed Content
I have a page that is very well indexed and has a 1st position ranking in google. It is the best landing page in my site. That being said, it's several years old and I honestly think it could be better. The images could be enlarged, the the images could have fancy box enlargements instead of just linking out to flickr, there could be more content about follow up projects that people have done. I'm noteably nervous about changing such a clutch piece of content on my site. I do want to improve the content for users, not just make it more SEO friendly (it's already SEO'd), but I'm afraid that any change could cause a set back in ranking. Am I being afraid of nothing, should I just go for it and improve my content, or should I be extra cautious when editing well indexed content like this? Thanks for the advice
On-Page Optimization | | CPollock0 -
Https and secure pages
Hello, I have a facebook badge in my footer. Is it okay if I make the code call on https. It makes the page secure for IE. I have also have done this for images. These secure urls are also being called on non secure pages. But I don't think that matters does it? Code below. Thanks Tyler
On-Page Optimization | | tylerfraser0