SEO best practice : HTTP to HTTPS
-
What's the best practice to switch from an all HTTP site to an all HTTPS site ?
No changes to the site structure, just a full site switch to SSL.
Right now, the site is reachable with HTTP and with HTTPS.http://crocodesign.be --> https://crocodesign.be
http://www.crocodesign.be --> https://crocodesign.be
https://www.crocodesign.be --> https://crocodesign.beCMS : Wordpress 3.9
Server type : Apache
Preferred method : .htaccess -
I wonder why Google's PhD engineers didn't post detailed info about this?.... But, I can probably understand it better from the Moz blog.
They also should have warned people that it would tank their adsense earnings.
-
We'll also be posting more info about this on the Moz blog later this month.
-
Oh ok...
This line ensures its a 301:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%1/$1 [R=301,L]
-
@Rafi : I want to explicity state in the .htaccess rule that a 301 must be used.
-
You can use any of the HTTP header checkers available online for the purpose or a desktop tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider can also give you the HTTP header status codes for any URL.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
-
Thank you for your reply @TomRoberts
How can I make sure it's a 301 permanent redirect ? -
The above redirect structure you've proposed would work great. You're ensuring only one homepage version exists, making it the canonical, and all variations (which may also have previous links going to them and SEO value) are being redirected to pass on to the canonical version.
You can use your .htaccess file to force http to https by adding the following code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^.*$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [R,L]The first line turns on redirection capabilities. The second line checks to make sure the connection is not already https. The third rule will redirect users from their original location, to the same location but using HTTPS.
And also, in case you want to know how to make sure that the www. version of your site redirects to the non-www version, the code would be:
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.)$ https://%1/$1 [R=301,L]Hope this helps
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Resolving 301 Redirect Chains from Different URL Versions (http, https, www, non-www)
Hi all, Our website has undergone both a redesign (with new URLs) and a migration to HTTPS in recent years. I'm having difficulties ensuring all URLs redirect to the correct version all the while preventing redirect chains. Right now everything is redirecting to the correct version but it usually takes up to two redirects to make this happen. See below for an example. How do I go about addressing this, or is this not even something I should concern myself with? Redirects (2) <colgroup><col width="123"><col width="302"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | theyoungfirm
| Redirect Type | URL |
| | http://www.theyoungfirm.com/blog/2009/index.html 301 | https://theyoungfirm.com/blog/2009/index.html 301 | https://theyoungfirm.com/blog/ | This code below was what we added to our htaccess file. Prior to adding this, the various subdomain versions (www, non-www, http, etc.) were not redirecting properly. But ever since we added it, it's now created these additional URLs (see bolded URL above) as a middle step before resolving to the correct URL. RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.*)$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%1/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] Your feedback is much appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help. Sincerely, Bethany0 -
Http to https redirection issue
Hi, i have a website with http but now i moved to https. when i apply 301 redirection from http to https & check in semrush it shows unable to connect with https & similar other tool shows & when i remove redirection all other tools working fine but my https version doesn't get indexed in google. can anybosy help what could be the issue?
Technical SEO | | dhananjay.kumar10 -
How to stop UTM affecting SEO
Dear Moz community, We are a directory website and have lots and lots of UTM. This is crucial as we want to measure visits through Google analytics. Moz as a tool is fantastic because through a site crawl it can spot all our duplicate pages. Needless to say, due to the amount of UTM's on different pages, we have lots of duplicate pages flagged up. I ideal solution is still having the analytics capabilities of the UTM, but not affecting our SEO where search engines will realise it is not a duplicate page - we're aware it is the same page we just want to track the source! Your help is greatly appreciated! Thanks,
Technical SEO | | Eric_S
Eric0 -
SEO for a a static content website
Hi everyone, We would like to ask suggestions on how to improve our SEO for our static content help website. With the release of each new version, our company releases a new "help" page, which is created by an authoring system. This is the latest page: http://kilgray.com/memoq/2015/help-en/ I have a couple of questions: 1- The page has an index with many links that open up new subpages with content for users. It is impossible to add title tags to this subpages, as everything is held together by the mother page. So it is really hard to for users to find these subpage information when they are doing a google search. 2- We have previous "help" pages which usually rank better in google search. They also have the same structure (1 page with big index and many subpages) and no metadata. We obviously want the last version to rank better, however, we are afraid exclude them from bots search because the new version is not easy to find. These are some of the previous pages: http://kilgray.com/memoq/2014R2/help-en/ http://kilgray.com/memoq/62/help-en/ I would really appreciate suggestions! Thanks
Technical SEO | | Kilgray0 -
One-Pager and SEO
We're building a page that is going to feature over 31 people as difference makers in their field. We're unveiling one a day for an entire month. The very early mockup of the page has name, pic, some bio info, and a link to open up a new window with the full bio. I would love to have all of the bio content for all of the people on the page (and indexable), but I'm not sure how to do that while still being able to hide the full bios until they are expanded. Anybody have any tips that are SEO-friendly and/or examples of a page that is built like this and ranks well. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | spackle0 -
Best Practice for Blocking a site from 1 countries search engines
A client cannot appear in any search engines in one given country but they are ok in rest of the world. Has anybody had any experience blocking a site from appearing in just google.de, bing.de and yahoo.de for example?
Technical SEO | | Salience_Search_Marketing0 -
Seo on a dk site
hi my client has asked if we can seo their dk site , my question is does all link building and article submission have to be in danish
Technical SEO | | Westernoriental0