Push for site-wide https, but all pages in index are http. Should I fight the tide?
-
Hi there,
First Q&A question
So I understand the problems caused by having a few secure pages on a site. A few links to the https version a page and you have duplicate content issues.
While there are several posts here at SEOmoz that talk about the different ways of dealing with this issue with respect to secure pages, the majority of this content assumes that the goal of the SEO is to make sure no duplicate https pages end up in the index.
The posts also suggest that https should only used on log in pages, contact forms, shopping carts, etc."
That's the root of my problem. I'm facing the prospect of switching to https across an entire site. In the light of other https related content I've read, this might seem unecessary or overkill, but there's a vaild reason behind it.
I work for a certificate authority. A company that issues SSL certificates, the cryptographic files that make the https protocol work. So there's an obvious need our site to "appear" protected, even if no sensitive data is being moved through the pages. The stronger push, however, stems from our membership of the Online Trust Alliance. https://otalliance.org/
Essentially, in the parts of the internet that deal with SSL and security, there's a push for all sites to utilize HSTS Headers and force sitewide https. Paypal and Bank of America are leading the way in this intiative, and other large retailers/banks/etc. will no doubt follow suit. Regardless of what you feel about all that, the reality is that we're looking at future that involves more privacy protection, more SSL, and more https.
The bottom line for me is; I have a site of ~800 pages that I will need to switch to https.
I'm finding it difficult to map the tips and tricks for keeping the odd pesky https page out of the index, to what amounts to a sitewide migratiion.
So, here are a few general questions.
- What are the major considerations for such a switch?
- Are there any less obvious pitfalls lurking?
- Should I even consider trying to maintain an index of http pages, or should I start work on replacing (or have googlebot replace) the old pages with https versions?
- Is that something that can be done with canonicalization? or would something at the server level be necessary?
- How is that going to affect my page authority in general?
- What obvious questions am I not asking?
Sorry to be so longwinded, but this is a tricky one for me, and I want to be sure I'm giving as much pertinent information as possible.
Any input will be very much appreciated.
Thanks,
Dennis
-
Hi Dennis Lees,
I had to deal with something similar in the past, the website was about online donations and wanted to look secure.
All pages were 301 redirected to the https version and it didn't seem to affect their rankings.
If you are to force sitewide https, I suggest to 301 redirect all http pages to their https version and search engine spiders will do their jobs at crawling the new urls and replacing them in the search results.
Don't expect this to happen overnight! It will take some time, you might see some rankings greatly fluctuate, but things should get back to normal and definitely better than having duplicate content all over the place.
Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer.
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
-
Http > https Switch Before Platform Migration?
We are planning a series of large site migrations over the next 12-18 months, moving from one platform to another. It's likely the first will be completed by around Aug this year, with the process running until the back end of 2018. The sites are currently on http, and the plan is to first of all migrate all sites to https in the next couple of months. The concern is that, due to the http>https 301 redirects that will be in place, are we putting ourselves at unnecessary risk by effectively carrying out 2 migrations in the space of a year (in terms of loss of potential authority caused by redirects)? Would we be better to wait, and implement https at point of platform migration instead? Thoughts appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sayers0 -
Site wide decrease in featured snippets
Hi, As of April we have seen a huge drop in the number of featured snippets and I'm unsure why. No major changes have been made to the site. We did submit to to Google news at a similar times (failed unfortunately) I have plotted our featured snippets and competitors featured snippets form data from Semrush and most our competitors have seen a fall in number of featured snippets. There has also been a large fall for some categories specifically. But overall we have seen the largest drop out of everyone. (See attached Graph) Does anyone have any clues as to why Google would remove multiple featured snippets from one website in particular. Thanks. OwseH
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sally940 -
Does Mobile optimised site improve ranking and how to index it faster?
Hi i have several question with regards to mobile optimised site: Does having a mobile optimised site improve ranking in SERP? How can we push/index mobile optimised sites to users searching on mobile sites faster? e.g. returning m.abc.com or abc.com/m to users seraching on mobile earlier.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FWSBIO0 -
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,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seagreen
Greg0 -
Should pages of old news articles be indexed?
My website published about 3 news articles a day and is set up so that old news articles can be accessed through a "back" button with articles going to page 2 then page 3 then page 4, etc... as new articles push them down. The pages include a link to the article and a short snippet. I was thinking I would want Google to index the first 3 pages of articles, but after that the pages are not worthwhile. Could these pages harm me and should they be noindexed and/or added as a canonical URL to the main news page - or is leaving them as is fine because they are so deep into the site that Google won't see them, but I also won't be penalized for having week content? Thanks for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Why will google not index my pages?
About 6 weeks ago we moved a subcategory out to becomne a main category using all the same content. We also removed 100's of old products and replaced these with new variation listings to remove duplicate content issues. The problem is google will not index 12 critcal pages and our ranking have slumped for the keywords in the categories. What can i do to entice google to index these pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
How can we get a site reconsidered for Google indexing?
We recently completed a re-design for a site and are having trouble getting it indexed. This site may have been penalized previously. They were having issues getting it ranked and the design was horrible. Any advise on how to get the new site reconsidered to get the rank where it should be? (Yes, Webmaster Tools is all set up with the sitemap linked) Many thanks for any help with this one!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | d25kart0 -
Static index page or not?
Are there any advantages of dis-advantages to running a static homepage as opposed to a blog style homepage. I have be running a static page on my site with the latest posts displayed as links after the homepage content. I would like to remove the static page and move to a more visually appealing homepage that includes graphics for each post and the posts droppping down the page like normal blogs do. How will this effect my site if I move from a static page to a more dynamic blog style page layout? Could I still hold the spot I currently rank for with the optimized index content if I turn to a more traditional blog format? cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoCoGuru0