HTTPS website migration and internal links
-
Hey Moz!
I read Moz's guide on migrating websites from http to https, and it seems changing all relative internal links to absolute https is recommended (we currently use relative internal links). But is doing this absolutely necessary if we will already have a redirect in our .htaccess file forcing all http pages to https?
Changing all of our internal links to absolute https will be very time consuming, and I'd like to hear your thoughts as to whether it's absolutely recommended/necessary; and if so, why?
Thanks!
-
I didn't think so, but wanted to double check.
Regarding redirects, will I have to change old 301 redirects in our .htaccess file that are setup for individual pages from http to https? Or will the site wide redirect take care of this?
Thanks!
-
As far as I know - no, they dont' support it yet (weird, I know). It does say it here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en
Note: The tool does not currently support the following kinds of site moves: subdomain name changes, protocol changes (from HTTP to HTTPS), or path-only changes.
-
Another question just popped into my head!
Does the Google WMT "Change of Address" tool still not support https?
-
Thanks for the info!
Does anyone else have experience with the issues I raised above? I'd love to hear other peoples thoughts too.
-
Yes, i believe so.
-
I honestly can't remember, as I started the research months ago and the project had to be put on hold.
I do know that Moz recommends the following: "Make sure every element of your website uses HTTPS, including widgets, java script, CSS files, images and your content delivery network."
Will the redirect I posted above take care of this?
-
Yeah, it looks right to me. Can you send me articles where you found people recommending absolute links for https?
-
Hey Dmitrii,
Thanks for the response...you seem to be everywhere in the Q&A!
As far as I understand the redirect below would make it impossible for users to reach our http website, which means we wouldn't have to change our relative internal links, correct? Keep in mind, the rewrite below may look a bit different since our website uses a load balancer.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} !https
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.jwsuretybonds.com$1 [R=301,L]
-
Hi there.
No it's not necessary at all. The reason it's recommended sometimes is that, basically, to eliminate potential extra redirects from http to https. But this would happen only if page you're currently on is not https. So, my thought is that as long as you make sure that there is no way to get to your http website (make sure that it's always redirected to https), you won't have any extra redirects.
From my personal experience: it depends also on hosting servers you use. If they are very slow or you have gigantic htaccess files or something in that spirit, then yes, couple extra redirects to secure version of your website can slowdown page loading on your website. But in modern world it's very rare. So, from dozens of https clients and my own websites I haven't seen any bad-bad experience with relative internal links.
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
-
What to do when migrating to HTTPS?
Hi guys, I am planning on migrating an entire http domain to https. For it to be successful and making sure that Google indexes these new https URLs and not losing any SEO juice, do I simply make sure all legacy URLs get 301 redirected to those new https URLs? Finally what is a server side 301 redirect? What are all the kinds of 301 redirects if there are multiple kinds? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art1 -
How long after https migration that google shows in search console new sitemap being indexed?
We migrated 4 days ago to https and followed best practices..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
In search console now still 80% of our sitemaps appear as "pending" and among those sitemaps that were processed only less than 1% of submitted pages appear as indexed? Is this normal ?
How long does it take for google to index pages from sitemap?
Before https migration nearly all our pages were indexed and I see in the crawler stats that google has crawled a number of pages each day after migration that corresponds to number of submitted pages in sitemap. Sitemap and crawler stats show no errors.0 -
Link building
ok mozers i have a few questions. I am starting a new seo campaign and i want to target traffic for "how to make money on autopilot" Question 1. when it comes to link building i have seen some articles saying that i should not send all of my links to my landing page at once but to send links to my backlinks then index then using tiered link building. Is this a must or not? will i get penalized if i build 20 targeted links to my landing page in 1 day, lets say 20, pr7-9 domains? or should i tier it out and link maybe 5 pr9 domains to my landing page, then link 10 pr5 domains to each of those 5 pr9 domains and maybe link 20-pr1 domains to each of those tiered 2 pr5 domains? eq: Tier 1 = 5 PR-9 Tier 2 = 50 PR-5 Tier 3 = 1,000 PR-1 Question 2. Is their a certain amount of backlinks i need to use in order to out do my competitor? or does it just matter on the metrics of my backlinks? and when it comes to indexing these links do i need to index just the 5 pr9 links? or do i need to index all of them? or should i just index the landing page through google webmasters tools and hope it indexes all connecting pages? will doing any of these get my landing page indexed faster in order to rank faster? Question 3. Types of link building. Ok i am targeting guest blogs, wordpress sites, etc to put a link on. Should i focus on smm 'social media marketing' as well? or can i just focus on the traditional seo tactics first? Question 4. Keyword research. ok so my blog post is 'how to make money on autpilot' and from my keyword suggestion tools it picked up a list of keywords suggestions to target. Competition ranges from low to high, search volume ranges from 10 to 1900 visitors per month, after organizing the most relevant keywords to add to my campaign should i target each of the these keywords by creating a link building campaign for each one and target it to my landing page or use it as my 2nd or 3rd tier? those are the questions i really have for now. Here is my blog post http://www.vemomedia.com/how-to-make-money-on-autopilot/ Please feel me in on what i am needing to do in order to get some ranking and on how to run a link building campaign the correct way. Thanx in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djgbshows1 -
Credit Links on Client Websites
I know there have been several people who have asked this but a lot of them were back in 2012 before many of the google changes. My question is the same though. With all the changes with Google's algorithm. Is it okay to put your link on the bottom of your clients website. Like Web Design by, etc. Part of the reason is to drive traffic but also if someone is actually interested who designed the website, they will click it. But now reading about how bad links can hurt you tremendously, it makes me second guess if this is ok. My gut feeling says, no.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blackrino0 -
Unnatural links to your site—impacts links
I got message in my Google webmaster tool: Unnatural links to your site—impacts links Does anyone knows the difference between "Unnatural links to your site—impacts links" and "Unnatural links to your site" Thank you Sina
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SinaKashani0 -
'Nofollow' footer links from another site, are they 'bad' links?
Hi everyone,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | romanbond
one of my sites has about 1000 'nofollow' links from the footer of another of my sites. Are these in any way hurtful? Any help appreciated..0 -
Internal links to blog posts
I am linking manually to blog posts in my site from my Home page. Our site isn't set up with an auto "Recent Posts" that shows on Home. Should I use the exact blog post title as the anchor text or do I need to create something that is not an exact match to the title of the post?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gfiedel0 -
Is there an optimal ratio of external links to a page vs internal links originating at that page ?
I understand that multiple links fro a site dilute link juice. I also understand that external links to a specific page with relevant anchortext helps ranking. I wonder if there is an ideal ratioof tgese two items
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Apluswhs0