Http urls on a new https website
-
Hi,
If a site is quite new and setup as https from the beginning why would http variations exist?
There are 301 redirects in place from the http to the https variation and also canonical tags pointing back to the http variation? This seems contradictory to me.
I'm not sure why the http variations exist at all but they have gone to the trouble of redirecting these to the https variation indicating that it is the variation of choice but at the same time using a canonical tag that indicates the http variation is the original/main url?
Thanks
-
As Logan pointed out, the most likely cause of this is because of the canonical tags pointing to the HTTP variation. I'd probably suggest carrying out the following:
Download a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider and crawl your full website - https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider - Once the crawl has run, export the data and check both the URLs and the Canonicals across all pages to ensure only HTTPS variants appear.
If you find http variants, then it's likely that the redirect rules you have in place aren't working. This is a global rewrite rule that can be applied to force the https:// version to show at all times, so you shouldn't need to make the changes once by one. I'd also make sure that if you're linking to any pages internally, that you're linking to them using a relative path, or straight to the https:// version. If your canonicals are causing issues, just ensure they're always choosing the HTTPS version and you shouldn't have any issues!
Finally, in GSC, just make sure you've got the HTTPS version of the site setup and that your sitemap includes only HTTPS URLs.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi M V,
Any updates on this, or are you able to share the site? How's it going?
-
Hi,
It's difficult to tell without seeing the site, but the likely problem is related to those canonical tags. A canonical tag that doesn't point to the preferred version of a URL can cause indexation problems, but not resolving URL issues.
There could also be some pages that don't have that 301 redirect applied, therefore leaving some pages to resolve at HTTP.
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 to https for large ecommerce - our steps taken (any others recommended?)
**Here is the message from our technical team for the http to https migration; are there any other http to https migration steps recommended? ** Http to https migration steps (for this large ecommerce site): We implemented HTTPS (HTTP over TLS) protocol today (5/4/2017). Applied a patch to ensure that HTTPS pages did not have NoIndex, NoFollow and tested before and after . Added new IIS HTTPS Redirect to enforce HTTPS from HTTP and changed others, including the WWW redirect Changed HTTPS only for Cookies as required as per new PCI vulnerabilities Changed the Basepage HTML template to use Relative Paths or Absolute URLs with HTTPS only (to prevent mixed content) Created and ran a SQL Script to cleanup 16 tables from HTTP to HTTPS (about 20,000 of them, including internal URL links, site settings, etc) Ran Google Sitemap Generator to create new sitemaps with HTTPS Added new HTTPS instance of the site into Webmaster Tools, then added verification code to master page, verified and then submitted the sitemaps to Search Console (QUESTION: will historical data in Google Console/ WMT be preserved for https?) **Follow up steps for http to https migration for large ecommerce: ** From this point forward, to avoid “mixed content”, the Marketing team must use either Relative Paths or Absolute Paths with HTTPS only in any customization (i.e. Basepage) or any new link, such as created in Content Management (i.e. Long Description). Any mixed content will make the website look not secure to customers and search engine spiders – so it is very important to be disciplined and diligent about this. Contact Salesforce to change the protocol to HTTPS only. Meanwhile, to prevent mixed content, we put in a temporary custom javascript change as workaround – but this should not be permanent especially as to the next upgrade will remove it – so we need Saleforce to make a change ASAP. We did not change Blog site (on sub domain), but we should even though it is only a Content site because it will not be signaled as Secure. This means we need to have someone make the changes to WordPress to enforce HTTPS and then change any links. In terms of impact to page ranking due to Google’s treatment of HTTPS over HTTP and due to some impact to page speed – we will need to monitor closely to see how indexing, organic traffic and page ranking goes and take any additional actions as necessary.
Technical SEO | | seo20170 -
Thoughts on different base URLs for different website language?
Hello mozzers, Currently in the process of setting up a new website for a new entity. I was wondering what your thoughts were on using different base urls for different languages. Example: ABCgroup.com -> English
Technical SEO | | yacpro13
groupeABC.com -> French I've never done this before; I've been one to prefer using a subfolder structure. However, for this case, the expected visitors are truly split between 2 languages, and therefore having a base url in the visitor's language is appealing. Would this approach be detrimental if all pages have a proper hreflang tag? Thanks!0 -
Changing permalinks in new wordpress website using regex in 301s?
Hi there I am working on a website and we would like to change the permalinks from product-category (replacing with Shop) and product to buy. Currently there are nearly 400 products and multiple categories. Although the website has just been indexed wondering if we need to do 301's? if we did would like to use regex to manage so redirect would be as example: mydomain.com/sub-domain/product-category/ redirecting to to mydomain.com/sub-domain/shop/ (I know you do not need to put in the domain but as an example) - could anyone give me the regex for this? Same for products: mydomain.com/sub-domain/product/sample-product redirect to mydomain.com/sub-domain/buy/sample-product thanks in anticipation
Technical SEO | | musthavemarketing0 -
How to change 302 redirect from http to https
Hi gang. Our site currently has a 302 redirect from the HTTP version of the homepage to the HTTPS version of the homepage. I understand this really should be changed to a 301 redirect but I'm having a little trouble figuring out exactly how this should be done. Some places on the internet are telling me I can edit our htaccess file to specify the type of redirect, however our htaccess file seems to be missing some of the information in theirs. Can anyone tell me what needs to be changed in the htaccess file - or if there's a simpler way to change the 302 to a 301? Many thanks 🙂 htaccess: BEGIN WordPress RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] END WordPress EXPIRES CACHING ExpiresActive On ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 6 months" ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 6 months" ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 6 months" ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 6 months" ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 10 days" ExpiresByType application/pdf "access plus 10 days" ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 10 days" ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 6 months" ExpiresDefault "access plus 2 days" EXPIRES CACHING
Technical SEO | | davedon0 -
Second URL
Hi We have a .com and a .co.uk Main website is .co.uk, we also have a landing page for the .com If we redirect the .com to the .co.uk, will it create duplicate content ... May seem like a silly question, but want to be sure that that the visitors cant access our website at both urls, as that would be duplicate content Thanks in advance John
Technical SEO | | Johnny4B0 -
Changed URL of all web pages to a new updated one - Keywords still pick the old URL
A month ago we updated our website and with that we created new URLs for each page. Under "On-Page", the keywords we put to check ranking on are still giving information on the old urls of our websites. Slowly, some new URLs are popping up. I'm wondering if there's a way I can manually make the keywords feedback information from the new urls.
Technical SEO | | Champions0 -
Url canonicalization: www. to http://
Hey there. Sorry for the simple question but I recently redesigned a site and published with WordPress, in the process the domain structure changed from being www. to http:// . My question is does this change affect the value we get from links pointing to the old www. domain structure? The reason I ask is that the old site had a domain authority of 36 with OSE and a couple of hundred links but the new site address shows as having zero domain authority and zero links. Is there some best practise I should be following to retain link value?
Technical SEO | | Luia0 -
Redesign existing websites / worried about urls / mapping
Hi Guys, While redesigning existing websites that will have page name changes such as: example.com/products to be called example.com/solutions example.com/about-us to be called example.com/about should I 301 the old url to the new url. In the past I have not done this & I'm just wondering from an SEO point of view how bad is this? (On a scale of 1 to 10 how bad is this not 301ing urls, 10 being really bad & 1 being fine), Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0