Switching from Http to Https, but what about images and image link juice?

[Shawn124]

Hi Ya'll.

I'm transitioning our http version website to https.  Important question:

Do images have to have 301 redirects? If so, how and where?

Please send me a link or explain best practices.

Best,

Shawn

[becole]

Shawn124, whenever you move from HTTP to HTTPs, you'll need to set up the 301 permanent redirects for pages on the site only. The other elements, such as images, JavaScript (if they're external files), and .CSS files will need to be changed only in the code so that they reference the new HTTPs URLs, and not HTTP.

If you load an HTTP element (such as an image that uses the full URL in it's reference rather than the image filename only) on an HTTPs URL, then the browser will give you an error.  So generally you need to do two things:

• set up 301 Permanent Redirect for the page URLs.

• search the entire website for all references to HTTP and  change them to HTTPs (unless you're linking out to an external site).

If the site is in WordPress, you can use the Search and Replace plugin to replace it all at once in the database.

[BlueprintMarketing]

If you  301 redirect all HTTP URLs to HTTPS On the origin server,

To Move the origin server  the HTTP to HTTPS On the origin server your redirects on your images will follow

#1

NGINX

Add the following to your Nginx config.

server {
listen 80;
server_name domain.com www.domain.com;
return 301 https://domain.com$request_uri;
}

Apache

Add the following to your .htaccess file.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

(TOOL Apache htaccess to NGINX config tool https://winginx.com/en/htaccess)

#2

Search and replace the old HTTP:// URLs to New HTTPS://

• http://mydomain.com to https://mydomain.com
• http://www.mydomain.com to https://www.mydomain.com

Use CLI or https://interconnectit.com/products/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/

#3

Alert Google that you are migrating to HTTPS https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

You will have no issue with your images.

Your link juice will flow as it did before because Google is no longer penalizing multiple redirects (So they SAY BUT don't over use redirects) keep them to a minimum, please.

https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/the-zen-guide-to-https-configuration/

https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/https-dilemma-security-seo/

#4

If on WordPress using proxy or just  have insecure content use

Really Simple SSL:  https://wordpress.org/plugins/really-simple-ssl/

Your insecure content is fixed by replacing all HTTP:// URLs with HTTPS://, except links to other external domains. Everything is done dynamically.

If using a Photos on a WAF or Pull CDN   Force HTTPS
Connections

#5

For example, if you're using a CloudFlare for Photos? You would use page rules to force a 301 redirect HTTPS

https://tools.keycdn.com/curl see #9 in https://www.maxcdn.com/one/tutorial/edge-rules-recipes/

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170536-How-do-I-redirect-all-visitors-to-HTTPS-SSL-

#6

301's will not lose link juice see:

https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for-seo

#7

Test using https://www.deepcrawl.com/ & or https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

(For a larger picture of the image below about redirect rule changing and link juice click on this URL http://i.imgur.com/vqyT6gm.jpg )

#8

If still needing tips or help read below.

**  _If so, how and where? _**

Do images have to have 301 redirects? Yes

Citing:

http://searchengineland.com/http-https-seos-guide-securing-website-246940

"Making the switch from HTTP to HTTPS

1. Start with a test server. This is important because it lets you get everything right and test without screwing it up in real time. Even if you are doing the switch without a test server, there’s almost nothing you can do that you can’t recover from, but it’s still best practice to have a plan and have everything tested ahead of time.
2. Crawl the current website so that you know the current state of the site and for comparison purposes.
3. Read any documentation regarding your server or CDN for HTTPS. I run into lots of fun CDN issues, but it can also be straightforward.
4. Get a security certificate and install on the server. This will vary depending on your hosting environment and server setup too much for me to go into details, but the process is usually well-documented.
5. Update references in content. This can usually be done with a search-and-replace in the database. You’ll want to update all references to internal links to use HTTPS or relative paths.
6. Update references in templates. Again, depending on how you deploy, this might be done with Git or simply Notepad++, but you’ll want to make sure references to scripts, images, links and so on are either using HTTPS or relative paths.
7. Update canonical tags. Most CMS systems will take care of this for you when you make the switch, but double-check, because that’s not always the case.
8. **Update hreflang tags **if your website uses them, or any other tags such as OG tags for that matter. Again, most CMS systems will take care of this, but it’s best to QA it just in case.
9. Update any plugins/modules/add-ons to make sure nothing breaks and that nothing contains insecure content. I commonly see internal site search and forms missed.
10. CMS-specific settings may need to be changed. For major CMS systems, these are usually well-documented in migration guides.
11. Crawl the site to make sure you didn’t miss any links and nothing is broken. You can export any insecure content in one of the Screaming Frog reports if this is the crawler you are using.
12. Make sure any external scripts that are called support HTTPS.
13. Force HTTPS with redirects. This will depend on your server and configuration but is well-documented for Apache, Nginx, and IIS.
14. Update old redirects currently in place (and while you’re at it, take back your lost links from redirects that haven’t been done over the years). I mentioned during the Q&A portion of the Technical SEO Panel at SMX West that I’ve never had a site drop in rankings or traffic when switching to HTTPS, and a lot of people questioned me on this. Due diligence on redirects and redirect, chains are likely the difference, as this is what I see messed up the most when troubleshooting migrations.
15. Crawl the old URLs for any broken redirects or any redirect chains, which you can find in a report with Screaming Frog.
16. **Update sitemaps **to use HTTPS versions of the URLs.
17. **Update your robots.txt file **to include your new sitemap.
18. Enable HSTS. This tells the browser always to use HTTPS, which eliminates a server-side check and makes your website load faster. This can also cause confusion at times, since the redirect will show as 307. It could have a 301 or a 302 behind it, though, and you may need to clear your browser cache to see which.
19. Enable OCSP stapling. This enables a server to check if a security certificate is revoked instead of a browser, which keeps the browser from having to download or cross-reference with the issuing certificate authority.
20. Add HTTP/2 support.
21. Add the HTTPS version of your site to all the search engine versions of webmaster tools that you use and load the new sitemap with HTTPS to them. This is important, as I’ve seen traffic drops misdiagnosed because they saw the traffic in the HTTP profile drop, when the traffic in reality moved to the HTTPS profile. Another note for this is that you do not need to use the Change of Address Tool when switching from HTTP to HTTPS.
22. Update your disavow file if you had one for the HTTPS version.
23. Update your URL parameter settings if you had these configured.
24. Go live!
25. In your analytics platform, make sure you update the default URL if one is required to ensure that you are tracking HTTPS properly, and add notes about the change so that you know when it occurred for future reference.
26. Update your social share counts. There’s a lot of gotchas to this, in that some of the networks will transfer the counts through their APIs, while others will not. There are already guides for this around if you are interested in keeping your share counts.
27. Update any paid media, email or marketing automation campaigns to use the HTTPS versions of the URLs.
28. Update any other tools such as A/B testing software, heat maps and keyword tracking to use the HTTPS versions of the URLs.
29. Monitor everything during the migration and check, double-check and triple-check to make sure everything is going smoothly. There are so many places where things can go wrong, and it seems like there are usually several issues that come up in any switch to HTTPS.

One question I’m often asked is if incoming links should be cleaned up. This is a tremendous amount of outreach and effort. If you have time, then sure; but most likely you’re busy with other things, and I don’t feel it’s necessary. However, you should update the links on any properties that you control, such as social profiles."

**  you asked for the best links here are what you need**

• https://yoast.com/dev-blog/move-website-https-ssl/
• https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-to-survive-a-website-migration-semrushchat/?l=en
• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/how-to-redirect-all-traffic-to-https-non-www
• https://moz.com/community/q/301-redirect-all-pictures-when-moving-to-a-new-site
• Link juice

** examplesI have put a lot more below**

1. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/how-to-redirect-all-traffic-to-https-non-www
2. https://kinsta.com/knowledgebase/redirect-http-to-https/
3. https://bjornjohansen.no/redirect-to-https-with-nginx

Unless you have to modify whatever system it is powering them, do you have a CDN? Or using something like AWS S3?

If so your images should move with the rest of the site. If you're posting them on a content delivery network or an AWS S3 whatever it is you must redirect that as well.

1. https://yoast.com/dev-blog/move-website-https-ssl/
2. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en&ref_topic=6029673
3. **https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection **
4. https://moz.com/community/q/301-redirect-all-pictures-when-moving-to-a-new-site

juice will not be lost long is you tell Google your moving the site see the URL below for how to redirect

https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/managing-url-redirects-301-302-307-and-meta-refreshes/

Some of the systems will have buttons where you'd just click HTTPS others will require you to put the code into the system. I have posted the code below for Nginx as well as Apache.

Redirect from HTTP to https

This last bit will help you tremendously when you’ve not updated every single link on your site yet. You can just add a straight server level redirect from HTTP to https. In NGINX, we do this by having two servers defined in our config, the “right” one; that listens on port 443 and a simple one that listens on port 80 (standard HTTP) and has just this:

server {
listen 80;
server_name yoursite.com www.yoursite.com;
return 301 https://yoursite.com$request_uri;
}

This seems to be the fastest way of doing this in NGINX, in Apache you’d do something like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

• Tools
• http://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/nonwww-to-www/
• https://yoast.com/research/permalink-helper.php
• http://www.contentforest.com/seo-tools/url-redirect-generator
• https://donatstudios.com/RewriteRule_Generator
• http://www.rapidtables.com/web/tools/redirect-generator.htm

How to force SSL with. htaccess

If you want to force your entire website to go through https, you can add these rules to your .htaccess file:

| |

RewriteEngineOnRewriteCond%{SERVER_PORT}80RewriteRule^(.*)$https://yourdomain.com/$1 [R,L]

|

If your site is in a subfolder, use this code:

| |

RewriteEngineOnRewriteCond%{SERVER_PORT}80RewriteCond%{REQUEST_URI}folderRewriteRule^(.*)$https://yourdomain.com/folder/$1 [R,L]

|

Only replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain name.

Test with

• https://varvy.com/tools/redirects/
• https://varvy.com/pagespeed/hsts.html
• https://varvy.com/mobile/mobile-redirects.html
• http://searchengineland.com/http-https-seos-guide-securing-website-246940

Hope this helps,

Thomas

vqyT6gm.jpg