Our site recently switched from http to https. Do I still need to setup a redirect for the incoming links pointing to http?
-
Our site recently switched from http to https. If you type in the http://www.websitename.com then it will automatically go to https://www.websitename.com ... my question is... do I still need to create a redirect in the htaccess file to ensure we don't lose all the links currently pointing to the http version of the website?
-
My question is simply: Do i need to do anything further in the .htaccess file to ensure we don't lose the value coming in from all the external follow links pointing to the http version of the site?
And very simply no
-Andy
-
Hi,
I read through your comments and the other thread in detail. However, I guess I'm still a bit lost.
The site already redirects to https (not sure how this was set up... probably server/host side) and all the current 301 redirects I've set point to the HTTPS version.
My question is simply: Do i need to do anything further in the .htaccess file to ensure we don't lose the value coming in from all the external follow links pointing to the http version of the site?
-
Hi Christopher,
It is generally understood that when you move a site from http to https, that you should go through and have your links point to the new domain. However, in reality, that isn't possible for 99% of situations and as such, I have never yet had a client suffer because this wasn't done.
I don't think that Google would ever penalise a site because old links were not changed.
You should make sure that all new links point to the new domain though and that all internal canonicals are changed. Hard coded links can be a nightmare!
-Andy
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
-
Landing pages showing up as HTTPS when we haven't made the switch
Hi Moz Community, Recently our tech team has been taking steps to switch our site from http to https. The tech team has looked at all SEO redirect requirements and we're confident about this switch, we're not planning to roll anything out until a month from now. However, I recently noticed a few https versions of our landing pages showing up in search. We haven't pushed any changes out to production yet so this shouldn't be happening. Not all of the landing pages are https, only a select few and I can't see a pattern. This is messing up our GA and Search Console tracking since we haven't fully set up https tracking yet because we were not expecting some of these pages to change. HTTPS has always been supported on our site but never indexed so it's never shown up in the search results. I looked at our current site and it looks like landing page canonicals are already pointing to their https version, this may be the problem. Anyone have any other ideas?
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
What needs to be done to tell google my site has moved /changed
Hi everyone, I have a site, which I have re-built on a temporary domain, so that my main ecommerce site can still run.. I have noticed that google has already crawled my temporary domain. The only problem is I now want to transfer the new site back onto its proper domain (www.ourbrand.com). I have changed some of the URL structures of the new site so realize I will need to do re-directs relating to the same domain, but will google get confused that another domain used to have my new website on? I don't plan on using the old temporary domain again and wondered if I need to tell google in some way it was used just to build my site on? Michelle
Technical SEO | | nutjobshell0 -
Inbound links with anchor text about pills pointing to our URLs
Hi, I have just noticed one of our websites has lots of inbound links with the words: "order cialis", "**cialis professional online", "**order viagra soft" and so on. I have checked the target URLs source for any kind of suspicious code and found nothing. **What should I look for and what should I do in this case? ** Thanks
Technical SEO | | ceci27100 -
301 redirects & merging two sites into one
We have a client that has two sites that rank well for different searches in their market. The main pages ranking are things like advice articles and news pieces. For various reasons, they just want one site. I believe they need to duplicate the content from the outgoing site and place it on the main site, with a 301 redirect from each old page to each new one. What happens when they eventually want to redirect the entire domain? Would these smaller, internal redirects become obsolete, therefore removing any link value they once had? I am not sure how this works or if there is a best practice way to do this. Thanks Gareth
Technical SEO | | Gmorgan0 -
Help needed please with 301 redirects in htaccess file.
In summary, we're currently having issues with our htaccess file. 301 redirects are going through to the new described URL but in addition the new URL is followed by a ? and the old URL. How can we get rid of the ? and previous URL so they don't appear as an ending. None of the examples we've found re this issue online appear to work. Can anyone please offer some advice? Can we use a RewriteRule to stop this happening? Here's a summary of the htaccess file REDIRECT CODE BEGINS HERE LONG LIST OF REDIRECTS, which appear to be set up perfectly fine. REDIRECT CODE ENDS DirectoryIndex index.php <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On Options +FollowSymLinks
Technical SEO | | petersommertravels
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond $1 !^(images|system|themes|pdf|favicon.ico|robots.txt|index.php) [NC]
RewriteRule ^.htaccess$ - [F]
RewriteRule ^favicon.ico - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]</ifmodule> DirectoryIndex index.php0 -
Redirect from old wordpress site to new php site? Best approach
Hi I have two websites one legacy site done in wordpress the other in php. However I would like to merge the two together and remove the wordpress site. However it has a good link profile and the pages rank well. What is the best approach to do a 301 redirect from the old site with all its pages pointing to the homepage of the new site? If so what's the best way to do this in wordpress? Many thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Best way to redirect 3 sites to 1 new one.
Hi All We currently have 3 old sites that have tones of content. Due to brand/business consolidation we have merge all 3 to produce 1 website. The new site contains all the old content from the old 3. So, I know I need to 301 redirect all the old content from the previous sites to the equivelent content on the new sites but am confused how you do this with 3 domains? One of the domains is being replaced with the new site. So I have: www.domain1.co.uk www.domain2.co.uk www.domain3.co.uk All the content for all the sites have been imported into a new site and any duplicate content issues havce been resolved. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks
Technical SEO | | EclipseLegal0 -
Redirect or not to redirect
We are rebuilding a website and try to get rid of errors. The content remains exactly the same but we correct the code and make it load faster. The site has quite many backlinks and I can't decide whether to remove .html endings from the urls and 301 redirect to the new ones or leave them with the older ending. If I remove the endings how much of the link juice will be passed? Anyone any idea?
Technical SEO | | sesertin0