Once on https should Moz still be picking up errors on http
-
Hello,
Should Moz be picking up http errors still if the sites on https? Or has the https not been done properly? I'm getting duplicate errors amoung other things.
Cheers,
Ruth
-
Wow - sorry this question slipped past, Ruth.
As long as the proper HTTP redirect has been written to HTTPS, there's nothing that needs to be done with canonical tags.
The beauty of 301-redirects is that they are server directives - once in place, its no longer even possible to reach the non-HTTPS URLs. The HTTPS URLs should of course still keep their own self-referential canonical tags, but that's handled automatically in most CMSs (Content Management Systems like WordPress.)
Hope that covers what you were asking?
Paul
-
Hi Ruth,
I am more than happy to help. Please have a look at these resources if you believe the migration has not been done correctly.
Please have a look at these resources I think they will be immensely helpful. Please remember the Google doc referenced in number one is available in line 3 as well as In the instructions anchor text on line 2.
- https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-optimization/http-https-migration-checklist-google-docs/
- To easily make a copy, add to your own Drive, download or print, go to the Google Docs, then choose “File” and select your preferred option: (Or use link below)
- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XB26X_wFoBBlQEqecj7HB79hQ7DTLIPo97SS5irwsK8/edit?usp=sharing
Please let me know if I can be of any help,
Thomas
-
Thanks, Thomas will have a look at those.
-
Hi Ruth,
Paul brought up a very good point.
If using Apache and it sounds like you are you can force the HTTP to HTTPS redirect using
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^443$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]</ifmodule>See this for more https://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/https-vs-http/
301 Redirects are in place verify that by using a tool like this one. you can drop all the URLs you want to check in here. https://httpstatus.io/
Then make sure any HTTP is a 301 and any HTTPS is a 200
Then run a search and replace
http://mydomain.com
tohttps://mydomain.com
http://www.mydomain.com
tohttps://www.mydomain.com
If you are running a WordPress website this is a very effective plug-in ( and free if you type the name into wordpress.org's plugin repo)
https://bettersearchreplace.com/ or https://interconnectit.com/products/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/
Your canonical tags (unless very good reason like third-party content) should be self-referencing meaning add canonical's to the https:// urls not the http:// URLs like below. A good example is what you see below
Moz will tell you as will https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/redirect-checker/ & https://deepcrawl.com will easily find any of the problems. some references below for rel-canonical tags
https://moz.com/blog/rel-canonical
https://yoast.com/rel-canonical/
Last but not least here is a wonderful tutorial that goes over migrating from http to https
https://www.keycdn.com/blog/http-to-https/
I hope this was of help,
Tom
-
Hi Paul,
Yes thank you, that's brilliant and confirms what I've been thinking - that the https hasn't been done properly as they're not redirecting when going to the http version. I thought the client had at the htaccess so will look into that.
If the redirects are done properly do I need to add canonical tags or are the redirects enough? Just want to make sure I'm covering all bases.
Thanks so much for your advice.
Cheers,
Ruth
-
You need to ensure that the HTTP version of the site's URLs are no longer reachable, Ruth. That means adding a 301-redirect to force all URLs to their HTTPS versions. This is the most likely cause of your issue
To test, simply go to a page URL in the browser address bar and remove the s from the HTTPS and hit enter. Watch what happens. If the address bar shows the automatic change back to the HTTPS version of the URL, you're good. If it doesn't, you'll need to add the redirect.
You should also ensure that all the internal links within the site have been rewritten to use the HTTPS version of the URLs - like menus, sidebars, widgets, and in-content links to other pages.
Hope that helps?
Paul
-
Thanks, Thomas. The https urls are in place but I was concerned that if the http urls are showing up still that the move to https hasn't been done properly.
-
Do a search & replace on your site then recheck it.
search for HTTP url's & replace with https URL's
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
-
How long does it take for Moz to discover links to pages
Hi folks, Our website is doing well in the Google rankings relative to our competitors who often have higher "Domain authority" than us as reported by Moz. I'm wondering how closely Moz's "Domain Authority" correlates with Google's. In particular, I wonder how long it takes Moz to discover inbound links. For instance our page at http://www.educationquizzes.com/ks3/english has many inbound links from pages on an outstanding educational website and yet our page authority is given by Moz as a measly "1"! Any insights would be very much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | colinking0 -
Error in how URLs were set up, how can it be fixed?
Hi, I managed a website port to a WP responsive deisgn for a client, see http://chicagotelephony.com. Unfortunately, he wanted me to work with a graphic designer rather than a web geek, so the resulting website has messed up URLS, i.e. index.php is smack in the middle of almost all the pages. I know that is all wrong, but I also realized that she was not fluent in the way the Genesis framework was set up or how the particular template I selected, operated. So I just wanted to get it out there.... and now it is live, but has all these errors. Do I have to do 301 redirects? Is there a setting or a button inside of the WP template that would put correct slugs but get rid of the index.pho within the URL? For example, http://chicagotelephony.com/index.php/cloud-based-solutions/ and http://chicagotelephony.com/index.php/var-network-value-added-reseller/ should be chicagotelephony.com/cloud-based-solutions/ and chicagotelephony.com/var-netowrk-value-added-reselle/ and so forth.
Technical SEO | | DianeDP0 -
Expired domain 404 crawl error
I recently purchased a Expired domain from auction and after I started my new site on it, I am noticing 500+ "not found" errors in Google Webmaster Tools, which are generating from the previous owner's contents.Should I use a redirection plugin to redirect those non-exist posts to any new post(s) of my site? or I should use a 301 redirect? or I should leave them just as it is without taking further action? Please advise.
Technical SEO | | Taswirh1 -
Cannot work out why a bunch of urls are giving a 404 error
I have used the Crawl Diagnostic reports to greatly reduce the number of 404 errors but there is a bunch of 16 urls that were all published on the same date and have the same referrer url but I cannot see the woood for trees as to what is causing the error. **The 404 error links have the structure:**http://www.domainname.com/category/thiscategory/page/thiscategory/this-is-a-post The referrer structure is: http://www.domainname.com/category/thiscategory/page/2/ Any suggestions as to how to unravel this would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Niamh20 -
HTTP 500 Internal Server Error, Need help
Hi, For a few days know google crawlers have been getting 500 errors from our dedicated server whenever they try to crawl the site. Using the "Fetch as Google" tool under health in webmaster tools, I get "Unreachable page" every time I fetch the homepage. Here is exactly what the google crawler is getting: <code>HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 19:52:27 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.15 (CentOS) X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.3 X-Pingback: [http://www.communityadvocate.com/xmlrpc.php](http://www.communityadvocate.com/xmlrpc.php) Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> My url is [http://www.communityadvocate.com](http://www.communityadvocate.com/)</code> and here's the screenshot from Goolge webmater http://screencast.com/t/FoWvqRRtmoEQ How can i fix that? Thank you
Technical SEO | | Vmezoz0 -
Sitemap error
Hi, When i search for my blog post in google i get sitemap results, and when i click on it i get an error, here is the screen shot http://screencast.com/t/lXOIiTnVZR1 http://screencast.com/t/MPWkuc4Ocixy How can i fix that, it loos like if i just add www. it work just fine. Thanks
Technical SEO | | tonyklu0 -
How to properly remove 404 errors
Hi, According to seomoz report I have two 404 errors on my site. (http://screencast.com/t/2FG8fA1dvGB) I removed them from google webmasters central about 2 weeks ago (http://screencast.com/t/MQ8XBvrFm ) , but they're still showing as an error in the next report (weekly update). Is there anything else you do about 404 or just remove urls through gwc? Or maybe seomoz data is delayed? Thanks in advance, JJ
Technical SEO | | jjtech0 -
Google webmasters shows 37K not found errors
Hello we are using Joomla as our cms, months ago we used a component to create friendly urls, lots of them got indexed by google, testing the component we created three different types of URL, the problem now is that all of this tests are showing in google webmasters as 404 errors, 37,309 not found pages and this number is increasing everyday. What do you suggest to fix this?? Regards.
Technical SEO | | Zertuxte0