Fundamental HTTP to HTTPS Redirect Question
-
Hi All
I'm planning a http to https migration for a site with over 500 pages. The site content and structure will be staying the same, this is simply a https migration.
Can I just confirm the answer to this fundamental question?
From my reading, I do not need to create 301 redirect for each and every page, but can add a single generic redirect so that all http references are redirected to https. Can I just double check this would suffice to preserve existing google rankings?
Many Thanks
-
Hi Sean / Others
Can I just add one last question to this post?
I'm not certain about the canonical tags. Although I don't need to add redirects for everypage, do I need to add a canonical tag to each page?
Is there a way of doing this for all pages?
-
Awesome, thank you so much!
-
Hi Sean
Thank you so much, that is brilliant much appreciated.
I'm new to this forum, just to double check I've ticked the thumbs up and also "good answer", I think that show the appreciation that you can on this forum?
-
Hi there!
You're absolutely correct, you would just need a domain-level server redirect to take all http URLs to their https equivalent.
Best practice is to ensure you've also got the non-www. version of the website covered in that same redirect too, to avoid any chains. You'll see what I mean if you run your domain through this > https://varvy.com/tools/redirects/
Depending on what stack you're using, here are the 2 guides. One for htaccess and one for IIS:
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10489895/http-to-https-through-htaccess
- https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/kaushal/2013/05/22/http-to-https-redirects-on-iis-7-x-and-higher/
You shouldn't need to, but just to be on the safe side, I would also add canonical tags to the http pages, pointing to their https equivalent prior to putting the server level redirect in place. This is to ensure that you won't be causing yourself issues if the redirect fails for any reason. Details here:
Once you've got your redirection planned in, make sure you set up a Google Search Console account for the https version to ensure there are no crawl issues and to check that the http version of the site stops receiving traffic.
That should just about cover it!
Hope it all goes well,
Sean
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
-
Magento SEO question
Hello Moz Community, I am wondering if these magento settings are correct for seo. www.domain.com 301 > www.domain.com/main-language www.domain.com/main-language/main-keyword (index & follow) www.domain.com/main-language/main-keyword/shopby/size-m (index & follow & canonicalized to www.domain.com/main-language/main-keyword) All layered navigation links are no-follow
Technical SEO | | mhenze0 -
301 Redirect Timing Questions
Hey all, Quick question on 301 redirects and the timing of creating them when transitioning from an old site to a new site. Does the timing matter? Can redirects interfere with DNS propigation (which seemed to happen to us when we did redirects minutes after redirecting someone's DNS A record to now point to the new site) And lastly, how long AFTER a new site launch can one still submit redirects and not lose the google juice? All the best,
Technical SEO | | WorldWideWebLabs0 -
Which Sitemap to keep - Http or https (or both)
Hi, Just finished upgrading my site to the ssl version (like so many other webmasters now that it may be a ranking factor). FIxed all links, CDN links are now secure, etc and 301 Redirected all pages from http to https. Changed property in Google Analytics from http to https and added https version in Webmaster Tools. So far, so good. Now the question is should I add the https version of the sitemap in the new HTTPS site in webmasters or retain the existing http one? Ideally switching over completely to https version by adding a new sitemap would make more sense as the http version of the sitemap would anyways now be re-directed to HTTPS. But the last thing i can is to get penalized for duplicate content. Could you please suggest as I am still a rookie in this department. If I should add the https sitemap version in the new site, should i delete the old http one or no harm retaining it.
Technical SEO | | ashishb010 -
https v http is there any difference in rankings what is the best for a online chemist store?
Have a client that has a https site do you think its better than http for this kind of site and is there any studies done regarding any difference in rankings?
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve0 -
Indexation question
Hi Guys, i have a small problem with our development website. Our development website is website.dev.website.nl This page shouldn't be indexed bij Google but unfortunately it is. What can i do to deindex it and ask google not to index this website. In the robots.txt or are there better ways to do this? Kind regards Ruud
Technical SEO | | RuudHeijnen0 -
301 Redirect Domain or 301 Redirect Domain + Interior Pages
Hello - My company acquired another company in our industry and our IT team immediately set up the acquired companies domain name as a an alias to our site. This created a duplicate version of our website under another domain name and Google started ranking interior pages from the aliased acquired site for several top keywords that were previously held by our real site. Should we 301 redirect just the top level domain name of the acquired site to the real site or 301 redirect the top level domain name and the interior pages on the acquired site to help ensure that our real domain will take back the rankings it once had? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Room2140 -
Compare URLs with 302 redirects
Hello I have a store which was developed in Magento. I have about 8300 errors like this: URL: http://www.theprinterdepo.com/catalog/product_compare/add/product/100/uenc/aHR0cDovL3d3dy50aGVwcmludGVyZGVwby5jb20vcHJpbnRlci1wYXJ0cy5odG1sP3A9NA,,/ 1 Warning 302 (Temporary Redirect) Found 3 days ago <dl> <dt>Redirects to</dt> <dt>http://goo.gl/XMaZg</dt> <dd>Description</dd> <dd>Using a 302 redirect will cause search engine crawlers to treat the redirect as temporary and not pass any link juice (ranking power). We highly recommend that you replace 302 redirects with 301 redirects.</dd> </dl> <a class="more expanded">Minimize</a> These URLs, are generated by magento by the COMPARE feature. In my store we bought an extension called SEO Enterprise Suite and I asked the developers(www.mageworx) about this error. Their answer is: Sorry for the late reply. Our extension adds NOINDEX,FOLLOW tag to compare and cookies pages so that they won't be indexed. I do not think that these redirects can hurt your SEO because these pages won't be indexed at all. The question is: What should I do? Is there anyway that SEOMOZ ignores these URLs? What should I do next, I just dont like to have that HIGH number of errors and warnings. Thank you
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
A technical 301 Redirect Question
Alright, I'm taking a chance and stepping into the developer role here...something completely out of my comfort zone so bear with me. We have a pretty site built in PHP (www.dassant.com) and we are coming across some duplicate content issues. For example, these are supposed to be the same page: http://www.dassant.com/products.php and http://www.dassant.com/products So the SEO in me states the obvious: We need a 301 redirect stat! Unfortunately, our developer went MIA and I am having the hardest time getting a 301 implemented. After some research I found the code that I need to paste into the PHP (for this specific page): Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Technical SEO | | EssEEmily
Header( "Location: http://www.dassant.com/products" );
?> However, when I paste it in, upload and refresh the page, I get these error messages in the (multiple) browsers I use. (See attached) http://imgur.com/a/1lar5 With my limited knowledge I can't find these supposed other redirects so I'm stumped. Can anyone shed some light? Thank you in advance! 1lar50