Strategy After Switching To HTTPS
-
So we made a big mistake with our website last month. Without thinking things through, our entire website was switched to using a SSL certificate and https urls on all pages of the site. I know it is recommended that SSL is only used on sensitive pages, but we have a lead form on all pages.
Of course Google is taking some time to adjust to all of our urls changing. A week later we lost all of our Google search rankings. It has now been about 3 weeks and our site is showing some signs of recovery, but obviously we'd like a quicker recovery.
We have done proper 301 redirects throughout the site, but unfortunately our CMS has been a little buggy creating some other problems to fix along the way.
So my main question is, how can we speed up the process? I do understand that we stand to lose 5-10% value of our old links due to the redirects. Is there anything else we should be doing to recover quicker though?
Also, at this point, would it make any sense to switch back to http urls? Or would that just delay things further?
Thanks!
-
Thanks for the advice John.
This is very sensitive contact info due to the nature of our niche. I do agree that a more simplified lead form on all pages with the extended info on a secure page would be best, but that decision is beyond my control.
Besides, if we were to make that change now, wouldn't it just delay the recovery since all urls would change again?
So it seems like we're at a point that we should be trying to make things work as is. It is definitely not the ideal setup, but I think we should still be able to recover rankings with this setup.
-
Is it really necessary to have everything on https? What kind of information are you collecting on this lead form? Most people won't bat an eye about you collecting things like name and e-mail address on a non-secure connection, but it would depend on your customers and industry. For the visits you're getting now, are a higher percentage submitting the lead form because the pages are secure? If not, I'd flip the URLs back. https is slower and the browser won't be able to cache everything, so it makes the user suffer on every page load.
A few other thoughts (it's impossible to say without seeing your site), but having a lead form on every page may be overkill. You could just link to the form (and then have the form be secure), or you might find success collecting just the e-mail address on all of your pages, and when you collect it, have that go to a secure lead form. Then you'll have a chance to e-mail market to those who abandon the form. Something to think about and maybe A/B test.
-
I am new to this site, but i would have done the same of a 301 redirect.
However can you not use both https and http? and then drop one once the search engines are listing both? (im not sure if they will see this as duplicate content or not though, if not just run with both http and https)
not sure if you know this or not but, within your HTML links you can use just "//www.domain.com" as appose to "http://www.domain.com". the links will then work on both http and https
Hope this helps, or someone better will come along
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
-
I am looking for an SEO strategy
I am looking for an SEO strategy, a step by step procedure to follow to rank my website https://infinitelabz.com . Can somebody help?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KHsdhkfn0 -
How to Evaluate Original Domain Authority vs. Recent 'HTTPS' Duplicate for Potential Domain Migration?
Hello Everyone, So our site has used ‘http’ for the domain since the start. Everything has been set up for this structure and Google is only indexing these pages. Just recently a second version was created on ‘httpS’. We know having both up is the worst case scenario but now that both are up is it worth just switching over or would the original domain authority warrant just keeping it on ‘http’ and redirecting the ‘httpS’ version? Assuming speed and other elements wouldn’t be an issue and it's done correctly. Our thought was if we could do this quickly it would be easier to just redirect the ‘httpS’ version but was not sure if the Pros of ‘httpS’ would be worth the resources. Any help or insight would be appreciated. Please let us know if there are any further details we could provide that might help. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thank you in advance for the help. Best,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ben-R1 -
Scary bug in search console: All our pages reported as being blocked by robots.txt after https migration
We just migrated to https and created 2 days ago a new property in search console for the https domain. Webmaster Tools account for the https domain now shows for every page in our sitemap the warning: "Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt."Also in the dashboard of the search console it shows a red triangle with warning that our root domain would be blocked by robots.txt. 1) When I test the URLs in search console robots.txt test tool all looks fine.2) When I fetch as google and render the page it renders and indexes without problem (would not if it was really blocked in robots.txt)3) We temporarily completely emptied the robots.txt, submitted it in search console and uploaded sitemap again and same warnings even though no robots.txt was online4) We run screaming frog crawl on whole website and it indicates that there is no page blocked by robots.txt5) We carefully revised the whole robots.txt and it does not contain any row that blocks relevant content on our site or our root domain. (same robots.txt was online for last decade in http version without problem)6) In big webmaster tools I could upload the sitemap and so far no error reported.7) we resubmitted sitemaps and same issue8) I see our root domain already with https in google SERPThe site is https://www.languagecourse.netSince the site has significant traffic, if google would really interpret for any reason that our site is blocked by robots we will be in serious trouble.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
This is really scary, so even if it is just a bug in search console and does not affect crawling of the site, it would be great if someone from google could have a look into the reason for this since for a site owner this really can increase cortisol to unhealthy levels.Anybody ever experienced the same problem?Anybody has an idea where we could report/post this issue?0 -
Best practice to redirect http to https
I have an SSL certificate on our domain but at times some search results still list the HTTP version. Clicking on this then warns the user about security and they leave. To avoid this I am using this in the htaccess file to redirect all HTTP visits to the https version. RewriteEngine On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavpeds
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://domain.com/$1 [R,L] Is this ok? I notice on Moz toolbar it give a 302 temporary redirect I am thinking this isn't good and needs to be a 301 maybe? What is the best practice in this situation?1 -
When moving a site from HTTP to HTTPS, will i lose value from the 301 redirect?
I am looking at moving my site from HTTP to full HTTPS, so i will 301 redirect any HTTP requests to their HTTPS counterpart. All my pages in the Google index are HTTP, so will that 301 redirect reduce the value of the pages? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOhmygod0 -
Link building strategy
Hello Moz Community, For the last couple of months we have been trying to improve our ranking in Google UK for the keyword "church candles" http://www.wattsandco.com/church-supplies/church-candles.html We’ve been contacting relevant interiors/lifestyle blogs to feature our candles including anchor text linking back to our page. Our anchor text has been predominately our brand (Watts & Co) but also other key search terms (Watts and Co church candles, Watts and Co pillar candles). We have been tracking our ranking for the keyword “Church candles” using the Moz “ Rank Tracker” and we started on position 15 in Google UK. We went up to 12 briefly before moving down every week to 15, 17, 19 and 22. We checked today and we have moved back up slightly to 19. Our progress seems to be a bit slow and inconsistent. We wanted to reach out for any advice on how we can move up? If there was any way we can improve our strategy? Here’s the links we have built so far: http://nostalgiecat.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/what-autumn-means-to-me.html http://blog.pollyrowan.com/2015/10/5-small-ways-to-decorate-your-home-that.html http://www.happyhomebird.com/2015/10/watts-co-candles-for-cosy-autumn-home.html http://www.frolic-blog.com/2015/10/beeswax-candles-for-fall/ http://hisforhomeblog.com/lighting/watts-co-church-candles/#axzz3qhqN1wzA http://lorilangille.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/sponsored-post-watts-and-co.html http://www.californiahomedesign.com/product-finds/waxing-poetic-must-have-candles Thanks so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roberthseo0 -
Help needed on HTTPS
Hi Can anyone help me. I need some help with some example of large e-commerce sites going to https. Ideally these need to be e-commerce sites but any large site will be great, so that I can show the impact. The site can be based anywhere in the world, its more the impact I am after. Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Hiring - SEO Strategy Planning - Airline Industry
Hello everyone, Looking to hire someone to help me out with a project in the flight tickets industry. Someone who's worked with similar industry and can provide some assistance with SEO strategy.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NickMacario0