Confused About Problems Regarding Adding an SSL
-
After reading Cyrus' article: http://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl, I am now completely confused about what adding SSL could do to our site. Bluehost, our hosting provider, says if we get their SSL, they just add it to our site and it's up in a few hours: no problem whatsoever. If that's true, that'd be fantastic...however, if that's true, there wouldn't need to be like 10 things you're supposed to do (according to Cyrus' article) to ensure your rankings after the switch.
Can someone clarify this for me?
Thanks,
Ruben
-
Thanks Cyrus!
-
Hi Ruben,
Thanks for writing in. I'm unfamiliar with Bluehost's HTTPs service, but I assume they are taking care of top level issues. You'll still want to go through the checklist to make sure everything is valid and you follow SEO best practices.In short:
- Check your links
- Check your assets (images, CSS, javascript)
- Canonical tags
- Register with Google Webmaster Tools
- Update your sitemaps and robots.txt files
This covers the important stuff. As you noted, a few more tips here: http://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl
-
Maybe was obvious to everybody but 301 redirect for every single page is also a fundamental step, otherwise you are going to have broken external links, not to mention WMT which I don't think would be satisfied by just the canonical update.
Sitemap must be updated as well.
We recently switched a website from HTTP to HTTPS and in term of performance there was no difference after the update, at least according to WMT and analytics.
I was kind of scared before to update but at the end everything was smoother than expected, WMT took around 10 days to completely re-index the https version.
But of course we kept finding some non https link embedded here and there in some pages for days and we had to manually edit some content to avoid ssl warning from browsers.
-
I have no idea what CMS you are using but check the server side code generating the link, not just the code sent to the browser.
We recently switched to SSL, and our CMS was already building internal links on pages using the protocol of the http request.
-
Thanks Highland!
-
Great, thanks!
-
Ruben, I had a look at your website and your URLs all have HTTP in them so these would need to be updated all across your site before you make the switch to HTTPS. Because you are using WordPress this should be as simple as updating the site URL to https://www.kempruge.com.
The tip by @Highland about using Firebug is excellent. This will allow you to quickly debug if there are non-HTTPS links remaining - in the WordPress theme or template, for example.
Have a look at the WordPress HTTPS documentation also.
-
Hi Alex,
I'm not really sure if we use a protocol-less linking pattern or not. I don't see http:// in any of our urls, so if that's the criteria I'm guessing we don't? I included a screenshot of one of our URLs. Would you mind telling me if it's clear from the image whether we do or do not?
Thanks for your response. I really appreciate your time and input.
Best,
Ruben
-
One major tip I always point people to is that using protocol-less links for anything external is a great way to make sure your site always supports SSL without issue.
Firebug is a great way to make sure everything is loading HTTPS. Turn it on, switch to the Net tab, and load your page. It will show you every request sent as part of your page. It makes spotting non-SSL requests easy.
You can turn HSTS on yourself if your provider uses Apache and supports htaccess. (sorry I can't link an article, Moz won't let me). If they don't, you will have to have your host enable it on their end.
-
Implementing SSL should be straightforward for the most part
You need to ensure that links around your site (including canonical links) are updated to use HTTPS (so https://example.com/link as opposed to http://example.com/link where example.com is your domain name). If you are already using a protocol-less linking pattern (//example.com/link) you don't need to update the links.
You can also configure your web server to only serve HTTPS. If your web server is Apache you can do this with the SSLRequireSSL directive.
<code><location>SSLRequireSSL</location></code>
HTTPS also causes a significant slow-down as the browser and the server negotiate a secure connection. If your site has already been optimized for speed it should not cause a problem but if in doubt revisit that process and ensure that you are getting the best possible speed for your visitors.
The article by Cyrus has a great checklist to double check everything.
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
-
Will Regularly Adding New Blog Posts Improve Ranking?
We have added very little new website content in the last year. Our domain is www.metro-manhattan.com. Would adding a brand-new blog post once a week help improve our ranking in Google? A few years ago adding new content would've had quickly had a positive effect. Is that still the case? Or should we focus content creation resources in other areas such as social media? Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Does adding more outgoing links on a high PA page decrease the juice passed to previous links?
Hi, I'm not sure how PA DA exactly works when the goal is to create backlinks to your site in order to have the most impact on passing PA DA juice (if there is such a thing) to ones money site. For example let's say you have a blog and the PA is 40 DA is 30. Let's say I create a backlink pointing to my site on the homepage of this blog, in which I desire better rankings for, and the links I created are only 1-3 outgoing links on this post which is again on the homepage. Then say in a months time, I want to add another post on the homepage (so the 40 PA and 30 DA stays the same) creating a backlink to one of my other money sites. Does adding this second round of backlinks result in sending less juice to the first? This is what I want to know. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | z8YX9F800 -
Schema.org problems (still)
Hey Mozzers, I've been working at this for a while now, and I can't figure out why the rich snippet data is not getting pulled for our reviews and product rating. I've included a sample URL where we have reduced the schema.org markup: http://www.tripcentral.ca/vacations-packages_00_03_JN_gran-bahia-principe-coba.html | } | Any thoughts? I was told not to list multiple reviews, so I took them out. But it's still not being picked up in the SERPs, and we would really like the star rating data to appear. Any useful advice would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tripcentral0 -
Negative seo problem
Hello, Someone attacked our website with negative SEO and our website fell drastically. If i use bing webmaster tools link explorer i see dozens and dozens spam links but if open a link i don't find this link in that website. Is it possible that someone added the links and then remove thouse links when we got hit? Or is it possible to hide the links that they don't show up on webpage but they are still there? How can i use Google disavow links tool if there is no links in thouse websites but Bing link explorer shows spam domains pointing to our website. BR, T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | otsinguturundus0 -
Will Nofollow in Nav Cause a Problem?
I have seen conflicting information regarding the use of rel=nofollow on internal links, but the gist of it seems to be that it's not a good idea. The top linked page on a particular site is a consultation page. Contact is not far behind. Both are linked from the header and footer or sidebar. At first, I thought no-following them would be the perfect solution. After what I've read, it seems I need to remove some of the instances of linking instead of nofollowing. Any e firsthand experience or feedback?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn0 -
301 Redirection problems
A couple of days ago we did a restructure of our e-commerce site (wordpress + woocomerce) where some product categories needed to change names. I used Yoast SEO plugin to do 301 redirects in the .htaccess file.Today I noticed that we had two hits in the SERP on the phrase "dildos med vibrator". See the attached screenshot (first two results).One goes to http://www.oliverocheva.se/kategori/sexleksaker/dildos/dildos-med-vibrator/ which is the right URL. One goes to http://www.oliverocheva.se/kategori/sexleksaker/dildosdildos-med-vibrator-dildos-for-honom/ which is a corrupt URL that has never been in use. The old one we did a redirect from was /kategori/for-honom/dildos-for-honom/dildos-med-vibrator-dildos-for-honom/The command in the .htaccess file was: Redirect 301 /kategori/for-honom/dildos-for-honom/dildos-med-vibrator-dildos-for-honom/ http://www.oliverocheva.se/kategori/sexleksaker/dildos/dildos-med-vibratorWhat has happened here? Why does the 301 create entirely new URL:s in the SERP?Tz0TULT.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kisen0 -
How to Find problem domain history
Hi I have what most of you may think is a dumb question but here goes. please be nice... 🙂 So I have a client (http://www,ace-alarms.co.uk) who are having a real problem ranking for ANY of their key words. I know it's a reasonably competitive area but I've not seen such a stubborn domain and it seems that no matter what we do there's nothing listed. i'm thinking that there may be a problem with the domain name. My question is; how can I find out if this is a problem domain. Thanks in advance Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stevecounsell0 -
Ad units or % of ads vs content?
When looking at content "above the fold" is it more important to look at ad units or the visual % of unique content to ads? For example, if there are 6 small ad units or one large ad unit that takes up 30% of the page, which is better for search engines? In general, is 50% unique content above the fold with 50% ads adequate or what % do you try to optimize for?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0