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
-
Forced Redirects/HTTP<>HTTPS 301 Question
Hi All, Sorry for what's about to be a long-ish question, but tl;dr: Has anyone else had experience with a 301 redirect at the server level between HTTP and HTTPS versions of a site in order to maintain accurate social media share counts? This is new to me and I'm wondering how common it is. I'm having issues with this forced redirect between HTTP/HTTPS as outlined below and am struggling to find any information that will help me to troubleshoot this or better understand the situation. If anyone has any recommendations for things to try or sources to read up on, I'd appreciate it. I'm especially concerned about any issues that this may be causing at the SEO level and the known-unknowns. A magazine I work for recently relaunched after switching platforms from Atavist to Newspack (which is run via WordPress). Since then, we've been having some issues with 301s, but they relate to new stories that are native to our new platform/CMS and have had zero URL changes. We've always used HTTPS. Basically, the preview for any post we make linking to the new site, including these new (non-migrated pages) on Facebook previews as a 301 in the title and with no image. This also overrides the social media metadata we set through Yoast Premium. I ran some of the links through the Facebook debugger and it appears that Facebook is reading these links to our site (using https) as redirects to http that then redirect to https. I was told by our tech support person on Newspack's team that this is intentional, so that Facebook will maintain accurate share counts versus separate share counts for http/https, however this forced redirect seems to be failing if we can't post our links with any metadata. (The only way to reliably fix is by adding a query parameter to each URL which, obviously, still gives us inaccurate share counts.) This is the first time I've encountered this intentional redirect thing and I've asked a few times for more information about how it's set up just for my own edification, but all I can get is that it’s something managed at the server level and is designed to prevent separate share counts for HTTP and HTTPS. Has anyone encountered this method before, and can anyone either explain it to me or point me in the direction of a resource where I can learn more about how it's configured as well as the pros and cons? I'm especially concerned about our SEO with this and how this may impact the way search engines read our site. So far, nothing's come up on scans, but I'd like to stay one step ahead of this. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | ogiovetti0 -
My site ranking has dropped in recent 2 weeks ?
I have a quick question to ask you guys,
Technical SEO | | Mustansar
I have my site (www.webuycarstoday.co.uk) It used to rank very well for all my target keywords. But recently all keywords dropped massively. I can't seems to find a good reason of this drop. We have not change anything which may have caused such drop.
Any suggestion or advice to get into the problem. I would appreciate your kind responses.0 -
Maintaining link value during site downtime
We are nearly finished rebuilding a client website, but they want to have a "dark launch" period for 4 days prior to the public site launch. During that 4-day period, we will be converting their server, so they want to take down the old site and instead send users a "coming soon" message. Although we have the old site pages set up to 301 for the public launch, I'm concerned that this dark period is going to hurt the link value on the old site pages. During this 4-day period, should we be setting a 503 status code on the old site that automatically serves the "coming soon" message? Or, should all old site pages be temporarily redirected to the "coming soon" landing page? Any other recommendations are appreciated as well.
Technical SEO | | AHartman2 -
How do you link your adaptive mobile site to Google Analytics?
With Google now saying they're putting a lot more emphasis on mobile sites, we recently got notifications from Google Webmaster Tools saying that some of our pages are not built for mobile. Some of these pages, however have an adaptive page that when you visit from a mobile phone (m.mysite.com), you're taken to instead of the desktop version. My question is, how do I let Google know that I have an adaptive site and not get penalized for poor mobile usability? I already have Google Analytics on the mobile site, I just need to somehow let Webmaster tools / Google's web crawlers know that they should be looking to my mobile site for usability, not the desktop site. Any advice is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Ditigal_Taylor0 -
No follow links from ban sites
Hello boys and girls. I'm auditing my link profile and came across links pointing to my sites, from a ban site (site: domain.com gives back no result).yet the links are no follow. should i try to remove them all? i know no follow should be enough, yet my links are set in a bad neighborhood. what would you recommend??
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
Deal with links that need login to view
Hi All, Deal with links that need login to view We have member names in the site in many places and when clicked it takes the user to the login page As just logged in members can view the details The redirection type is 302 and Moz Campaign says we have many and need to make them 301 What is the best way as we have a drupal website Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Are multiple sites needed to rank one website?
My SEO guy for a mortgage website says that we should have 30 websites, with about 250 pages each on each site plus 50 blogs in order to even think of ranking for mortgage keywords. Is that correct?
Technical SEO | | simermeet0 -
International Site Links In Footer
We have several international sites and we have them linked in the footer of our main .com site . Should we add "nofollow" to these links? Our concern is that Google could see these sites as a network?
Technical SEO | | EwanFisher0