Can converting a site to HTTPS impact ranking?

[dknewmedia]

We have a client with a very large site that would like to put a login on each page; however, that would require the entire site be put behind a secure connection (changing http:// to https:// on every page).  They rank for a ton of keywords and rank well. Would the change impact their rankings at all?  Could it possibly help them?

[Nobody1560986989723]

Right, one of our clients fits this bill exactly. So here goes:-

• Do a 301 redirect of all impacted URLs in the .htaccess or web.config file (depending on the type of server)
• Ensure the sitemap.xml contains the HTTPS versions only.
• Find out who's linking to your pages and using the HTTP and ask them to update the link to https
• Do a double check of all internal links (which should have relative paths anyway) and make sure none refer to HTTP

If you do it well it shouldn't negatively impact it at all. Positive? Well, depends on the competition I suppose, having a HTTPS shows care for your community and providing a secure service is a good thing, but I wouldn't expect much of a nudge based on this alone.

[dknewmedia]

Hmmm... of course if I could do all of those things, I probably wouldn't have asked the question. Sarcasm aside, there are tens of thousands of links external to the site, many of them on very high authority sites that will not update their links.

Are you saying that a non-SSL link to an SSL page will actually diminish the backlink's weight?

Doug

[Nobody1560986989723]

Hi Doug,

And I did not presume you could or couldn't do those things, but I didn't word my post in a way that was condescending...explaining things step by step is not always appropriate because I would rather presume knowledge on a forum like SEOmoz than presume ignorance.

So, I hope you were not too offended by my presumption of knowledge.

That being said would you like me to explain what to do to achieve the above points? I am more than happy to do so, by the way.

• On the volume of links - if it is a large-scale issue then another solution would be to have a non-SSL version home page, but on login they are taken to a different SSL 'member welcome' or 'dashboard' sort of page. That way you can retain the link value to the non-SSL version while providing the necessary security over the logged-in functionality.
• On the question of non-SSL links to SSL page ... any extra 'diversion' required between a link and its target has, in my experience, the propensity to reduce that link's effectiveness. even the effects of 301's diminish over time because the presumption is that the page you are 301-ing to is the correct 'new' one and is therefore more relevant, which is why I initially suggested getting links 'fixed'. As your initial post did not suggest the scale of links I could not have replied in a more precise way.

So I do suggest you consider implementing the first bullet point above as a good compromise and will retain the value of your links but permits the SSL implementation as well.

Let me know if I can help further or if you need more things explaining so that you know how to go about doing some of the things suggested. Thanks.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Douglas,

Martin has some good points on how to implement the migration to https, but I want to make sure that you're only adding a login on each page, and not putting your content behind the login. You're content is visible even if a user is logged out, right?

If it's just a form, then you're okay. You might lose a little link juice via 301 redirects, but in general you'll be fine.

On the other hand, if you require a login to your content, this is a really bad idea.Search robots don't fill out login forms. When they get to one, they stop. There are no more links at this point for them to crawl. This can and does create severe crawling and indexing for websites that employ this technique.

Otherwise, if you follow Martins advice you should come out quite alright. Once you implement the 301s, I might leave the old sitemap in place for awhile (and submit both to the major search engines) so that Google can process the 301s.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

[Nobody1560986989723]

Thanks for adding that Cyrus... I have to say I was assuming Douglas wasn't hiding the actual content, but that was an assumption, so I'm glad you checked.

[dknewmedia]

Not at all, Martin!  They just didn't answer the original question of whether or not there would be an impact.

[dknewmedia]

Hi Cyrus,

No - all the content will still be visible.  We just want to migrate to https.  Thanks for the advice!