Homepage 302 Redirect For SSL

[Rogs.SEO]

Hi All,

My site, http://domain.com, currently has a 302 redirect from http://domain.com to https://domain.com.

The reason we have an SSL cert is because we have a registration and log in form on the homepage (as well as log in options in the top bar of every page on the site - email/password).

My question is:

When taking SEO best practices into account, would we be better having a 301 redirect from http://domain.com to https://domain.com as most of our inbound links are directed to http://domain.com.

Thanks for any help!

[Mike.Goracke]

If I were you, I would change the 302 redirect to a 301.

A 302 redirect tells search engines that it is a temporary redirect and to not pass any link juice, because it is a temporary redirect and will be changing.

A 301 redirect tells search engines that it is a permanent redirect and to go ahead and allow link juice to flow from one page to another, because it is a permanent redirect and will not be changing.

Make sense?

Hope this helps.

Mike

[Rogs.SEO]

Hi Mike,

Thanks a lot for the response there. Just two quick follow ups:

1. Would we be losing any juice or search ranking already established with http://doman.com if we now set up a 301 redirect to https://domain.com (given that the site has been operating for over a year in its current form)?

2. Is there any negative side to setting up a homepage 301 redirect to an SSL homepage (https://domain.com)?

Thanks again for your help.

[Mike.Goracke]

1. If you currently have a 302 in place directing http to https, you are only utilizing the backlinks of the https version. Once you implement a 301 from http to https, you will be gaining the backlinks that the http version has pointing at it and directing them to the https version.

2. No. If you need to use https, you need to use it. It is not looked down upon or more difficult to rank for or any of that... merely personal preference or need based.

Does that answer your question?

Mike

[Rogs.SEO]

Hi Mike,

That makes perfect sense. One last question that I'd really appreciate your knowledge on:

We go ahead and set up a 301 redirect from http://domain.com to our https://domain.com homepage.
On the homepage, we have a number of links to other pages on the site that are publicly visible. For these links on the homepage, would you advise that we set up a 301 redirect from https://domain.com/second-page to http://domain.com/second-page or is there any problem with keeping the tier 2 pages as https://domain.com/second-page.

Thanks again Mike - much appreciated.

[Rogs.SEO]

Hi Mike,

Thought you might find this interesting:

I was checking my crawl stats and it appears that the http://domain.com and the https://domain.com pages have returned the exact same backlink and page authority results. As mentioned, we currently have a 302 redirect in place here so I'm not sure how the https has managed to stack up the same page authority and backlinks as the http. Any idea?

[Mike.Goracke]

It does not matter from an SEO standpoint whether you link to https or http from your homepage to a secondary page.

What does matter is that you only have one version. You do not want to have http://domain.com/second-page and https://domain.com/second-page on your website.

Hope this helps.

Mike

[Mike.Goracke]

What tool are you using to get your backlink profile?

Can you provide your domain?

Mike

[Rogs.SEO]

Hi Mike,

We used the SEOMoz crawl test tool that provided the results.

The below stats are for the http://domain.com and the https://domain.com (we have a 302 from the http:// to the https://. Results are exactly the same.

<colgroup><col span="4" width="65"></colgroup>
| Internal Links | Linking Root Domains | External Links | Page Authority |
| 216 | 58 | 259 | 45 |
| 216 | 58 | 259 | 45 |