How to properly implement HTTPS?

[EcommerceSite]

We are looking at implementing HTTPS for our site. I have done a little research but can't find anything recent, http://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-content-and-http-and-https is the most recent thing I found.

Does everything in the answers still apply? Should I just do a 301 redirect to all new https? Or add a canonical tag?

[Highland]

Matt Cutts talked about this on topic. I would pick only one and run with it (i.e. all SSL) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeFo4ytOk8M

Also a small public service announcement, please make certain your host is all patched up from Heartbleed.

[EcommerceSite]

The first thing he talked about was 301s. If I did 301s would I have to do anything else? Is there anything I would need to do in Webmaster tools?

[JaneCopland]

Hi,

You shouldn't have to do anything in WMT as there isn't an option for preferred URLs between HTTPS and HTTP (whilst there is an option to say if you prefer http://site.com/ or http://www.site.com/). Google should pick up and acknowledge the 301s if you choose to do this, ranking only your HTTPS URLs.

It used to be the case that this wasn't recommended for SEO, but Google has come a long way with dealing with secure URLs. Just a quick search for inurl:https will show you how many sites are indexed with SSL URLs. Some have done it properly; some have not.