Https vs Http Link Equity

[jayoliverwright]

Hi Guys,

So basically have a site which has both HTTPs and HTTP versions of each page.

We want to consolidate them due to potential duplicate content issues with the search engines.

Most of the HTTP pages naturally have most of the links and more authority then the HTTPs pages since they have been around longer. E.g. the normal http hompage has 50 linking root domains while the https version has 5.

So we are a bit concerned of adding a rel canonical tag & telling the search engines that the preferred page is the https page not the http page (where most of the link equity and social signals are).

Could there potentially be a ranking loss if we do this, what would be best practice in this case?

Thanks,

Chris

[Alick300]

Hi,

In above case you must use 301 redirects to point all HTTP URLs to HTTPS to pass link juice from http to https or the link juice isn’t going to pass over.

Hope this helps

Thanks

[MoosaHemani]

Ok, so here is a thing why do you want to switch from http to https version? If this is because of the fact that it helps Google rankings, I would suggest not go for it as it only give you a small benefit (if any).

If your website is small and there are only few pages then going for 301 redirection is a good idea just 301 redirect your pages so that link juice transfers to the preferred version.

If your website is big and you think that rel canonical is the only solution, my idea is to go with http version as moving https without redirection will hurt your rankings to a good extent.

Again, this is pretty much depends upon what your end goal is… so decide what you want to achieve at the end of the day and act accordingly.

Hope this helps!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Chris,

I am in agreement that taking the route of canonical would not be as beneficial as 301. Remember that a canonical is just a suggestion to Google and they can still opt to ignore this if they wish.

I would avoid any possible complications here and 301. It is understood that a rel=canonical passes page rank in the same way that a 301 does, with a minor loss, but as far as I am aware, there is no actual testing to show which passes more / less.

-Andy

[CleverPhD]

The https ranking signal is a tiebreaker assuming that all other ranking factors are the same

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-https-dealbreaker-20632.html

You have to decide if you have other reasons to go https site wide.  Are people logging in?  Are you having them provide sensitive data?  That is the reason you move.

If you do want to move everything to https:  use the 301 redirect.  It will probably be a wash in the end.  You lose a little bit of link equity in a 301, but in a tie, you would "win" thanks to the https and assuming that the other page is http.  The key to the 301 is to have the 301 be page to page and not global in nature.  If you use a 301 and you redirect a page to another that is not on the same topic, you will lose link equity.  Google does this so that if you have a page that has a lot of link equity for the topic "red widgets" and then 301 redirect that page to one on "purple fruit" the link equity is lost.  You have to redirect the "red widget" page to the new page on "red widgets" to have that pass through.  Otherwise, you are just using the 301 to help move people along to the new page, which is not a bad idea, but something you need to think about none the less.

I would not use the canonical as the http to https is not really what it was meant to be used for.

In the end, just be consistent and it will all work out as there are a ton of other factors that are more important to help you rank.

Cheers!

[jayoliverwright]

Good answers!

If you do 301 redirect to all https pages would this cause issues with previous rel canonical tags which point to http version of the page.

E.g. this page

http://www.the upside sport.com/sale/women/hoodies/recovery-hoodie-coral

Has a rel canonical pointing to (which is correct):

http://www.the upsidesport.com/recovery-hoodie-coral

Then if i implement a 301 redirect to the https version the correct version would be:

https://www.theupsidesport.com/recovery-hoodie-coral

But the rel canonical would be to the non-http page unless i change it. Would this cause issues if i don't change the rel canonical tags to the https version.

- Chris