Switching from HTTP to HTTPS: 301 redirect or keep both & rel canonical?

[Steven_Macdonald]

Hey Mozzers,

I'll be moving several sites from HTTP to HTTPS in the coming weeks (same brand, multiple ccTLDs). We'll start on a low traffic site and test it for 2-4 weeks to see the impact before rolling out across all 8 sites.

Ideally, I'd like to simply 301 redirect the HTTP version page to the HTTPS version of the page (to get that potential SEO rankings boost). However, I'm concerned about the potential drop in rankings, links and traffic.

I'm thinking of alternative ways and so instead of the 301 redirect approach, I would keep both sites live and accessible, and then add rel canonical on the HTTPS pages to point towards HTTP so that Google keeps the current pages/ links/ indexed as they are today (in this case, HTTPS is more UX than for SEO).

Has anyone tried the rel canonical approach, and if so, what were the results? Do you recommend it?

Also, for those who have implemented HTTPS, how long did it take for Google to index those pages over the older HTTP pages?

[LoganRay]

Hi Steven,

You'll definitely want to apply 301 redirects to any site that you move to HTTPS. For most sites, this can typically be done with a single redirect rules that essentially replaces http with https, so you won't have to comb through each URL and apply one-to-one redirects.

No need to worry about losing link juice, Google views these types of 301s differently than a typical 301, and all authority will pass through them.

Canonical should also be applied, this will help search engines learn your new URL structure and ensure they index the new HTTPS URLs.

Cryus Shepard wrote a great post with all the necessary steps for a secure migration, check it out here: https://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl

Good luck!

[Steven_Macdonald]

Thanks Logan!

[LoganRay]

No problem!

[Kilgray]

Hi Logan,

I have a question related to this topic. We have something similar in place, but we are struggling as the 301 redirect from http to https sometime kills the gclid parameter that AdWords uses to track clicks coming search or display campaigns.

Have you heard about this before? Do you any practical solution to this?

Cheers,

Kilgray Translation Technologies

[LoganRay]

The best way to mitigate this problem would be to update the destination URLs in your Adwords Campaigns. You can do this in bulk relatively quickly using the Adwords Editor desktop application.

[GlobeRunner]

I would definitely use the 301 permanent redirects and NOT use the canonical tag for this. Also, don't forget to verify the HTTPs version of your site in Google Search Console, as well. We recommend getting a few new links to the HTTPs version of the site, as that will help with indexing and crawling.

[GlobeRunner]

Regarding the GCLIDs, you'll want to update  your Google AdWords campaigns and anywhere else you can updated the URLs to the new HTTPs version of your site.

Whenever you use a 301 Permanent Redirect  you typically lose the referrer data, so that's why you're going to see issues with the referrers.

[Steven_Macdonald]

Thanks Eric, I appreciate the response.