HTTPS Migration & Preserving Link Equity

[JJLWeber]

Hey All — I’m working with a site that is migrating to HTTPS and had a couple questions. I read Moz’s ‘SEO Tips & Tricks for HTTPS’ post but want some clarification on a couple items. Aside from using https canonicals...

1. What is the best way to preserve link equity from inbound links? Site wide 301 Redirect in .htacess?

2. What is the best way to redirect internal links from http to https? The site uses absolute internal links.

THX!

[Alick300]

Hi Joe,

I'm sharing all the SEO checklist for https migration. I'm highlighting two points that you have asked.

SEO checklist to preserve your rankings

• Make sure every element of your website uses HTTPS, including widgets, java script, CSS files, images and your content delivery network.

• Use 301 redirects to point all HTTP URLs to HTTPS. This is a no-brainer to most SEOs, but you'd be surprised how often a 302 (temporary) redirect finds its way to the homepage by accident

• Make sure all canonical tags point to the HTTPS version of the URL.

• Use relative URLs whenever possible.

• Rewrite hard-coded internal links (as many as is possible) to point to HTTPS. This is superior to pointing to the HTTP version and relying on 301 redirects.

• Register the HTTPS version in both Google and Bing Webmaster Tools.

• Use the Fetch and Render function in Webmaster Tools to ensure Google can properly crawl and render your site.

• Update your sitemaps to reflect the new URLs. Submit the new sitemaps to Webmaster Tools. Leave your old (HTTP) sitemaps in place for 30 days so search engines can crawl and "process" your 301 redirects.

• Update your robots.txt file. Add your new sitemaps to the file. Make sure your robots.txt doesn't block any important pages.

• If necessary, update your analytics tracking code. Most modern Google Analytics tracking snippets already handle HTTPS, but older code may need a second look.

• Implement HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). This response header tells user agents to only access HTTPS pages even when directed to an HTTP page. This eliminates redirects, speeds up response time, and provides extra security.

• If you have a disavow file, be sure to transfer over any disavowed URLs into a duplicate file in your new Webmaster Tools profile.

Thanks

[LoganRay]

Hi Joe,

Specifically addressing your first question, 301 redirects that take URLs to HTTPS won't cause any loss in link juice as they would with a typical 301 redirect. This information came out of a Q&A with Mueller, which you can read more of here.

For your second question, that largely depends on your server, but you should be able to do this with a single rule, as opposed to redirects on a one-to-one basis.

[GlobeRunner]

Logan is correct, whenever you use a 301 redirect from one page on your domain to the same domain the link equity is passed (all of it, 100 percent). So, migrating from http to https isn't going to hurt at all. You won't lose any link equity.

I still prefer to updated any links on other sites whenever I can, such as links from social media profiles, etc. and any other links I can get updated.