How to Evaluate Original Domain Authority vs. Recent 'HTTPS' Duplicate for Potential Domain Migration?

[Ben-R]

Hello Everyone,

So our site has used ‘http’ for the domain since the start. Everything has been set up for this structure and Google is only indexing these pages. Just recently a second version was created on ‘httpS’. We know having both up is the worst case scenario but now that both are up is it worth just switching over or would the original domain authority warrant just keeping it on ‘http’ and redirecting the ‘httpS’ version?

Assuming speed and other elements wouldn’t be an issue and it's done correctly.

Our thought was if we could do this quickly it would be easier to just redirect the ‘httpS’ version but was not sure if the Pros of ‘httpS’ would be worth the resources.

Any help or insight would be appreciated.

Please let us know if there are any further details we could provide that might help.

Looking forward to hearing from all of you!

Thank you in advance for the help.

Best,

[Roman-Delcarmen]

There is no a big deal, to avoid duplicate content just make the appropriate redirects, and register both properties on search console the 'http' and 'https' version and then set the right version on this case https.

Go to Search Console > Add a property > https version > Verify
then go Site settings and set the new version of your website, with those simple steps you will have everything up and running.

[BlueprintMarketing]

As Romans stated you will need to go into search console and add all four properties. Then pick which one you want to be your canonical or  Chosen URL.

1. On the Search Console Home page, click the site you want.

2. Click the gear icon, and then click Site Settings.

3. In the Preferred domain section, select the option you want.

4. HTTP://

5. HTTP://www.

6. HTTPS://

7. HTTPS://www.

** The to do list. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6332964**

** make certain that you force https:// on your hosting environment or WAF/CDN**

**Check it using a **Redirect mapper

• https://varvy.com/tools/redirects/
• If you get lost and need to fix something
• https://online.marketing/guide/https/
• https://www.deepcrawl.com/blog/news/2017-seo-tips-move-to-https/

Add HSTS once everything is definitely working.

Make sure everything is working correctly before Google crawls it use

• https://www.deepcrawl.com
• or
• https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

all the best,

Tom

[BlueprintMarketing]

This will help too

http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-optimization/http-https-migration-checklist-google-docs/

& use http://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/https-vs-http/

<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^443$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]</ifmodule>

[Ben-R]

Thank you both for the help, this is great. We were asking more in relation to choosing between which version to make the priority. It seems like you would recommend switching over to ‘https’ even though all of our pages being indexed are ‘http’? - Just wanted to make sure we understood you correctly.

We will make sure to go through all of the documentation you sent over before moving as well.

Please let us know if there is anything we could provide further details for that might help.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Thank you again for all the help.

Best,

[Roman-Delcarmen]

You're welcome

[BlueprintMarketing]

I'm happy to be of help!

[BlueprintMarketing]

Yes I would recommend moving to https over  the curent http it will be very unlikely that you have an issue with google and  The end-users will feel much more secure.

If you are doing this on a bespoke site ( not very common CMS or made by hand)

I know tools like  letsencrypt.com give you a free certificate so will CloudFlare.com  so if you're trying to have HTTP/2 , HSTS, forced https & a cert you can use for free version and it will do everything you need for https cost  (free-$5,000) (any reverse proxy CDN or WAF) stackpath.com ($20)  incapsula.com ($59) sucuri.net WAF ($19) Armor.com ($600-7,000) WAF only (under $200) Speedyrails.com has always had deals on cloudflare (35-40% off) if you're going to use it.

if you use a EV cert or just want to have a regular certificate I strongly recommend looking at third-party sites you can save a lot of money.

I like  DigiCert and GlobalSign  personal most of the others are on the Symantec what was VERISIGN you can definitely get away with getting one for $5-100 on namecheap  but remember to search for the best price on Google.

They tend to make the job a lot easier and  my personal opinion is that every person should actually do have WAF for their sites they like.