Transfering Site from Http to HTTPS

[RobinJA]

Migrating all of our pages from HTTP to HTTPS. I am listing few of my concerns regarding the same:

1. Currently, all HTTPS traffic to our Homepage and SEO page is 301 Redirected to HTTP equivalent. So, when we enable HTTPS on all our pages and 301 all HTTP traffic to HTTPS and stop current 301 Redirection to HTTP, will it still cause a loop during Google crawl due to old indexing?
2. Will we move whole SEO facing site to HTTPS at once or will it be in phases? Which of the two approach is better keeping SEO in mind?
3. what all SEO changes will be required on all pages.(eg. Canonical URLs on our website as well as affiliate websites), sitemaps etc.

[RobinJA]

Also please explain what all things to do with Google Analytics and Google Webmasters.

1. Google Analytics Tracking code will remains the same?

2. Need to submit the new https version URL on google webmasters?

[andy.bigbangthemes]

Hey there,

1. Google won't be affected, no worries.

2. I'd recommend moving the whole thing.

3. All you need to do is make sure that all internal links (from / toold posts/categories/etc) will now be set to https so they don't redirect from http to https.

4. GA code remains

5. No. Just tell G to reindex when you're ready.

Good luck!

[RobinJA]

Can u answer me little more deeply and technically about the first point with I had asked. Since I'm not having a clear idea with it.

Also in google analytics, should I add the new https url under Admin>Property Settings?

[andy.bigbangthemes]

Hey.

No, it's not a new property. No need in my opinion. Let's see if others see otherwise, but I never do this.

For the first - It won't cause a loop. Just make sure to set all links to https. If you run WP - install a plugin called something like "simply http to https" if you don't have the coding skills or a dev team to handle the migration properly. It's a clean solution.

Cheers

[fencepencil]

Hi Robin,

I just went through this and here is my $0.02...

1. You will need to basically reverse your 301 redirect, so that http redirects to https, instead of how you have it set now. This should be no problem, just update .htaccess and reverse it. If you are using Wordpress, you'll need to set your site URL in the general settings tab and go verify all the permalinks update to https. You won't get a redirect chain unless you have http pointing to https and then https pointing back to http. Just use one 301, and you should be fine.

2. I would move the whole thing at once. It'll be a lot simpler than trying to segregate which pages are http and which are https.

3. You won't need canonicals because of the 301. Google will see that you are permanently redirecting all your pages to https. Another likely canonical situation; if you have another website using an article that you published first, and they are pointing to the same article on your website as the canonical, it'll hit the redirect and not split the link juice.

4. The tracking URL's won't change, and you can verify this by logging in to Analytics and Search Console. The one thing you'll need to do in Search Console is "add a property" for the https:// and the https://www versions of your website. You'll then need to make sure you have the preferred domain selected. Then you can resubmit your sitemap.xml files and you should be good to go.

I hope this helps

[jessential]

Where the issue becomes more complex, is if you add CloudFlare to your site for DDoS protection, to serve up from closer towers, etc. Many sites who want to load faster or avoid attack are doing so. We have thus incurred a redirect issue to work through and it takes some technical expertise. Because CloudFlare is a third party for SSL certificates in many hosting packages, this seems to catch many off-guard and wondering what went wrong.

If helpful, we have had greater success buying our own CloudFlare service versus letting a hosting provider be an affiliate service for our SSL.