Would you redirect Website A to Website B, when Website B is in the middle of a HTTP=>HTTPS migration?

[jeremycabral]

Hey guys,

I'm curious on your thoughts around this scenario...

Website A:

• 35,000 monthly pageviews

• 1,000 pages

• 375 root linking domains

• currently HTTPS

• focused on one topic

• weak rankings for competitive keywords

Website B:

• 3M monthly pageviews

• 32,500 pages

• 3,500 root linking domains

• started HTTP to HTTPS migration 1 week ago. 1/3 of pages indexed as HTTPS.

• focused on many topics

• strong rankings for competitive keywords

Requirement: I want to have a reliable read on how Website A's keyword rankings change after redirecting it's pages to Website A. This post-migration analysis will be used as a basis to assess the risk of redirecting another website we own that is similar to Website A into Website B.

My question:

Would you wait until most of the pages on Website B are indexed as HTTPS before doing a 301 of Website A to Website B? Please back up your answer with reasons why or why not

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

According to Google, it really doesn't matter, but I like the idea of everything being clean and equity being passed, so I would wait until the https version is live and your migration is complete. Reason being, I want that equity to be transferred fully to where it's supposed to be, especially in the destination is leveraging a ranking factor like https.

I would follow Google's migration resource and make sure you are doing this with best practices in mind. I would also look at your backlink profile to make sure you're not transferring bad backlinks for Site A to Site B in your move.

Hope this helps! good luck!
P

[jeremycabral]

Thanks for your thoughts. That's my position on it at the moment, so I'll continue to wait

J