Re: Inbound Links. Whether it's HTTP or HTTPS, does it still go towards the same inbound link count?

[premieresales]

Re: Inbound Links. If another website links to my website, does it make a difference to my inbound link count if they use http or https?

Basically, my site http://mysite.com redirects to https://mysite.com, so if another website uses the link http://mysite.com, will https://mysite.com still benefit from the inbound links count?

I'm unsure if I should reach out to all my inbound links to tell them to use my https URL instead...which would be rather time consuming so just checking http and https counts all the same. Thanks.

[LoganRay]

Hi,

The value of an inbound link is not discounted if it points to http and you redirect it to the secure version of that URL. John Mueller of Google stated this earlier last year in response to a lot of people asking the same question. No need to reach out to site owners for updates.

[benesmartin]

Hi Logan,

but what about the loading speed and UX? The 301 redirect is still one step more and takes time to load. This could lead for example to higher bounce rate and thus lower rankings. Do you think it's worth reaching the site owners because of this if not because of the link juice? I'm just curious

Thanks for the answer. Cheers, Martin

[LoganRay]

Hey Martin,

That's a great follow-up question. In my experience, the only time 301 redirects significantly impact page speed is when you have entirely too many or when you have a bunch of redirect chains (redirects that point to other redirects URLs). Think of an HTTP > HTTPS more like a URL re-write, where every URL requested from the server gets re-written to HTTPS. It's a much quicker redirect than a standard /old-page.html > /new-page.html. Additionally, Google isn't going to start dinging sites for minuscule load time lags from a secure redirect since they're recommending site owners make the switch.

Hope that helps answer your question.

[benesmartin]

Thanks for the answer, Logan. Now it's much clearer.