Duplicate pages with http and https

[Diana.varbanescu]

Hi all,

We changed the payment part of our site to https from http a while ago. However once on the https pages, all the footer and header links are relative URLs, so once users have reached the payment pages and then re-navigate back to other pages in our website they stay on https. The build up of this happening has led to Google indexing all our pages in https (something we did not want to happen), and now we are in the situation where our homepage listing on Google is https rather than http.

We would prefer  the organic listings to be http (rather than https) and having read lots on this (included the great posts on the moz (still feels odd not refering to it as seomoz!) blog around this subject), possible solutions include redirects or a canoncial tags.

My additional questions around these options are:

1. We already have 2 redirects on some pages (long story), will another one negatively impact our rankings?

2. Is a  canonical a strong enough hint to Google to stop Google indexing the https versions of these page to the extent that out http pages will appear in natural listings again?

If anyone has any other suggestions or other ideas of how to address this issue, that would be great!

Thanks

Diana

[Chris.Menke]

Diana,

1.There are good reasons to limit your 301, especially regarding preserving link juice, but you are OK with chaining three 301s, as Matt Cutts describes here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA

2. yes, you can canonicalize those page to the http version to bring them back into the search results instead of the https version.  If you can 301 everything but the payment pages, you could use that method too.

[Gijsbert]

Hi Diana,

1. Check this video from Matt Cutts about several redirects: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA

2. A canonical is strong enough, check this video from Matt Cutts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm9onOGTgeM

Good luck!

Gijsbert

[Modi]

a) Some how, the authority passed will be lesser. As under 301 redirects - its not 100% authority which is passed to redirection page. Refer this - http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021832.html

So, Authority passes on keeps diminishing if the chain of redirects keeps on increasing to reach to that page.

b) Canonical gives google a strong indication that the original and main page is x, Google generally respect this and pass on authority to the canonical page.

Had i been on your side, what i would have actually done is :-

a) Removed all 301 redirect chain i.e A to B to home page etc and make all redirect from A to home page, B to home page and applied canonical to home page

b) Have standalone template for Home page and apply canonical tag to it say http://www.abc.com - so that if i near future, again if something changes. The template override of canonical will be considered the main page.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Diana

This may have been implied, but is it not an option to change your internal linking? It's obviously best to have all your internal links point to the exact locations you want without 301 redirects. So absolute URLs are recommended in this case pointing to final pages.

I think this article may help you: http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/5-easy-steps-to-fix-secure-page-https-duplicate-content/ - I'd follow the steps there, it's pretty solid!

-Dan

[Diana.varbanescu]

Hi Dan, thanks for the link!