SSL Certificates and SEO

[marain]

SEO has resulted in not-too-shabby placements of my sites by search engines. If I were to install an SSL certificate, the prefix on my site pages would change from http: to https: Would that affect my search engine popularity? Would a workaround be available? If so, would it be a big deal?

Thanks for all past and future assistance.

A.

[djr33]

https and http are two separate things. So it is possible that only one would work for a website and your users would have no idea that they should now be using https.

But... that's a terrible design for a site and simply a mistake on the part of the webmaster. (There ARE plenty of sites out there like that, for example a few of the course webpages at my university.)

The solution is easy: use both HTTP and HTTPS. If you want to only use HTTPS, then just add a redirect from HTTP to HTTPS. Done. No one will notice the difference, probably.

Now there's one slight problem. That is that you already have the http pages indexed in search engines. So now you just need to add a redirect that takes ANY page on your site from http to https as a redirect, and at least it will work for users, although it may take search engines a while to catch up.

However, that also works out easily enough because if you give the right redirect information (permanent redirect) the search engines will eventually switch over to the new URLs.

[marain]

Dan,

Thank you.

I surmise then that, while the search engines are catching up, my sites' popularity will diminish, because traffic will be split between http and https. Thus, instead of the search engines seeing that http received, let's say, 100 hits, the allocation will be split between http and https, e.g. 80-20, or 50-50, or 20-80 and, eventually, 01-99, or the like.

I'm not sure of your reasoning that that's simply a mistake on the part of the webmaster. The site began as purely informational. It then progressed to inviting the user to complete forms or send e-mail containing sensitive personal data. So, as the site evolved, it becomes necessary to take into account protection of confidential information.

A.

[djr33]

I'm not sure of your reasoning that that's simply a mistake on the part of the webmaster.

Sorry-- my comment wasn't about you at all, or any HTTP site. I'm talking about an HTTPS-only website that doesn't work at all if you try http. So if I type "http://whatever.com" it will load nothing and claim the website doesn't exist. But if I for some reason know to use "https://whatever.com" it will work magically. Most users have no idea why or how to deal with that.
(The opposite isn't true-- an HTTP-only website is normal and it's not a problem to lack HTTPS. Or to change. But if you DO have HTTPS, then you should also absolutely have HTTP, at least as a redirect!)

It then progressed to inviting the user to complete forms or send e-mail containing sensitive personal data. So, as the site evolved, it becomes necessary to take into account protection of confidential information.

That's correct!

I surmise then that, while the search engines are catching up, my sites' popularity will diminish, because traffic will be split between http and https. Thus, instead of the search engines seeing that http received, let's say, 100 hits, the allocation will be split between http and https, e.g. 80-20, or 50-50, or 20-80 and, eventually, 01-99, or the like.

Hm. I don't really know. I think it would depend on whether your users are active when you switch it. If so, I don't see much of a hit occurring. The search engines will likely be able to figure it out anyway (this sort of thing does happen from time to time). If your hits drop when you switch (for related or unrelated reasons) then so will your SEO rankings, and they may never recover because your new site won't be popular. But I don't think that's something you need to worry about. I think it's very likely that the transition will be smooth.

With a "permanently moved" redirect (I think that's a 301 maybe with an extra parameter) the search engines will understand-- they won't take off points for that or anything, as long as it's clear. Then you might have a little bit of fluctuation but once it's all settled down and as long as your users are still there, you'll be fine.


One alternative is to keep just HTTP for the whole site and add a new HTTPS section. This doesn't fit every site, but it does fit some-- for example, an online store attached to a different kind of website.

[fahadrafiq]

SEO has resulted in not-too-shabby placements of my sites by search engines. If I were to install an SSL certificate, the prefix on my site pages would change from http: to https: Would that affect my search engine popularity? Would a workaround be available? If so, would it be a big deal?

Thanks for all past and future assistance.

A.

There is more to it than meets the eye, Google out of nowhere saying that moving over to HTTPS will give a ranking boost in the SERPs sounds a bit unfair to me. Many people might rush to getting SSL installed on their websites. But most might not know that moving over to HTTPS is complicated, it might cause harm if you do not follow entire guidelines.

And also this seems like a business move by Google to increase their profits than to make internet more secure.

[technews]

yes it can affect your ranks positively, but https is just one of the so many aspects for ranking any website.
before thinking about doing anything please have a look at what google actually has to say about this:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...ng-signal.html

Keep in mind, google has also started selling domains recently - Google as a Domain registrar imagine that!