Scared to Migrate from HTTP to HTTPS?

[djbaxter]

Scared to Migrate from HTTP to HTTPS?
by Mr-X on ThreadWatch
Wed, 2016-02-03

A lot of posts that I read on the 'Net lately are about how switching from HTTP to HTTPS leads to lost rankings and disaster. It doesn't have to be that way though. On SEO Chat, users are discussing what you need to do to prepare for an HTTPS migration in this thread. One of the mods there has transcribed some solid advice from John Mueller. The mod also says that he's never had major issues migrating, and he seems like an open dude. So if you have any questions, that'd be the thread to ask them in.

I was reminded of that thread because HTTPS migrations were in the news yesterday. The SEM Post published two stories: one story about how you can move partial sites to HTTPS, and another about how using a 301 or 302 to redirect to HTTPS results in no PageRank loss.

Read more...

What has been your experience in making the HTTP -> HTTPS transition?

 

[David K]

Great resources and very complete dj, thanks greatly. I personally considered migrating to HTTPS but my sites soon overtook all industry competitors combined for traffic and now my main competitors are a couple high ranking blog sites which I can still overtake because I am fighting against their subpages and not their main ones. I think everyone has to decide based on who they are competing against and the climate at the time. I agree by experience that 301 & 302 redirects eventually like domain forwarding carry all the site strength like backlinks but readers need to keep in mind that it can take up to 30 days as that's how long it takes search engines to recrawl sites, even the most popular ones. I may even have to revisit the HTTPS option in the future, as not only is seo ever changing, but as we all know the exact formula is always a propriety secret itself changing and the old fashioned legwork of trial & error will always hold true - in this case with 30 days of patience! Thanks a heap!