Moving to HTTPS: Tips for Success #FOS17

Moving to HTTPS Tips for Success

#httpsmigration at #FOS17 by @aleyda from @orainti

Hallo #FOS17


I’m Aleyda Solis


ORAINTI.COM @ALEYDA FB.COM/ALEYDASEOTIPS/

I Do SEO

BITLY.COM/LIBROSEOALEYDA

I’m Aleyda Solis

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http://ORAINTI.COM

http://@ALEYDA

http://FB.COM/ALEYDASEOTIPS/

http://BITLY.COM/LIBROSEOALEYDA

I Blog I Speak I’m Featured

I’m Aleyda Solis


I help my clients move to HTTPS


https://letsencrypt.org/stats/

Over 50% of the pages loaded by Firefox are now using HTTPS


bit.ly/spreadhttps

HTTPS is already becoming the “default” in top SERPs


http://bit.ly/spreadhttps

It’s about security, users safety, trust & experience


The perfect opportunity to start using HTTP/2 & improve your site speed too

bit.ly/http2seo


http://bit.ly/http2seo

Provide another Positive Ranking signal


The goal is that your users can browse securely, earning their trust


Instead of this :(


While also migrating your rankings & traffic from your HTTP to HTTPS URLs


Without traffic drops


Instead of this


bit.ly/httpsmigration

Let’s see the most critical steps as well as dos & dont’s to maximize chances of success


http://bit.ly/httpsmigration

Before Moving


Don’t show and allow access to content via your HTTPS version if you haven’t migrated yet


You want to avoid having mixed indexation, cannibalization & content duplication issues


Make sure to canonicalize and refer consistently to your HTTP URLs

301-redirect Canonicalize LinkInclude in

XML Sitemaps

HTTP#httpsmigration at #FOS17 by @aleyda from @orainti

To later facilitate the migration towards HTTPS


XML Sitemaps

HTTP HTTPS#httpsmigration at #FOS17 by @aleyda from @orainti

Create GSC profiles for your HTTPS domains & subdomains to start monitoring them


Don’t mix HTTPs migrations with other structural Web changes


Verify the type of SSL Certificate you need, like wildcard ones for multiple subdomains

sslshopper.com


http://sslshopper.com

It doesn’t need to be expensive! You can even do it for free by using Cloudfare

bit.ly/freehttps


http://bit.ly/freehttps

Check with your hosting provider if they offer them, as it might be easier to enable it too


If you work with CDNs you will also need to activate it for your subdomains zones


Create a list of your top pages from a visibility & conversion perspective to monitor closely


When Moving


https://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-checker.html

Make sure that the SSL certificate is effectively installed


https://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-checker.html

For HTTP to HTTPS migrations you can’t use GSC “Change of address” feature


You need to 301-redirect, canonicalize, link and refer to your HTTPs URLs consistently


XML Sitemaps

HTTPSHTTP#httpsmigration at #FOS17 by @aleyda from @orainti

Update your canonical & hreflang tags so they refer to the HTTPS URLs


Don’t do this

If your links use absolute URLs they need to be updated with your HTTPS ones


Don’t do this

Generate a new XML sitemap with your HTTPS URLs

Don’t do this


Implement 301-redirect from each of your HTTP URLs to their HTTPS versions

bit.ly/redirectgenerator


http://bit.ly/redirectgenerator

http://searchengineland.com/chromes-devtools-seo-10-ways-use-seo-audits-266433

Be careful if you’re hotlinking, all resources (images, css, js) need to be moved to HTTPS too


Don’t do this

http://searchengineland.com/chromes-devtools-seo-10-ways-use-seo-audits-266433

Remember these should be permanent 301-redirects & not 302s


Make sure to also update your robots.txt to your HTTPS domain & update URLs if needed


If you use Wordpress there’s a plugin that facilitates it

https://es.wordpress.org/plugins/really-simple-ssl/


https://es.wordpress.org/plugins/really-simple-ssl/

After Moving


Validate your SSL certificate & secure content status

https://www.whynopadlock.com/



Crawl your migrated site emulating both desktop & smartphone Googlebots


Do also a list crawl of those top pages that you wanted to prioritize


Have all URLs been migrated? Is there a performance change?


Do you find HTTP URLs in the crawl? Errors, redirects & canonicalization issues?


See which old HTTP URLs you’re still linking, if they’re showing errors or are redirected


Do the same looking for canonical tags pointing to old HTTP URLs


Have XML sitemaps also been updated? What’s the gap vs. the crawled URLs?


Check if the Page-to-Page Redirects are Effectively Implemented with 301s


Don’t do this

… and that they’re redirecting to the relevant and indexable HTTPS URLs


Don’t do this

That there are no chain redirects between them


Don’t do this

For independent mobile sites, verify redirects and rel alternates & canonicals w/ desktop


Don’t do this

Prioritize to fix pages w/ erroneous protocol, status & canonicalization w/ high traffic


Look for orphan URLs by identifying which URLs with organic traffic are not in the crawl


Once fixed, you can submit your HTTP & HTTPS URLs & XML sitemaps to be re-crawled


Check in your log files for googlebot “before” & “after” behavior & crawled URLs


Screaming Frog Log Analyzer


And start monitoring how your index statusmoves to HTTPS in Google Search Console


Dank Je!


Marketing

Moving to HTTPS: Tips for Success #FOS17