Redirecting from http to https impact SEO? [duplicate]

Question

According to what I have learnt, when we take a decision of permanent redirect, the SEO is impacted like in the folowing example:

Redirect www.example.net to www.example.com
Redirect www.example1.com to www.example2.com
Redirect www.example.com/category1 to www.example.com/category2

The best thing to do is to take a solid and immutable decision from the beginning.

My question:

I am not prepared yet for https URLs, but it's programed in the midlle term, will I incure some SEO loss when I will redirect all http URLs to https ? Or bots are so smart to handle sush situations.

Answer 1

For a period, you will see a drop-off in traffic before picking up again. Be prepared for this and make sure that management understands that switching from HTTP to HTTPS comes with a price.

In theory, though rarely in practice, HTTP and HTTPS are two separate sites. As the search engine drops the HTTP site and indexes the HTTPS site, there will be a disruption. This can be significant depending on the site size and freshness.

Assuming that you do a blanket 301 redirect from HTTP to HTTPS, it will take a while for the value of any link to your HTTP site to effect your HTTPS site. What is preferred for any 301 redirect is that the link profile for the HTTP site be replicated for the HTTPS site. You can request that links be changed from HTTP to HTTPS where you can, and where you cannot, replace the remaining links so that the link profile exceeds that of the HTTP site. This allows you to not rely upon the redirect of links for value in case further changes are required such as dropping HTTP.

Answer 2

There's a trade-off here.

If you decide to move everything to https then people will have a longer waiting time initially in order for the security certificate to be recognized by the client browser.

For now, make one URL the secure version of that URL. Make it start with https:// and run that URL through webpagetest.org and you'll notice either a purple or pink bar attached to other color bars in the initial waterfall chart next to that URL. That pink/purple bar represents the time for a secure connection to be established. This extra time does not exist in http.

At least with https:// the odds of a hacker breaking into your site will not be as good since data is exchanged over a secure channel between your browser and server.

Also, Load time is a factor in SEO because google hates sites that take forever to load, and if I'm not mistaken, a TTFB (time to first byte of data) that measures over 1/5th of a second is bad news. This can also be measured on any of your pages via webpagetest.org.

So my advice is, if your site is informational only and doesn't have sections only for special users, then go with http.

If you're storing user information or doing anything that the world should not access (for example, going past a login screen to a special page with the correct username and password), then you're better off using https for those specific pages.

Answer 3

Redirecting to the, now, preferred secure version of the same site will have no effect on your ranking. The domain name is the key for search engines. https is the protocol, not the content.