HTTP Competing with HTTPS

[Flea Market SEO]

Hey Guys.


I think I have an issue with my site. I went from having visitors of 350+/day to 100/day within about a 8 week period. I'm losing ranking for posts I've been in the top 10 for 6-12 months. My posts have dropped into the 50-90 range. My content is all native English and long form (2000-3000 word per post).

The stuff that's outranking me is garbage.

I've done a backlink analysis and there don't appear to be any issues there...I have strong backlinks, the site is 7 years old - backlinks from Wikipedia, other DA 90+ news sites, DA 75+ relevant blogs, etc...

***I was browsing AHREFs and I am noticing that my keywords are constantly being "lost" and then "new" by the same page/post...the only difference is that one is the HTTP version, while the other is the HTTPS version.

Is there a way for me to check that and correct it if there's an issue?

I use a CDN (Cloudflare), which I wonder if it's causing the issue. I don't necessarily think it is, but wanted to ask anyway.

Any help is appreciated!!

 

[Mission IMpossible]

Could also be due to the recent updates by Google. Many users are complaining about garbage websites outranking them.

 

[tiiberius]

I don't think minor technical issue like this would be the cause.

You are more likely affected by the latest update. (or updateS)

 

[Flea Market SEO]

Could also be due to the recent updates by Google. Many users are complaining about garbage websites outranking them.

I was definitely affected by the May 2020 update, but this was starting back in Feb/March. I normally see about visitors of 400-450/day through the holidays and then drop down to 300 after the holidays for a few months. It then climbs back to 350+ towards April/May/June.

I know my site and something is "off". I'm not even as concerned with the actual visitors as much as I am the trajectory.

 

[Stansy]

I have an exact match domain without an SSL and very little content ranking first page for a high competition keyword. It's possible.
Google likes exact match domains.

 

[SEO Grand Room]

Mate,

Just for your confirmation.

Have you done the redirection for the posts - http -> https

 

[Flea Market SEO]

Mate,

Just for your confirmation.

Have you done the redirection for the posts - http -> https

Yes, if you type in http, it redirects to https

 

[nSnoopy]

You are using cloudflare right? Then, go to cloudflare.com>yourdomain>SSL/TLS and select Full(strict).
It should solve your problem

 

[SEO Grand Room]

Great! It takes some time to replace that old position.

I would suggest build some quality backlinks with that https urls and improve the internal linking for that https urls.

Hope you will retain the positions very shortly.

 

[Flea Market SEO]

You are using cloudflare right? Then, go to cloudflare.com>yourdomain>SSL/TLS and select Full(strict).
It should solve your problem

Thank you, I'll give this a shot!

 

[Luco]

The latest updates from garbage G is your issue!

 

[Flea Market SEO]

You are using cloudflare right? Then, go to cloudflare.com>yourdomain>SSL/TLS and select Full(strict).
It should solve your problem

Will I have to change my certificate when doing this?

 

[nSnoopy]

Will I have to change my certificate when doing this?

It won't change anything regarding the certificate, it will just make sure that all links/pages/posts are using the https instead of http Don't forget to purge cache.
After you do this, go to ahrefs and find those links with http and visit them, see if they redirect to https automatically

 

[OutreachSEO]

Just redirect http to https, problem solved.

 

[Flea Market SEO]

Just redirect http to https, problem solved.

Not the issue, http was already being redirected to https

 

[hideath]

If the HTTP version redirect to the HTTPS version as you mentioned, i don't think that's even a problem at all,
Are you sure you have pages ranked as HTTP version?

• Goolge site:http://example.com to check if that's true
• If yes, check these pages http manually to see if they redirect to the https version or not
• Change the SSL mode in Cloudflare to Full (strict)

Apart from this, I don't really think https or http is the problem, Google is trash nowadays,
ranking bunch of google books, google sites, Weebly and Pinterest/Quora pages above strong pages from authority websites

 

[gyamasak]

I redirected my http links to https and it seemed to work for me.

 

[Mr Positive]

You can change www.http to www.https but possibly it’s because of the latest update check those dates

 

[the1aquemini]

I have an exact match domain without an SSL and very little content ranking first page for a high competition keyword. It's possible.
Google likes exact match domains.

What's your niche if you don't mind me asking?