Does http to https harm SEO rankings

[tophi]

Hi, I started new project a few months ago and ranked some kw, where one of the KW was #1 for about 30k monthly searches. Recently I read about how good is SSL for seo, and changed all urls from http to https with 301. I also change the site structure but not the link structure. Suddenly last 3 days I saw drop from 1 to 9 and dancing ...
Shall I go back to http (because I don't have payment so ssl is not really neceserry) or stay to see if its going back to 1. No new competitors in the niche for months so far so I don't think anyone is moving upwards (will see .. )
I'm not sure is the website change or ssl caused the issue.
Suggestions ?

 

[mirrorer]

I just switched to https today too.Not sure how is going to react. I am ranked top 10

Is your website WP?

Did you 301 through htaccess and mod_rewrite?

 

[tophi]

No , my website is custom script not WP, I use nginx, and I redirected to 301 via cloudflare.

 

[mirrorer]

No , my website is custom script not WP, I use nginx, and I redirected to 301 via cloudflare.

When you type an old url with http does it redirects to https version ? If not you may have duplicate content issues

http://searchengineland.com/google-makes-penalty-mistakes-buffer-story-203591
https://www.cloudtec.ch/blog/web/2014/will-switching-to-https-affect-my-seo-ranking




According to nginx pitfalls, it's slightly better to omit the unnecessary capture, using $request_uri instead. In that case, append a question mark to prevent nginx from doubling any query args.

server {
listen 80;
server_name signup.mysite.com;
rewrite ^ https://$server_name$request_uri? permanent;
}

Source: http://serverfault.com/questions/250476/how-to-force-or-redirect-to-ssl-in-nginx

 

[Aty]

At first chances are rankings will drop or at least dance, however after a while they will settle again.

 

[tophi]

The KW where I loose traffic is the main url it was http://example.com and I changed it to https://example.com . Now typing http://site or www.site redirects to the right url -> https . Thank you for the info links you posted I read them both, lets hope the site will go better.

When you type an old url with http does it redirects to https version ? If not you may have duplicate content issues

http://searchengineland.com/google-makes-penalty-mistakes-buffer-story-203591
https://www.cloudtec.ch/blog/web/2014/will-switching-to-https-affect-my-seo-ranking




According to nginx pitfalls, it's slightly better to omit the unnecessary capture, using $request_uri instead. In that case, append a question mark to prevent nginx from doubling any query args.




Source: http://serverfault.com/questions/250476/how-to-force-or-redirect-to-ssl-in-nginx

@Aty do you have experience with this case ?

 

[asap1]

Give it some time to settle down.

You might drop a bit in rankings since 301's don't pass 100% of the link juice but it shouldnt be anything big.

 

[mirrorer]

The KW where I loose traffic is the main url it was http://example.com and I changed it to https://example.com . Now typing http://site or www.site redirects to the right url -> https . Thank you for the info links you posted I read them both, lets hope the site will go better.



@Aty do you have experience with this case ?

No
Today is the first time that I do this to a money site of mine.Will let you know if something strange happens.

My site has not been indexed as https:// yet by google so it is early to say.

Edit: Didn't saw that you were asking @Aty

 

[tophi]

After a little play with curl I found my SSL does not work as it suppose to... so I switched back. Thats because I use the free ssl from cloudflare which anyway does not secure the things between CF and my server, only client - CF . So I get green ssl bar but its not worth I guess. Can you PM me with your relsulst next weeks ?

Edit: Found a reason why not to move over ssl yet
Recently Google'e Webmaster analyst John Muller twitter about Self-sign SSL certificate as, "self-signed usually won't work in browsers, so we'd flag that." which means if a user issues free/Self-signed SSL certificate google will not considered that website as HTTPS ranking signal.

For now I will stay with the basic http

 

[mirrorer]

After a little play with curl I found my SSL does not work as it suppose to... so I switched back. Thats because I use the free ssl from cloudflare which anyway does not secure the things between CF and my server, only client - CF . So I get green ssl bar but its not worth I guess. Can you PM me with your relsulst next weeks ?

Edit: Found a reason why not to move over ssl yet
Recently Google'e Webmaster analyst John Muller twitter about Self-sign SSL certificate as, "self-signed usually won't work in browsers, so we'd flag that." which means if a user issues free/Self-signed SSL certificate google will not considered that website as HTTPS ranking signal.

For now I will stay with the basic http

I have lot of things going on and probably will forget.Sent me a pm and I will let you know when the site is re-indexed with https

I use commercial SSL from Comodo.

Good luck

 

[JaceyRep]

they are header certifications, they not have anything todo with your site SEO.

 

[Aty]

@Aty do you have experience with this case ?

Yes, I did redirect one client site to https.

 

[Mr Vlad]

https is better for seo, even Matt Cutts mentioned it.

Problem is you had backlinks/seo initially built for http. So when you switched to https the juice from those backlinks dropped. Either keep your new seo efforts on https, or switch back. If you started recently I suggest keeping https, and make sure new backlinks are not pointed to http..

 

[FutureProofSeo]

You might want to make sure that all your internal links still work correctly. Crawl the site with Screaming Frog to double check.

 

[Galleta]

After a little play with curl I found my SSL does not work as it suppose to... so I switched back. Thats because I use the free ssl from cloudflare which anyway does not secure the things between CF and my server, only client - CF . So I get green ssl bar but its not worth I guess. Can you PM me with your relsulst next weeks ?

Edit: Found a reason why not to move over ssl yet
Recently Google'e Webmaster analyst John Muller twitter about Self-sign SSL certificate as, "self-signed usually won't work in browsers, so we'd flag that." which means if a user issues free/Self-signed SSL certificate google will not considered that website as HTTPS ranking signal.

For now I will stay with the basic http

Why would cloudflares free SSL or any other free SSL certificate be unsigned or self-signed?
How comes this conclusion?

 

[mirrorer]

Update:

The site has been fully indexed with https now. No issues so far.No position gain.
However, traffic has gone up by 10%. I guess when users see https they are more likely to click because they see it as a trusted website.

Conclusion: Even if you don't gain serps with https, it helps users to trust your site and increases the serps CTR

 

[tophi]

Update from my side, I switched back to http and gain my serps within a 2 days, because I was going lower and lower day after day. I relay for this project only on seo, I don't have returning visitors (less than 10% ) . I think if the website have popularity it's ok to loose some serp and gain user trust but in my case was better to go back to http. I will know in the future to start from the begin with SSL and build the links with https.

 

[SEOANG3L]

Redirect from .htaccess starting with Mod write command

 

[Deleted member 657006]

Https suppose to improve serp postion.

that was a new seo added feature to improve
website postion.

if you go https your need a proper seruity cert.



read this please.

https://uk.godaddy.com/help/redirect-http-to-https-automatically-8828

with godaddy it 45 year.
https://uk.godaddy.com/web-security/ssl-certificate

 

[mirrorer]

Update from my side, I switched back to http and gain my serps within a 2 days, because I was going lower and lower day after day. I relay for this project only on seo, I don't have returning visitors (less than 10% ) . I think if the website have popularity it's ok to loose some serp and gain user trust but in my case was better to go back to http. I will know in the future to start from the begin with SSL and build the links with https.

Most likely you didn't a proper redirection.

My serp didn't change,however ctr has increased as I see more visitors than previously while I am on the same positions.

If you have wrodpress it is easy to switch to https.