Ranking drop after switching to HTTPS

deerhunter308 · Feb 15, 2017

Hi everyone,

I am in need of some help. Basically 2 months ago i made the switch to HTTPS for one of my sites but since doing so the site has dropped quite a lot in rankings eg #1-2 positions to #4-5 for a lot of the main terms.

I can't seem to see anything which could have caused this, we forwarded the site using 301 redirect. Optimised the sites speed etc but still no return in rankings.

I am wondering if anyone here can see anything either in the SSL, on site etc that could be causing the drop.

Site: (Mod Edit: Removed At OP's Request)

Apart from increasing the server specs to reduce page load times and changing all images etc to https nothing else was changed.

Since changing schema for reviews have also been removed by google.

I am seriously thinking of reverting back to HTTP even though i don't want to.

Thanks in advance,

kshatriya · Feb 15, 2017

When you originally set up the site, did you do it with www or without it?

And since you changed it to HTTPS, did you also change the URL to include the www or not?

deerhunter308 · Feb 15, 2017

Before and after the change www. was used and http://site.com.au was always forwarded to the http://www. version.

deerhunter308 · Feb 15, 2017

Article posts are now basically non existent in google as well. When id post an article beforehand it would be #1 for all long tail terms at least. Now google doesn't show an article in top 5 pages.

deerhunter308 · Feb 15, 2017

Willing to pay anyone who can help find the issue/fix.

gman777 · Feb 15, 2017

I'm not a pro when it comes about 301 redirects, but I know from other people who said that such a redirect doesn't provide full power, but about 85%, that would explain the rank dropping.

Optimizing speed is petty stuff.

Peter Ngo · Feb 15, 2017

Have u added the new https variation to wmt?

I had a pretty stable result after changing to https, not much changes.

deerhunter308 · Feb 15, 2017

Yep, i added the HTTPS version to WMT + resubmitted sitemap etc.

bartosimpsonio · Feb 15, 2017

I checked some of your main kw's and you're ranking top 10 on all of them.

I tested some URLs for common errors and did not find anything wrong with it.

Only thing I notice is some of your content pages are all rendered with javascript and I have JS disabled right now so I coudn't see shit.

deerhunter308 · Feb 15, 2017

Hey, thanks for looking. The site still ranks quite well but it was in the top 1-2 positions for all keywords now its in top 5-6 so there has been probably a 50% decrease in traffic due to the HTTPS switch. And i have no idea why this would happen.

Some terms have also gone completely and won't show in top 10 pages + when i use to check the site in US google it would be on page 2 or 3 and now it does not show in top 20 pages.

badrman2 · Feb 15, 2017

Just built a quality backlinks to your site and everything should be fine.

deerhunter308 · Feb 15, 2017

Ive spent the last two years building quality links, hence why i have no idea why my site would get hit so hard changing to https.

deerhunter308 · Feb 15, 2017

Anyone else have any ideas? Contemplating going back to HTTP.

erasus · Feb 15, 2017

This seems really bizarre.

Unreliable Witness · Feb 15, 2017

It could be a multiple redirects issue. Google says 301 redirects pass full power, but from testing I don't believe this.

The non-www http version of your site first redirects to the non-www https version, and then redirects again to the www https version. You might want to make sure there are fewer redirects in the chain.

One thing you might try doing is getting Google to recrawl the links to the site so that it recognises the redirects. One way to do this is to run them through an indexer. If you'e missed the news - Google seems to be crawling and indexing really slowly at the moment.

deerhunter308 · Feb 15, 2017

Hey, thanks for the reply that is kind of helpful. We did however already redirect http://site to http://www.site from launch so there shouldn't be any links/content on the non http:// version so a lot of the redirection should be http://www. to https:// so only one move.

I am starting to think maybe it was a move during a period where google is doing a lot of updates. Ive seen rankings jump and tank for the past 1-2 months since going to https. Moves of 5-50 rankings in the matter of days. I definitely think there is something going on at google at the moment as in the ranks ive seen sites from no where shoot up into high positions. These sites seem to be really old and not updated. (weird)

Ive also found a lot of snippets are coming into some niche which basically negate rankings these days. So much manipulation of on page content to rank.

Cshark · Feb 16, 2017

There will be temporary ranking drops due to 301 redirects. Except for that everything looks good, OP, and you should continue building links to get back to where you were before the switch.

deerhunter308 · Feb 16, 2017

Thanks for the reply Cshark. I was expecting a small drop but it seems to be more than 15%. Especially with new articles, beforehand they would be in the top 1-2 positions. Now they can't be found on the first 1-2 pages. Seems like the authority it had gained with google was lost giving no weight to any links or articles we post.

Ranking drop after switching to HTTPS

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