HTTPS Site Migration | SearchLondon

© Copyright 2016 Builtvisible. All rights reserved. Private and Confidential
HTTPS Migration
Most common pitfalls
Maria Camanes | Technical SEO Consultant | maria@builtvisible.com

Let’s start with the basics

What is HTTPS?
It’s the secure version of the
HTTP protocol, in which
communications between clients
and servers are encrypted
Traditionally was only used for
payment transactions, email &
the sharing of sensitive
information
It keeps user’s data
confidential &
uncompromised when
shared between a website &
their device
HTTPS is now widespread
across sites of many different
purposes & is not only used on
transactional pages or forms,
but sitewide

But, how does it work?

Data protected in 3 main ways
The data is encrypted
so that no one other than the
intended recipient can understand
it. This is done by converting the
unencrypted data – or plaintext –
into cyphertext
The data maintains its integrity
during the transfer and cannot
be corrupted or modified
without being detected
The communication is authenticated
This proves that users communicate
only with the intended site and
avoids interception by third parties

Site migrations are potentially
one of the most dangerous
online marketing adventures

Migrating to HTTPS can
have multiple benefits

Top 10 Common pitfalls & how to avoid
them

No. 1: Traffic & revenue losses: the most feared issue
There may be a temporary traffic loss from organic

How to avoid it
Benchmark the site’s performance and keyword rankings for later
comparisons
Ensure that all the important URLs are redirected

No. 2: We always come too late to the party

How to avoid it
• Incorporating your SEO team into the
migration from early stages
• Always consult site changes with SEO
experts
• Involve other stakeholders too
• Plan ahead carefully and make sure
everyone knows their responsibilities

No. 3: Think of your legacy redirects
Chains in redirects mean increased load times
Google will give up after 5+ hops and treat it as a 404
URL A
Legacy site
URL B
Legacy site
URL C
New site
A chain of two redirects
URL A
Legacy site
URL B
Legacy site
URL C
New site
Suggested solution

How to avoid it
• Find URLs with multiple redirects in a
chain using a crawler
• Create a mapping of old to new URLs -
map out each hop along the way, until
the final target
• Update internal links, schema mark-up and social buttons
• Check the staging site before launch
• Test the redirects once implemented (use Fetch as Google for
individual URLs or site crawlers for large numbers or URLs)

No. 4: The two domains indexed alongside each other
• If you don’t block the staging site for search engines, this can accidentally get
listed in search results
• Both http and https versions might be indexed, causing duplicate content
issues

How to avoid it
Add a meta robots noindex to
all pages and a disallow rule
to the Robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Password-protect the
test environment
Allow access to only
certain IP addresses

No. 5: Don’t hide your site from Google
• Block needs to be removed as soon
as redirects are implemented
• Otherwise search engines will be
redirected to a blocked site –
resulting in massive ranking drops

How to avoid it
• As soon as redirects are in place:
• Remove the blocking to allow robots to crawl
the new website
• Make sure the robots.txt file allows all
crawling (including images, CSS, JS & other
page assets)
• This needs to be done as quickly as
possible after the redirects are in place
• Make sure canonical tags reflect https
versions (update hreflang and other meta
tags too)

No. 6: Your credibility and user confidence trashed
• Your new HTTPS pages flagged as
‘Not Secure’ due to mixed content
signals
• Any page using an HTTPS address
must have all of the content within
coming from a secured source

How to avoid it
• Make sure you are hosting all resources on a secure source (images, videos,
audio files, etc.)
• Ask your SEO team to crawl your site and find these for you
• Fixing the issue is often as simple as adding an “s” to links
• Update your CDN URLs if you’re using one

No. 7: Make it easy for search engines
Don’t forget to move your
sitemap.xml and robots.txt files
You don’t want to rely on search
engines to get things right

How to avoid it
• Create a new XML sitemap file
containing the HTTPS versions of the
URLs
• Upload it in the main domain root
folder
• Submit it in the new Search Console
& Bing Webmaster Tools properties
• Add the sitemap’s location to the
robots.txt file

Pro tip: Leave the original XML Sitemaps live on the
HTTP version to be able to track the indexation
status on Search Console

No. 8: Avoid unnecessary panic attacks
• Significant changes to your site can
easily break analytics
• You might see your traffic drop off a
cliff, when in fact, that’s not really
happening
• You’ll lose visibility into how the
migration is going

How to avoid it
• Use Screaming Frog to verify your
analytics code is included on every page
• Configuration > Custom > Search
• Paste your tracking ID into the search box &
choose to find pages which don't contain it
• Ask your SEO team to carry out an analytics audit to your site, to make
sure everything is in place

No. 9: Page speed elements not considered in the
migration plan
• HTTPS adds another 2 steps to the process
of how a browser and web server
communicate
• This occurs on all of your web traffic all of
the time, so this exchange needs to be as
efficient as possible
• If HTTPS is not implemented correctly it can
increase page load time and negatively
affect the UX

How to avoid it
• Site speed performance should be a
constant and this doesn’t make any
exception
• Use persistent connections so that
a single handshake is done and lots of
requests are sent over the same
connection
• Conduct page speed audits before and
after the migration

No. 10: Bad timing? Don’t even think about it
No matter how organised you are, things can
always go wrong
It takes Google some time to register all the
site changes and migrating in your peak
period can result in significant traffic losses
The migration shouldn't take place during
busy times for the business or when time or
resources are too tight

How to avoid it
• Migrate during weeks / months the revenue is at
the lowest point, to avoid big losses
• Pick the ideal time when everyone is available
• Don’t rush it! Give yourself enough time to make
all the necessary checks and tests
• Make sure everyone is aware of their
responsibilities before, during and after the
migration

Other Things To Consider

Choose the right certificate for your site
This will vary depending on your site structure:
• Single certificate: only one subdomain
• Multi-domain certificate: a few subdomains (e.g., www.example.com and
blog.example.com)
• Wildcard certificate sites with dynamic subdomains. (e.g.,
site1.example.com, site2.example.com, etc.)
Make sure it offers at least 2048-bit keys
Certificates used to be expensive, now they’re free with Let’s Encrypt

Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools
• Add the HTTPS version to Google Search Console and BWT
• Verify both versions of the site within the same account
• Be sure to verify your live HTTPS site address, and not the test
one!
Replicate old property configuration:
• Submit the new XML Sitemap
• Upload your disavow file
• Update your URL parameter settings

PPC in a site migration
• Sending users to broken links will trash
your Quality Score
• Collect all the URLs used on PPC
campaigns and redirect them
• Attempt a transaction and ensure
everything is being reported

Pro tip: Prepare paid ads targeting top organic
keywords to put live if you run into issues after the
launch

Link realignment
• Identify the most authoritative links
in your backlink profile to be
switched to the new URLs
• Reach out to the site owners of the
most valuable links and ask them to
update their links
• Update social profiles and ad
campaigns too

To summarise

This move is definitely worthwhile, and the
sooner it is commenced with, the better

The process is, however, fraught with
challenges and difficulties

But a carefully planned process involving stakeholders
across different teams should allow for a successful
migration

There’s lots of moving pieces to a site migration but at the end
of the day it’s all about clear goals, careful planning & clear
communication between all the parties involved

Gracias!

HTTPS Site Migration | SearchLondon

Recomendados

Recomendados

Más contenido relacionado

La actualidad más candente

La actualidad más candente (14)

Similar a HTTPS Site Migration | SearchLondon

Similar a HTTPS Site Migration | SearchLondon (20)

Más de Builtvisible

Más de Builtvisible (20)

Último

Último (20)

HTTPS Site Migration | SearchLondon