The ultimate guide by WebRankey to switching from HTTP to HTTPS for SEO
WebRankey follows all these steps to successfully transit your website from HTTP to HTTPS while maintaining SEO performance. Your visitors will benefit from an encrypted browsing experience. Securing your website with HTTPS has become crucial for user experience and search engine optimization (SEO) in today’s digital landscape. HTTPS, which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, ensures that data transmitted between a user’s browser and your website is encrypted and secure.
Switching from HTTP to HTTPS can significantly benefit your website’s SEO performance by improving rankings, boosting user trust, and safeguarding sensitive information.
In this ultimate guide by WebRankey, we will walk you through switching from HTTP to HTTPS and provide essential tips to optimize your SEO during and after the transition. Remember that HTTPS is now a ranking factor, and making the switch will improve your website’s security and help rank your website in Search Engines. Transitioning from HTTP to HTTPS is an important step for your website’s security and SEO. Your visitors will benefit from an encrypted browsing experience.
1. Understand the Basics:
Before diving into the transition process, it’s essential to grasp the fundamentals of HTTPS. It uses an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate that encrypts data transmitted between a user’s browser and your website’s server. The SSL certificate is obtained from a trusted Certificate Authority (CA) and validates your website’s identity.
2. Choose the Right SSL Certificate:
Different types of SSL certificates are available, ranging from single domain certificates to wildcard certificates and extended validation (EV) certificates. Select the certificate that suits your website’s needs and budget. For most websites developed by WebRankey, a standard single-domain certificate should suffice.
3. Prepare Your Website:
WebRankey backs up your website’s files and database before making any changes. Updates all internal links, images, and other content references from HTTP to HTTPS. WebRankey uses relative URLs wherever possible to ensure that resources are loaded securely.
4. Implement 301 Redirects:
To ensure a seamless transition from HTTP to HTTPS, WebRankey set up 301 redirects from HTTP URLs to their corresponding HTTPS versions. It tells search engines and users that your website has permanently moved to a secure protocol.
5. Update External Links:
WebRankey updates all external links to your website to reflect the new HTTPS URLs. It includes backlinks from other websites, social media profiles, online directories, and other platforms linking to your site.
6. Update XML Sitemaps and Robots.txt:
Generate a new XML sitemap and WebRankey update it with the HTTPS URLs. Also, update your website’s robots.txt file to allow search engines to crawl and index the HTTPS version of your site.
7. Verify HTTPS in Google Search Console:
WebRankey adds the HTTPS version of your website to Google Search Console and verifies ownership. Submit your updated XML sitemap to ensure proper indexing of your HTTPS pages.
8. Monitor Crawl and Indexation:
Keep an eye on the crawl and indexation of your HTTPS pages using tools like Google Search Console and crawling software. Ensure that search engines are correctly indexing your secure pages.
9. Update Social Sharing and Open Graph Tags:
WebRankey updates your website’s social sharing and Open Graph tags to reflect the new HTTPS URLs. It ensures that the shared links are secure when users share your content on social media.
10. Monitor Page Speed and Performance:
After switching to HTTPS, WebRankey monitors your website’s page speed and performance. Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure can add a layer of encryption, which may impact loading times. WebRankey optimizes your website’s performance using caching, compression, and content delivery networks (CDNs).
11. Monitor and Fix Mixed Content Issues:
Mixed content occurs when a secure webpage contains insecure (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) resources. WebRankey regularly scans your website for mixed content issues and fixes them by updating the URLs to use HTTPS.
12. Update Google Analytics and Other Tracking Codes:
Update your website’s tracking codes, such as Google Analytics, to ensure they continue to work seamlessly with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure version of your website. WebRankey updates the URLs and verifies that data is being collected accurately.
WebRankey follows all these steps to successfully transition your website from HTTP to HTTPS while maintaining SEO performance. Remember that HTTPS is now a ranking factor, and making the switch will improve your website’s security and help rank your website in Search Engines.
