Will my site lost backlinks after switch to https?

by Bruch
43 replies
  • SEO
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Hi guys,


It has been 10 days since switching to https, Google hasn't re-indexed my site.
How long must I wait?

To be precise, a few pages were indexed on the third day, and then a few days later, those https were de-indexed, and now my website is all http.

My site is tiny site, only 10 pages

(Updated January 20, 2020)


I want to switch my sites to https, and set up 301 redirect.
Will my site lost backlinks?
Will my site keywords rank drop?

Thanks in advance!
#backlinks #https #lost #site #switch
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  • Profile picture of the author fastreplies
    Switch to https only if your site uses shopping cart or some sort of payment processor
    other than that, don't even bother and risk to face some unknown outcome.



    fastreplies
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    • Profile picture of the author webcontent
      Originally Posted by fastreplies View Post

      Switch to https only if your site uses shopping cart or some sort of payment processor
      other than that, don't even bother and risk to face some unknown outcome.



      fastreplies
      Today, I just read one post from SEJ that Google is going to block Mixed content. Do you still say, we can leave ssl pages as it is? Thanks in advance.
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    • Profile picture of the author mattlaclear
      Originally Posted by fastreplies View Post

      Switch to https only if your site uses shopping cart or some sort of payment processor
      other than that, don't even bother and risk to face some unknown outcome.



      fastreplies
      Superbad advice. Https is a ranking factor for all sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author vannguyen255
    It does not not mater you have a shopping cart not
    You will loose the traffic if you do not switch to https. Customers will be out from your website when they see the warnings from chrome or Fire Fox.
    Switch from http to https is vary simple, all backlinks from http will be transfered to https.
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    • Profile picture of the author fastreplies
      Originally Posted by vannguyen255 View Post

      It does not not mater you have a shopping cart not
      One question
      Have you ever hurt anything about "GOOGLE"?

      I don't believe you have or you would know that it created that http and https mess
      but soon enough started to realize that it's stupid to base64 technical data, research documents, images and so on and then clarified where https should be used.

      Directory in my signature uses http and guess what... no problems what-soeever.



      fastreplies
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  • Profile picture of the author Bruch
    Need advice about backlinks.


    Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author Mack
      You might see a little drop in rankings at first (but they'll bounce back). You won't lose backlinks if your redirects are set up correctly.

      In the long run you'll benefit from making the switch to https.
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      • Profile picture of the author Bruch
        Originally Posted by Mack View Post

        You might see a little drop in rankings at first (but they'll bounce back). You won't lose backlinks if your redirects are set up correctly.

        In the long run you'll benefit from making the switch to https.
        They'll bounce back, Great!
        But what do I need to do for it?

        If I do nothing, will the rankings bounce back?

        Thank you Mack!
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Originally Posted by fastreplies View Post

    Switch to https only if your site uses shopping cart or some sort of payment processor
    other than that, don't even bother and risk to face some unknown outcome.



    fastreplies
    Ignore this. You absolutely should switch.Chrome and Firefox, the two most used browsers on the planet, will often throw up warnings for pages not using HTTPS.

    Most people do not understand that unless they are providing financial or other private information to the site, not having HTTPS is not really a big deal. They will just see the "security" warning and many will leave before visiting the site.

    As for losing traffic or backlinks, you won't lose a thing if you do the migration correctly.
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    • Profile picture of the author fastreplies
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      Ignore this. You absolutely should switch.Chrome and Firefox, the two most used browsers on the planet, will often throw up warnings for pages not using HTTPS.
      Ignore? Really?
      The keyword is "often"... meaning https site's format can be ignored and that is why more
      than 90% of plain Jane sites don't use https. Why are you pushing uselessness?

      Why don't you go to our directory using Chrome or FF to see if any warnings popping up?
      What would be the point for some research paper or mams and paps or favorite pet personal
      sites etc., which have nothing to secure to use https?

      Granted some sites have to use security options to protect some information that treated
      as commodity but they are exemptions and not a rule made and arbitrarily imposed by
      Chrome and Firefox whereas https option should be used on voluntary bases.



      fastreplies
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by fastreplies View Post

        Ignore? Really?
        The keyword is "often"... meaning https site's format can be ignored and that is why more
        than 90% of plain Jane sites don't use https. Why are you pushing uselessness?

        Why don't you go to our directory using Chrome or FF to see if any warnings popping up?
        What would be the point for some research paper or mams and paps or favorite pet personal
        sites etc., which have nothing to secure to use https?

        Granted some sites have to use security options to protect some information that treated
        as commodity but they are exemptions and not a rule made and arbitrarily imposed by
        Chrome and Firefox whereas https option should be used on voluntary bases.



        fastreplies
        I'm not saying it makes sense. I'm saying it is a fact that Chrome and Firefox will throw up security warnings, and if they don't throw up security warnings, they will at least label the site as "not secure".

        I know that 99% of sites on the internet don't really "need" an SSL certificate. I think it is dumb that Google pushed it.

        But the reality is that they did push it and it is likely that warnings in Chrome and Firefox are only going to get more severe.

        Migration is a piece of cake. SSL certificates can be obtained for free. At this point, there is no reason for sites not to do it.
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        • Profile picture of the author fastreplies
          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

          I'm saying it is a fact that Chrome and Firefox will throw up security warnings, and if they don't throw up security warnings, they will at least label the site as "not secure".
          And that would be fine if our users have to provide information they would believe
          inappropriate, like Credit Card or SIN etc. but if all you want is to read article about:
          'how to make borsch'...well, just because Google said jump, do you really have to?



          fastreplies
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          • Profile picture of the author vannguyen255
            Hi fastreplies,
            You still don't get it.
            Even your website is not e-commerce, Firefox and chrome still make a warnings and people will be scared to get out.
            I had the same your thought two years a ago, but I recently have changed to secure.
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      • Profile picture of the author Janice Sperry
        Originally Posted by fastreplies View Post

        Ignore? Really?
        The keyword is "often"... meaning https site's format can be ignored and that is why more
        than 90% of plain Jane sites don't use https. Why are you pushing uselessness?

        fastreplies
        You are looking at it from a technical standpoint instead of from the point of view of visitors and clients. Most people do not have a clue what https is but they understand what "Not secure" means. When they see "Not secure" right to the left of your domain name they panic. How many visitors click away immediately and never use your site? How many potential businesses that might want to be listed in your directory click away?

        If you have a good up-to-date host for your domain it takes even a newbie maybe 20 minutes to add https and add the redirects. It is worth it to let people know you care about your website and are keeping up with all the new best-practice protocols (whether they are really needed or not).

        "90% of plain Jane sites don't use https" - Do you really want your website to be viewed as a "plain Jane" website along with the rest?

        To the OP: As mentioned by others, if you do your redirects correctly, which is very simple, you will not lose any link juice at all. When I updated my website a couple years ago to https I did not lose any rankings at all. I don't think it even took more than a few days for Google to understand what I had done.
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        • Profile picture of the author Bruch
          Originally Posted by Janice Sperry View Post

          You are looking at it from a technical standpoint instead of from the point of view of visitors and clients. Most people do not have a clue what https is but they understand what "Not secure" means. When they see "Not secure" right to the left of your domain name they panic. How many visitors click away immediately and never use your site? How many potential businesses that might want to be listed in your directory click away?

          If you have a good up-to-date host for your domain it takes even a newbie maybe 20 minutes to add https and add the redirects. It is worth it to let people know you care about your website and are keeping up with all the new best-practice protocols (whether they are really needed or not).

          "90% of plain Jane sites don't use https" - Do you really want your website to be viewed as a "plain Jane" website along with the rest?

          To the OP: As mentioned by others, if you do your redirects correctly, which is very simple, you will not lose any link juice at all. When I updated my website a couple years ago to https I did not lose any rankings at all. I don't think it even took more than a few days for Google to understand what I had done.
          When you updated your website, did you build some NEW backlinks?

          My niche is low competition, in other words, my site has a lot of low traffic keywords, the links are natural. Is your website the same?

          Thank you!
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          • Profile picture of the author Janice Sperry
            Originally Posted by Bruch View Post

            When you updated your website, did you build some NEW backlinks?

            My niche is low competition, in other words, my site has a lot of low traffic keywords, the links are natural. Is your website the same?

            Thank you!
            The website I did this with is ranking for low, medium and high competition and high traffic keywords. All of the many hundreds of backlinks are natural organic links.

            When you do the 301 redirect correctly all the traffic that clicks on an old http backlink will be redirected to your https urls. Google also credits the old backlinks to the new urls.

            I also had a ton of internal links that were http. I used a plugin to change them all. If you are using a WordPress site you can use a plugin called Velvet Blues to change all your current http internal links to https. The plugin found and changed hundreds of links for me and it only missed a couple I had created in the CSS theme files. I just changed those manually. You can then remove the plugin when you are done.
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  • Profile picture of the author Laptop Titan
    If your website is a reputable ecommerce site you should switch to https to increase trust from customers. If not, you should not switch to https.

    But one thing is for sure you will lose backlink when switching from http to https. To fix this, in addition to 301 redirects, you should use Ahref to scan all the baclinks of the page and fix them to https.

    This takes a lot of time but if persevered within a few months, your rankings will gradually stabilize and may increase rankings than before.

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    • Profile picture of the author Bruch
      Originally Posted by Laptop Titan View Post

      If your website is a reputable ecommerce site you should switch to https to increase trust from customers. If not, you should not switch to https.

      But one thing is for sure you will lose backlink when switching from http to https. To fix this, in addition to 301 redirects, you should use Ahref to scan all the baclinks of the page and fix them to https.

      This takes a lot of time but if persevered within a few months, your rankings will gradually stabilize and may increase rankings than before.
      What takes a lot of time (a few months)?

      Use Ahref to scan all the baclinks of the page and fix them to https, it takes a lot of time?

      Or I just wait for my rankings to gradually stabillze, nothing to do, it takes a lot of time?

      Thank you!
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      • Profile picture of the author Laptop Titan
        What takes a lot of time (a few months)?

        Time to rebuild baclink on your site and wait for google to update

        Use Ahref to scan all the baclinks of the page and fix them to https, it takes a lot of time?

        If you persevere and work continuously, this should only take a few days
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        • Profile picture of the author Bruch
          Originally Posted by Laptop Titan View Post

          What takes a lot of time (a few months)?

          Time to rebuild baclink on your site and wait for google to update

          Use Ahref to scan all the baclinks of the page and fix them to https, it takes a lot of time?

          If you persevere and work continuously, this should only take a few days

          Build NEW backlinks?


          Thank you!
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          • Profile picture of the author Laptop Titan
            Originally Posted by Bruch View Post

            Build NEW backlinks?


            Thank you!
            Fix the old backlink and rebuild the new backlink to https
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            • Profile picture of the author Bruch
              Originally Posted by Laptop Titan View Post

              Fix the old backlink and rebuild the new backlink to https

              My backlinks are all natural, how to fix them?


              Thank you!
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              • Profile picture of the author Laptop Titan
                If your backlinks are posted in forums, personal profiles, personal blogs ... with your account, you can easily change them. But if your backlink is created by another person and you do not have the right to edit the content, there is only one way you contact the writer to ask them to correct them, if it is a website with DR and High PA, you even have to spend some money to ask them to do it
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    • Profile picture of the author medicineman
      Originally Posted by Laptop Titan View Post

      If your website is a reputable ecommerce site you should switch to https to increase trust from customers. If not, you should not switch to https.


      â†'

      â†' The above is to be ignored.



      You are not switching to https for Google or for anyone else but your visitors. It is for their security.



      Depending on your webhost your pages could be redirecting to https pages automatically.



      If not, look how to do it yourself using the .htaccess file.




      https://www.johnpatel.com/redirect-http-to-https/

      Remember, links to images with "http" need to be changed to "https" for the webpages they are on.





      Good luck.
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  • Profile picture of the author vannguyen255
    Most people will get out from your website right away when they see the warning from Firefox or chrome. if you like the high bounce rate, you may stay with non-secure http.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Originally Posted by fastreplies View Post

    And that would be fine if our users have to provide information they would believe
    inappropriate, like Credit Card or SIN etc. but if all you want is to read article about:
    'how to make borsch'...well, just because Google said jump, do you really have to?



    fastreplies

    I don't give two shits about YOUR site or YOUR situation. You are free to do what you want.

    I also fully understand what SSL certificates really were only important for sites collecting financial and personal data.

    The fact is that Chrome, Firefox, and Safari will all throw up warnings to visitors on pages that are not using HTTPS. It doesn't matter if having an SSL certificate makes sense for that page or not. Those warnings are likely to only become more intrusive in the future.

    My point was that advising other people to not make the switch is just plain horrible advice. Switching is easy. It can be free. Not using HTTPS means a site is potentially losing visitors, and in most cases they will never know how many people bounce from their site because their analytics script will never even have a chance to fire.
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    • Profile picture of the author fastreplies
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      My point was that advising other people to not make the switch is just plain horrible advice.
      You're entitled to your opinion but not to right to scare people and to make them
      to believe that they are going to be doomed into oblivion if they won't use https.

      The truth is, browsers designed to worn about certificate risk only if people are
      going to try using payments gateways but because certificate cannot be applied
      to single page, it have to be installed in site's root.

      If you really give a two shits about anything, you should make people to
      comprehend the reality as you partially have tried in your post

      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      Most people do not understand that unless they are providing financial or other private information to the site, not having HTTPS is not really a big deal.
      And that, if you have noticed, is my point too



      fastreplies
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by fastreplies View Post

        You're entitled to your opinion but not to right to scare people and to make them
        to believe that they are going to be doomed into oblivion if they won't use https.

        The truth is, browsers designed to worn about certificate risk only if people are
        going to try using payments gateways but because certificate cannot be applied
        to single page, it have to be installed in site's root.
        That's not how the browser warnings work.

        I never said anyone would be doomed into oblivion. I said they are risking losing traffic and they will never know just how much traffic they are losing.

        It no longer matters if you are collecting financial information or not. Google and Mozilla have decided to impose their will on the subject to all of their users. They happen to control the vast majority of the browser market.

        When people work so hard to get traffic to their site, why would you want to risk losing people. That's just plain stubborn and, at this point, stupid.

        And telling others not to worry about using HTTPS without explaining the possible consequences is just not sound advice at all.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeffery
    When I was a young 'un I delivered news papers. One fine spring day I went to a newly developed neighborhood with a new gated home. A sign on the gate said "Beware of Dog."


    My first thought was to drop the paper at the gate and keep on keeping on. Then I saw a pretty lady sitting on the front porch smiling at me. Puffed up my chest and flexed my arms as I opened the gate to personally deliver (er, meet) the pretty lady..


    Bing Bang Boom..


    The Dog Bit Me!


    As I was running away I heard the lady say..


    You can't read?
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  • Profile picture of the author ahmansoor
    Your website may still lose few backlinks even if you use 301.
    You may see a temporary drop in organic rankings as well.
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    • Profile picture of the author Bruch
      Originally Posted by ahmansoor View Post

      Your website may still lose few backlinks even if you use 301.
      You may see a temporary drop in organic rankings as well.

      This is exactly what I am worried about, but I don't know what kind of backlinks be lost.


      Thank you.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by ahmansoor View Post

      Your website may still lose few backlinks even if you use 301.
      You may see a temporary drop in organic rankings as well.
      That is a lie. You will not lose a few backlinks.
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    • Profile picture of the author expmrb
      Originally Posted by ahmansoor View Post

      Your website may still lose few backlinks even if you use 301.
      You may see a temporary drop in organic rankings as well.

      We have moved more than 50 sites last year. Didn't felt a thing.
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      • Profile picture of the author Blakers1
        Originally Posted by expmrb View Post

        We have moved more than 50 sites last year. Didn't felt a thing.
        Fastreplies clearly does not have the technical know-how to properly switch a site to HTTPS using htaccess so that there are no mixed content issues.

        So he wants everyone to take his advice and not upgrade your site, even though HTTPS is a known ranking factor and trust signal. Not to mention the fact that it's almost always a few dollars a year and well worth it for any site.

        Fastreplies is giving out bad advice as many have pointed out. The issues that the original poster described are easily fixed with a few lines of code.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alex Gramm
    If you implement redirects in proper way, you won't lose any rank and backlinks.
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  • Profile picture of the author Medon
    I am not an expert in this area but I don't see why you should lose anything. But it is important that the switching be done by an expert. This way you will be sure that you will not lose anything.
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  • Profile picture of the author XenG
    Originally Posted by Bruch View Post

    Hi guys,

    I want to switch my sites to https, and set up 301 redirect.
    Will my site lost backlinks?
    Will my site keywords rank drop?

    Thanks in advance!
    Per experience, NO (to all of your questions). Even after switching to https, your old http automatically redirects to your https.
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  • Profile picture of the author markdeessel
    No, you don't lose anything but make all 301 redirect places correctly. After all, redirection submits your website again in the webmaster tool.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bruch
    It has been 10 days since switching to https, Google hasn't re-indexed my site.
    How long must I wait?

    To be precise, a few pages were indexed on the third day, and then a few days later, those https were de-indexed, and now my website is all http.

    My site is tiny site, only 10 pages

    Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author ThereseWright
    You won't lose anything as long as you map out your redirects and do it properly.
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