How long have we been just “wondering” if HTTPS is better? We have test results to let you choose your final answer.
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Transcription Below
Does a Page That Uses the Secure Protocol, HTTPS, Beat an Unsecure Page That is Using HTTP?
Google said that your site should be https and there was definitely a ripple in the internet 1 ½ - 2 years ago when Wikipedia moved all their pages over to https. They clearly say it also in the developer’s guide on what you should be doing on your site. They recommend https. The idea that they so clearly stated that this is a thing, is it really a ranking thing? That is what we go to test.
I set up the 5 pages, the middle page as the https. What was really interesting was that almost immediately, the test page moved to the number one spot. What was also interesting was you could see if you look in the image, the actual https image is listed there and the previous version of the page which wasn’t secure moved to number one. It was interesting that there was a bit of echo, if you will, of the old page still showing in the index yet that page moved to number one
. A few days later, the old page disappeared. It was removed from the indexed and what was moved to the number one spot and stayed there was the https page.
There has been some good discussion in the Facebook group about changing pages over and a word of caution on that because you are going to get a drop. Google would see those as new pages and if you 301 them. I am pretty sure and even still with that, any links that you’ve build, you would probably get a loss of link juice so it is something that I would really do with caution because I am not entirely sure that the benefit that you would receive from https would outweigh that loss of link juice.
If you have a very mature site and you are ranking very well and you are looking to move one spot, this is probably not the technique to do that. If you have a brand new site or your client is building a site or they are just scrapping something and building something, this is exactly where I would do this and make sure that is in place.
What if somebody is in between, do you think there might be a plugin out there that does the 301 redirects properly from http to https?
Sure, definitely. It exists for sure and it is not that terribly hard to do. You are going to lose some link strength. If you are in a situation with a client with a site that has a host of issues, things to correct, and they might be way behind in link strength anyway, that would be a fine opportunity to switch over to the secured protocol and then just build the links at that point. That is how I would approach it.
If your site is on https, do you send the links to the https domain name or the http? Also, do you have to replace previous links to point out to https?
You do not have to send links to the https. You could send to the www or non www, whichever you are using.
If that is fine, why would we be concerned with 301ing them properly?
Because I think that Google will see that as a new page, when you go to the unsecured to the secured. Same as going to www to non www. It would see it as a new content. That is only from people who were in our group that has seen large drops in their ranking. Eventually, they come back but they might be months later.
Is the ranking on the https on the page level or the domain level? For example, if I only change my landing pages to https and let everything else be http?
Clearly, it is just at the page level and that is what this test showed. Because just that page on that domain was changed over to the secure protocol. All the other pages on the same domain was not.