- Should you move your website from HTTP to HTTPS?
- Is it worth moving an information site like a blog to HTTPS?
These were some of the questions we all had last year when HTTPS became really common.
If we look at the current trend, it’s a no brainer that our sites should be using HTTPS.
And when you are starting a new site & implementing HTTPS, things are easy.
However, when you are moving an existing/running site from HTTP to HTTPS, things are not that simple.
Moving to HTTPS is indeed a big technical SEO change. At times, people make mistakes here & start losing their SEO traffic.
However, one can quickly avoid this if they are following all the right steps before & after moving their site from HTTP to HTTPS.
There are a few tools that let us check for proper SSL implementation, but they are not geared toward SEO. These tools usually check for canonical & SSL certificate implementation, which is not enough when you are doing an SEO audit after moving your site to HTTPS.
So, what’s the solution?
SEMrush, which is the most popular SEO tool, recently added an HTTPS implementation audit feature in their site SEO audit feautre. As some of you may know, SEMrush is the most comprehensive HTTPS SEO audit tool I have ever come across.
In this guide, I will share how you can use this tool to check if there’s anything wrong with your HTTPS implementation.
If you have migrated your site from HTTP to HTTPS recently and have noticed a drop in traffic, or if you are planning to move your site to HTTPS sometime in the future (which you should), this is the tool that you should be using.
SEMrush is a paid tool, however, you can use the link below to sign up for a 14-day free trial (you can simply cancel the subscription before 14 days is up).
Test drive the HTTPS feature of SEMrush (14 days of unrestricted access)
How To Use The HTTPS Implementation Site SEO Audit Feature
Note: This feature can be used by existing SEMrush users & new users who are signing up for the first time.
Here is what you need to do:
- Create an account on SEMrush or log in to your dashboard.
- Click on Projects on the left side column.
- Click on Add New Project & give your project a name (see the below screenshot for the reference).
- Click on Save & then click on the “Site Audit” option.
This part is pretty easy & straight forward.
- Depending upon your site’s size, select the number of pages you want to be crawled.
SEMrush crawlers will start crawling your site & within a few minutes, you will have your report ready.
Along with any HTTPS issues, SEMrush will show all other SEO issues present on your site.
In my case, it took about 5 minutes to crawl 400+ pages.
- Now, open up the generated report & on the next page, click on the HTTPS Implementation tab to find all existing HTTPS implementation errors on your site.
In this case, all reports are OK apart from one subdomain HSTS issue (which is not major).
An Example Of An HTTPS Implementation Error:
Let’s look at ShoutMeLoud, a big site where there are a few HTTPS SEO issues.
This is a screenshot from the ShoutMeLoud.com HTTPS audit report:
Here I have discovered a few site-wide links which are still HTTP.
Fixing this issue helped me lower down the number of redirections & will help search engine bots to crawl the site more effectively.
Discovering non-secure pages:
This issue is triggered if the SEMrush Bot detects an HTTP page with a <input type=”password”> field. Using a <input type=”password”> field on your HTTP page is harmful to user security, as there is a high risk that user login credentials can be stolen. To protect users’ sensitive information from being compromised, Google Chrome will start informing users about the dangers of submitting their passwords on HTTP pages by labeling such pages as “non-secure” starting January 2017. This could have a negative impact on your bounce rate, as users will most likely feel uncomfortable and leave your page as quickly as possible.
If you have effectively implemented an SSL certificate & are serving all of your pages properly, this result should show zero non-secure pages.
However, in my case, I have 2 sub-domains which I have yet to move to HTTPS.
Depending upon the complexity of your or your client’s website architecture, this tool can help you discover severe SEO issues which are not easy to discover manually.
Most of you who have used my earlier guides on HTTP to HTTPS migration will either have no issues or very minor ones.
If you need those tutorials, they’re here:
- How To Fix Mixed Content Error In WordPress After Adding SSL Certificate
- How To Use A Free SSL Certificate With Bluehost Hosting
However, it would be very unwise for anyone to be over confident & not use another tool to ensure the HTTP to HTTPS migration is problem-free.
Since SEMrush offers a 14-day free trial, it’s a good starting point for anyone to test out their HTTPS implementation.
Go ahead & do a complete SEO audit using the above tutorial.
Let us know what kind of HTTPS implementation issues you have found using this tool. Also, if you are stuck somewhere while fixing the issue, let me know in the comments section below and I will help you along.
Know someone who is waiting to migrate from HTTP to HTTPS? Share this guide with them to help them avoid any SEO blunders!
Hi Harsh,
Nice article! These tips are very useful to migrate my site from http to https . Thank you so much for sharing this article.
I have a 5 pages website and I moved from http to https and updated all the canonical tags, updated https redirection in .htaccess and almost fixed everything, but I lost ranking on major keywords. Then I moved to http again and the ranking is still same. I don’t know what to do.
Thanks for the tips, I faced similar issues with https. Hope this will surely solve my problems.
Hello Mr Harsh, I ported my blog cybergeak to https but it is not rendering, they said it is self signed, Please help Sir.
It’s definitely because the SSL certificate may not have been setup properly. So the SSL certificate is not reflecting the SSL service provider, hence the self-signed issue.
I have experienced this problem before, login to your hosting panel, and go to your SSL/TLS file; put in the .cer file and the .Key file (the private key for the SSL package you purchased). Do the setup from the beginning and install the SSL package. The self-signed stuff should be solved.
Was worried about the loss in website traffic after the migration to https. Thought it was hard to get the same level of traffic again. After reading your blog I could ease a bit that I can get back the lost website traffic soon. Thanks for Sharing
It is not really to much hard talk it is very easy to do if once your website go down u do one simple step go for some couples of guest posting on regular intervals u can find your website rank will improve without any hard work. thanks have a good day.
I have asked several questions on some of the post here, but all yet to be approved, I can’t help to think you always write just for my sake, most of your post all points to me..
Thanks for the tips, I faced similar issues, then I ran back to http.. Now am back to https I hope this time I got it right, however how do I move my social share?? Thanks in advance
@Samuel
You can use Social warfare or Easy Social share plugin to recover your social media share count.
https://www.shoutmeloud.com/socialwarfare-review-wordpress-plugin.html
Thanks a lot harsh, It fixed my problem and I used it on one of my main websites.
It happened with one my website where I lost considerable traffic just after I went https. Honestly I followed some other article which had similar suggestions for easy fix. Within few months I came out of that problem. Thanks Harsh for informative article.
Very well explained mate. It was really helpful. Migrating to HTTPS is something where traffic gets fluctuated but your explanation on fixing it is awesome and very helpful.
awesome post It will help me to migrate my site from http to HTTPS thanks for awesome post
Great Post Harsh, Migrating to Https is great if done correctly, thankfully we have tools like semrush to check if there are any issues that needs to be fixed. luckily i never run into an issue like this before.
Great article sir,
I was planning to migrate to https, after reading this article I will be aware of errors while implementation and take care of it.
Thanks 🙂
Hey Harsh,
Can you point out your guide on HTTP to HTTPS migration? Can’t find it.
Thanks.
is it mandatory to implement https to my sites, what about small sites
Hi Harsh
Recently I migrate my site from http to https but I don’t know about this type of audit we have to do after migration process,after getting this information I will surely check my site using SEMrush.
Thanks a lot for this info
Hello Harsh Sir,
Very helpful article for me.
Thank you for Sharing,
I recently moved to https and same happened with me too, will you tell us how to setup google webmaster after migrating to htpps.
@Rohit
It’s the same way you configured the webmaster tool for the first time for your HTTP site. This time you would be using https instead of HTTP when adding your site.
Any idea as to how to not loose the social shares count after migrating to HTTPS without using any plugin like Social Warfare?
Hello Harsh,
I am also willing to change my domain from HTTP to HTTPS. But Unfortunately I am not so aware of its SEO changes and how will traffic flow changes after implementing it. This article is definitely going to help me a lot. Great Post. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Yes, sir, I have experienced this, after migrating to https,
Finally i figured out what to do at this situation, – Most Helpful sir 🙂