HTTPS Migration Goes One of Two Ways: Flawless or Catastrophic.
There is no middle ground.
We have seen sites lose 40% of their organic traffic overnight because of a botched HTTPS migration. Missed redirects. Mixed content. Canonical tags still pointing to HTTP. Internal links not updated.
After 500+ campaigns and 20+ years, we have seen every HTTPS migration mistake there is. Here is how to avoid them.
Before the Migration
Get your SSL certificate. Set up HTTPS on your server. Crawl the HTTP version of your site and document every URL.
Update all internal links to HTTPS. Canonical tags to HTTPS. Sitemap URLs to HTTPS. OpenGraph tags to HTTPS. Hardcoded URLs in your CSS and JavaScript to HTTPS.
Yes, all of them. This is where most migrations fail — missed references.
During the Migration
Set up 301 redirects from every HTTP URL to its HTTPS equivalent. Not the homepage. Every. Single. URL. Our redirect mapping guide covers the process in detail.
Test the redirects. Spot check critical pages. Make sure there are no redirect chains (HTTP to HTTPS to another URL).
After the Migration
Submit the new HTTPS sitemap to Search Console. Add the HTTPS property to Search Console. Monitor crawl errors daily for the first two weeks.
Check for mixed content warnings (HTTPS pages loading HTTP resources). Update external profiles and listings with your new HTTPS URLs.
The Monitoring Phase
Watch your organic traffic closely for 2-4 weeks. A temporary dip is normal. A sustained drop means something went wrong.
Check Search Console for indexing issues. Are HTTPS pages being indexed? Are HTTP pages being deindexed?
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