HTTPS issues

There are various versions of your web address that can confuse search engines

1. 1. www
   2. http
   3. https

I’m writing this post about HTTPS issues because all too often I’ve gone to sites where the best version of their URL is not working. For example at the time of writing, a resort with a great-looking web design, that I relief managed years ago, www.aitutakilagoonresort.com was working but the problem is https://aitutakilagoonresort.com was not. That’s a lost opportunity.

What is the s in httpS?

Google gives a slight boost on its SERPs for web pages using HTTPS, an encrypted secure protocol that should be used on websites that collect personal information. Ref GDPR. Laws in Australia stipulate that breaches of security must be reported to the Australian government’s Information Commissioner.

HTTPS PROBLEMS

• Duplicate content. If canonical tags are not leveraged, Google sees two site versions live, which is considered the SEO penalty for duplicate content.
• Link dilution. If using https, don’t have half your link juice going to your HTTP version
• Waste of search engine crawl budget

Mixed content is an issue where httpS pages have internal links to HTTP versions of their web pages. These sites have not set the HTTPS site version as the preferred one and still have the HTTP version floating around.

HOW TO FIX THE PROBLEM OF A SITE WITH BOTH HTTP and HTTPS PAGES (ie MIXED CONTENT)

If you have a website with HTTP and HTTPS pages we recommend preference to us HTTPS and redirect HTTP pages to the httpS version. In the head of the page your want to redirect to your preferred to be indexed by search engines add:
<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://example.com/sample-page” />