HTTPS and Google Serps - My Experience

**Webzcas** · 13 March 2016, 11:16 am

This past week I bought and installed an SSL Certificate for my oldest site. Anyhow, after configuring the site to use the certificate, sorting out all the 301 redirects and other 'backend stuff', I started to see on Friday evening my serps in google take a nose dive, ala Tom Daly style.

So instead of moping and pulling out what remaining hairs I have left on my head, I decided to turn this into a positive experience. Hence I have started a video diary of the whole experience. Starting with the entry I recorded today for my YouTube channel.

Which you can view below.

I am really interested in getting any feedback from any webmaster that has gone through this process of converting their site to use https. Hopefully this diary of videos I will be putting together will become a good learning resource for webmasters yet to go through what is currently a painful process.

**ProCasinosOnline** · 13 March 2016, 12:09 pm

Great info looking forward to hear more videos

**MMM** · 13 March 2016, 1:04 pm

Was considering to convert one of my sites as well, but started getting errors and gave up (my experience as a developer is quite low). Looking forward to see how it goes.

**Progger** · 13 March 2016, 1:11 pm

I dont know why a simple casino blog need ssl. You have nothing to protect.
Only one procent of all Pages wold wide get a better ranking with SSL!

Read Google news before you waste your time again.

regards

**ProCasinosOnline** · 13 March 2016, 1:15 pm

@progger i agree that is only a blog and under that analysis there is nothing to secure. But the purpose on installing a ssl certificate is to show

**ProCasinosOnline** · 13 March 2016, 1:20 pm

To Google that your site is serious, are your investing in make it better, under Google eyes that is a positive signal for SEO.

**MMM** · 13 March 2016, 1:34 pm

Progger, I do like your posts, but you need to be a bit more respectful IMO. If you check when Webscaz started and his sites, my guess would be that he read google news...

**vd752** · 13 March 2016, 6:55 pm

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral.

if users need to login to the site - you definitely need SSL, if not -

nothing to protect

.

However I believe some (old) sites can get benefice from moving to https version (but this is about penalties

)

ex xxx.pornhub.com your view history is not private if not logined
same
xxx.nytimes.com/
http://edition.cnn.com/
http://www.bbc.com/news

**Muppet** · 13 March 2016, 8:12 pm

We switched over to all SSL a few months ago and it has made no discernible difference to anything apart from the fact that our visitors' browsing sessions are now private and their logins (and our own) are encrypted, which were the main reasons why we did it. There was no instant noticeable change to search engine traffic levels, nor did we expect any to happen. If you are seeing a complete tank then you may have made a mistake somewhere perhaps in .htaccess or somewhere else that is causing Google to run into errors or redirect loops perhaps. Check Webmaster tools.

If not then the ranking change could be due to something irrelevant and you may be confusing correlation with causation.

Originally Posted by Progger

I dont know why a simple casino blog need ssl. You have nothing to protect.
Only one procent of all Pages wold wide get a better ranking with SSL!

Read Google news before you waste your time again.

Perhaps (deity forbid) you are running a Wordpress blog and logging in to the admin area of the site in plain text (congratulations, every server hop along the way could be logging your password). Perhaps you might have visitors that would appreciate not having their specific page by page browsing history logged by their government or local dictatorship. Or maybe they might need to log in to your site to participate in a forum and/or buy stuff. Or perhaps you want to protect yourself from MITM attacks and website forgery. There are many valid reasons to switch to SSL apart from the likely inconsequential difference that it may or may not make to search rankings, and none of them are a waste of time. If you think you have nothing to protect then you are valuing your own site as worthless.

**Muppet** · 13 March 2016, 8:30 pm

Forgot to say - the worst part of the process was going through the forum and fixing all the externally hosted images and stuff that pointed to non SSL domains so that users would not get any mixed content warnings.

**Webzcas** · 14 March 2016, 4:35 am

Originally Posted by Progger

I dont know why a simple casino blog need ssl. You have nothing to protect.
Only one procent of all Pages wold wide get a better ranking with SSL!

Read Google news before you waste your time again.

regards

Actually you are wrong. Firstly the site in question is not a 'blog'. Secondly it is my oldest site and most valuable site - 12 years old this year. Thirdly, best practice. Fourthly I plan to install HSTS down the line. Finally, it is another layer of security.

This has not been a waste of time, indeed this has been and still is a valuable learning experience. If you don't like it, you don't have to read about it or watch the video and subsequent videos.

However, please feel free to offer your advice or experience of dealing with installing https.

**Webzcas** · 14 March 2016, 4:36 am

Originally Posted by Muppet

We switched over to all SSL a few months ago and it has made no discernible difference to anything apart from the fact that our visitors' browsing sessions are now private and their logins (and our own) are encrypted, which were the main reasons why we did it. There was no instant noticeable change to search engine traffic levels, nor did we expect any to happen. If you are seeing a complete tank then you may have made a mistake somewhere perhaps in .htaccess or somewhere else that is causing Google to run into errors or redirect loops perhaps. Check Webmaster tools.

If not then the ranking change could be due to something irrelevant and you may be confusing correlation with causation.

Perhaps (deity forbid) you are running a Wordpress blog and logging in to the admin area of the site in plain text (congratulations, every server hop along the way could be logging your password). Perhaps you might have visitors that would appreciate not having their specific page by page browsing history logged by their government or local dictatorship. Or maybe they might need to log in to your site to participate in a forum and/or buy stuff. Or perhaps you want to protect yourself from MITM attacks and website forgery. There are many valid reasons to switch to SSL apart from the likely inconsequential difference that it may or may not make to search rankings, and none of them are a waste of time. If you think you have nothing to protect then you are valuing your own site as worthless.

Muppet, reading your post, I had a lightbulb moment. Could kiss you as there is something I have not done......

**Webzcas** · 14 March 2016, 4:37 am

Originally Posted by Muppet

Forgot to say - the worst part of the process was going through the forum and fixing all the externally hosted images and stuff that pointed to non SSL domains so that users would not get any mixed content warnings.

Yep, had that. Major PITA but had to be done.

**thebookiesoffers** · 14 March 2016, 5:22 am

not sure how this happened. I moved one of my sites to https and nothing happened at all, didn't see one move at all. put wmt on it crawled the whole site and just left it

hope it works out

**Celebrationbird** · 14 March 2016, 1:23 pm

I went https from the beginning with freespinslista.se and it has been through amazingly fast serp increase. Updated daily and Good links also have done its trick ofc though but I am going SSL with all potential high ranking new domains for sure.

**Muppet** · 14 March 2016, 5:27 pm

Originally Posted by Webzcas

Muppet, reading your post, I had a lightbulb moment. Could kiss you as there is something I have not done......

I hope you sorted it out.

Once you're all set up you can submit your domain to be added to the HSTS preload list for Chrome and other browsers. If you're on there then browsers will force all connections to your domain to go via SSL, even if the user requests plain HTTP. If not, there is a remote possibility that the SSL connection can be compromised by a MITM attack during the redirection from HTTP to HTTPS.

**Webzcas** · 14 March 2016, 5:48 pm

Quick Update. The future looks bright

**Bikram** · 19 March 2016, 5:13 am

Thanks for the update. Looking forward to your upcoming videos.

We already have the SSL certificate, but we haven't yet implemented on our website. May be try once after watching all videos.

**Webzcas** · 21 March 2016, 5:14 pm

Final video in the series:

**betarades** · 22 March 2016, 8:05 am

Following to some search and practice we tried the recent months, we realized that https is not so important to google. Dont follow myths...

Thread: HTTPS and Google Serps - My Experience

LinkBack

Thread Tools

Search Thread

Display

HTTPS and Google Serps - My Experience

The Following 10 Users Say Thank You to Webzcas For This Useful Post:

The Following User Says Thank You to MMM For This Useful Post:

The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Progger For This Useful Post:

The Following User Says Thank You to ProCasinosOnline For This Useful Post:

The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to ProCasinosOnline For This Useful Post:

The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to MMM For This Useful Post:

The Following User Says Thank You to vd752 For This Useful Post:

The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Muppet For This Useful Post:

The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Muppet For This Useful Post:

The Following User Says Thank You to Webzcas For This Useful Post:

The Following User Says Thank You to Webzcas For This Useful Post:

The Following User Says Thank You to Webzcas For This Useful Post:

The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to thebookiesoffers For This Useful Post:

The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Celebrationbird For This Useful Post:

The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Muppet For This Useful Post:

The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Webzcas For This Useful Post:

The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Bikram For This Useful Post:

The Following User Says Thank You to Webzcas For This Useful Post:

The Following User Says Thank You to betarades For This Useful Post:

Posting Permissions