Technical SEO

HTTPS Migration

Moving a site from HTTP to HTTPS without losing rankings — a URL change, handled with redirects.

An HTTPS migration is moving a site from HTTP to HTTPS. Every URL changes, so it is a site move: each HTTP address needs a 301 to its HTTPS equivalent, internal links and canonicals must be updated, and the HTTPS property has to be added in Search Console. Done correctly the ranking impact is negligible.

Definition

The steps are well established: install the certificate, serve the whole site over HTTPS, 301 every HTTP URL to its exact HTTPS counterpart, update internal links, canonicals, hreflang and sitemaps, and add the HTTPS property in Search Console.

The usual failure is mixed content: a page served over HTTPS that loads an image or script over HTTP. Browsers block or warn on it, and it is almost always a hardcoded absolute URL left behind.

Why It Matters

Certificates are free and browsers mark HTTP as not secure, so there is no case for staying. The risk is entirely in the execution, and it is concentrated in redirect completeness.

Example

http://example.com/page must 301 to https://example.com/page — the same path. Redirecting everything to the HTTPS homepage discards every page's accumulated signals.

The redirect is where migrations are won or lost

Everything else about an HTTPS migration is mechanical. The redirect is where sites lose rankings, and there are two ways to get it wrong.

Redirecting to the homepage. Sending every HTTP URL to https://example.com/ discards each page's accumulated signals. Every old URL must map to its own HTTPS equivalent, path preserved.

Chaining. http://example.com/page → https://example.com/page → https://www.example.com/page is two hops where one would do. Combine the protocol and hostname decisions into a single redirect rule.

Then update everything that names a URL: internal links, canonicals, hreflang, the sitemap, and the property in Search Console — which treats HTTP and HTTPS as separate sites, so the new one has to be added or you lose visibility into your own migration.

How SlapMyWeb checks this

The audit checks the certificate's validity and chain, whether HTTP redirects to HTTPS in a single hop, whether the redirect preserves the path, and whether any resource on the page is still loaded over HTTP. Mixed content is reported per resource, since a single hardcoded http:// image is enough for a browser to flag the page. The matching fix guide is how to fix a missing SSL certificate.

Related Terms

Https Ssl Certificate Redirect 301

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