How do I migrate my site to https?
If your site was created by a web agency or a developer, the easiest way is to ask them to do this. Depending on the type of site (CMS, E-commerce, etc.), the operation can take from a few hours to several working days.
If you made your site on your own, you can migrate your site on your own, but be careful not to make mistakes that could cost you a lot of SEO. For Wordpress sites, you can use an HTTPS plugin which can, if your site is relatively simple, help you migrate in a few clicks.
1. Buy an SSL certificate or get a Let’s Encrypt certificate
You can contact us if you need help choosing a suitable SSL certificate for your project.
2. Activate HTTPS on your domain name
Enable HTTPS with your SSL certificate so that encrypted data can pass.
3. Make sure that the internal links of your website are working
Do a crawl of your website, identify each page and check that the links between them are in relative format (“/ category / product-page”) and not in a classic URL address format such as “http: //www.monsite.com/category/page-product ”so that when your website switches to HTTPS, these links still work.
4. Remove potential mixed content: images, scripts that come from http site
All the content on your website (images, videos, various resources) must come from HTTPs addresses. If they don't, you can edit these links before migrating the site.
You can check mixed content on all of your pages via https://www.jitbit.com/sslcheck/
5. Redirect HTTP to HTTPS
When you migrate your website to HTTPS, your external links (links from sites that redirect to your site) will always be in HTTP. You can obviously contact these sites 1 to 1 to correct your URL, but first of all you will need to perform 301 redirects (permanent) on your server from all existing HTTP URLs to those in HTTPS to avoid losing the traffic generated. .
6. Add a canonical URL in HTTPS to simplify the migration for Google
The canonical URL is the final address of your web page. For the transition to HTTPS, add the canonical URL in HTTPS for each of the web pages of your website.
7. Once the migration to HTTPS is complete, check that your SSL certificate is effective. In particular, you can check this via SSL Labs which, among other things, allows you to check the security level of your HTTPS site.
8. Re-register your HTTPS site on Google Webmaster
If you are using Google Webmaster, remember to resubmit your site using HTTPS. Your HTTPS website is viewed by search engines as a new site.
9. Finally, and it can be a long process, remember to change all mentions of your site on the web from HTTP to HTTPS.
If you made your site on your own, you can migrate your site on your own, but be careful not to make mistakes that could cost you a lot of SEO. For Wordpress sites, you can use an HTTPS plugin which can, if your site is relatively simple, help you migrate in a few clicks.
Here is the method to migrate your site to https:
1. Buy an SSL certificate or get a Let’s Encrypt certificate
You can contact us if you need help choosing a suitable SSL certificate for your project.
2. Activate HTTPS on your domain name
Enable HTTPS with your SSL certificate so that encrypted data can pass.
3. Make sure that the internal links of your website are working
Do a crawl of your website, identify each page and check that the links between them are in relative format (“/ category / product-page”) and not in a classic URL address format such as “http: //www.monsite.com/category/page-product ”so that when your website switches to HTTPS, these links still work.
4. Remove potential mixed content: images, scripts that come from http site
All the content on your website (images, videos, various resources) must come from HTTPs addresses. If they don't, you can edit these links before migrating the site.
You can check mixed content on all of your pages via https://www.jitbit.com/sslcheck/
5. Redirect HTTP to HTTPS
When you migrate your website to HTTPS, your external links (links from sites that redirect to your site) will always be in HTTP. You can obviously contact these sites 1 to 1 to correct your URL, but first of all you will need to perform 301 redirects (permanent) on your server from all existing HTTP URLs to those in HTTPS to avoid losing the traffic generated. .
6. Add a canonical URL in HTTPS to simplify the migration for Google
The canonical URL is the final address of your web page. For the transition to HTTPS, add the canonical URL in HTTPS for each of the web pages of your website.
7. Once the migration to HTTPS is complete, check that your SSL certificate is effective. In particular, you can check this via SSL Labs which, among other things, allows you to check the security level of your HTTPS site.
8. Re-register your HTTPS site on Google Webmaster
If you are using Google Webmaster, remember to resubmit your site using HTTPS. Your HTTPS website is viewed by search engines as a new site.
9. Finally, and it can be a long process, remember to change all mentions of your site on the web from HTTP to HTTPS.
Updated on: 14/02/2023
Thank you!