Site Builders Need to Follow These HTTP and HTTPS Rules
Ever since the explosive revelations made by Edward Snowden about mass internet surveillance carried out by the United States National Security Agency in 2013, the use of HTTPS connections has become a new standard of web browsing and development. Over the years, more website administrators have been acquiring secure certificates to install on their hosting servers, and in many cases they had to migrate existing websites to the new and secured domain.
It did not take long for search engine optimization professionals to realize that the transition to HTTPS created an issue in terms of established rank on the Google search engine results page (SERP). There is a process that must be enacted, and it entails the following:
Backup the contents of the HTTP legacy site before obtaining the secure certificate from a reputable vendor.
The type of certificate you need should support SSL connections.
When installing the SSL certificate on the server, you should also install the Really Simple SSL plugin to make things easier. This assumes that you are hosting a WordPress website; there may be other versions of this plugin for other platforms such as Drupal.
The website addresses should be changed at this point.
A 301 redirection should be applied before updating all internal links. This is a crucial step in order to keep as much SEO integrity as possible. The redirection should originate from the .htaccess folder. Do not use 302 or any other redirection strategy.
Now is the time to update the Google Search Console with the HTTPS version of the site.
The new HTTPS XML sitemap should be generated and submitted to the console.
If using a content delivery network, the URL should be changed or updated.
Don't forget to review all social media profiles and special listings such as Google My Business; you will need to change URLs that point to your new HTTPS version.
Finally, the new HTTPS site should be connected to Google Analytics.
The choice of SSL certificate vendor is highly debated these days. You can find free providers as well as brand names that charge hundreds per year. One advantage of paid certificates is that they may provide support when following the steps above. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/lxj0vn/httptohtpps/.