How do I migrate my website from HTTP to HTTPS without losing SEO ranking?

Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS is essential for security and is a confirmed Google ranking signal. However, it is technically a site move, and if handled poorly, it can lead to temporary ranking drops. The process begins with obtaining a valid SSL/TLS certificate from a provider. Once installed, you must force all traffic to the secure version using 301 redirects at the server level (e.g., in .htaccess or Nginx config). This tells search engines that the change is permanent and passes the link equity from the old URLs to the new ones. A common mistake is leaving 'mixed content'—where the page is HTTPS but images or scripts are still called via HTTP; this must be fixed to avoid browser security warnings. You also need to update your XML sitemap and robots.txt to reflect the new protocol. Finally, because Google treats HTTP and HTTPS as different sites, you must add and verify the HTTPS version of your site in Google Search Console. Use the 'Change of Address' tool if you are also changing your domain, but for a protocol switch, simply monitoring the new property is sufficient.

Пошаговое руководство

Советы экспертов

• Check that your CDN and caching plugins are updated to support HTTPS.
• Ensure your canonical tags are updated to point to the HTTPS versions.
• Watch for a spike in 404 errors during the migration using Search Console.
• Keep the old HTTP property in GSC for a few months to monitor traffic migration.

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