SEO Move From HTTP to HTTPS 39% increase in Organic Traffic.

Recently at SMX Advanced in Sydney the question was raised:

Is it safe to move my site from HTTP to HTTPS?

Now around 3 months ago a client asked this exact question and after searching for similar case studies online we could not find many positive examples of this move taking place.

One site which had some information on this move was Yoast, this is an updated version of a old post they had on this specific topic – https://yoast.com/move-website-https-ssl/

The developers at the site we were consulting with were keen to implement the changes and after implementing the redirects across the site, you can use the rules used above in the Yoast post. This post also addresses some technical areas when implementing a move such as this.

We monitored the traffic 30 days prior and 30 days post the redirect and the site saw an increase in traffic by around 39.5%. (review the image below)

Another note was that 95%+ of the URLS on HTTPS are now indexed which is also a positive sign the change has worked effectively.

In addition to this we must remember several internal and external factors which have attributed to the site move which can have a positive increase on the organic traffic such as –

1. Panda 4.0 roll out – the site has increase the level of unique content over the past few months.
2. Fixing some error pages when implementing the 301’s.
3. Additional fresh link building and content marketing work on the website.

Overall this is a small case study to show you that moving to a secure HTTPS version of your website should not be something you need to worry about if it is done correctly. Our analysis is to do the analysis first and ensure that you fix all technical areas of the site first before you implement the move so it goes as smoothly as possible.

I hope this quick case study helps some one who is looking to implement this move as it is a question many businesses are starting to ask.

Please comment below if you have tested a move from HTTP > HTTPS on a large or small website.