Ranking loss due to https implementation-Help Needed

[accidentalseo]

Hi there,

I’m experiencing an issue with newly implemented “https” website. This very obvious & no different from what you might experience. Please suggest me on the same. Thanks in Advance.
My scenario :
We have recently changed our http website to https on Jan 5 2016. When I see the traffic data in google analytics and clicks data in webmaster tools, I found drastic drop in traffic (like almost 90%). Now that I’m very concerned about the traffic drop and I need to revive the traffic as soon as possible. Here’s the two things that I thought of doing, please suggest me on which is best to revive the traffic.

1) Roll back to the non-http website. I have moved to https in Jan 5, now it’s been 4 weeks. Shall I roll back? How fast can the site can regain the normal traffic? Will this backfire? I mean going back and forth between http and https? This is very important here. I cant afford to lose any ranking from here on.
2) Doing 301 re-direction and other stuffs to make sure that google recognizes the same http and https on the same domain.
I’m considering option (1) because there so much thing are to be implemented to comply with https migration which might take some time. But I’m eager to get the usual traffic first and implement https later on. For me the priority is to get the ranking back than implementing ssl.

Thanks in advance.

 

[PTTed]

In my opinion, because you have already screwed up your rankings in the transition to https - I would continue forward with your plan to migrate to https. Just get it done as soon as possible. Implement the 301 redirects. And move forward from here.

If you undo the https and try to put things back the way they were, I doubt you will recover very quickly anyway. You will probably still spend weeks if not longer struggling to regain your traffic. So I would continue moving forward from here assuming you had a good reason to move to https in the first place.

You already took the step forward. You may as well follow through with it. (in my opinion)

 

[ericplotz1]

I actually experienced this exact same issue.

Did you verify all URLS in Webmaster tools? Meaning:

https://www.domainname.com
www.domainname.com
http://www.domainname.com

Then, in webmaster tools make sure you set the preferred domain name to the

https://www.domainname.com

Because the http: was the old domain, it is my experience that you will lose the SEO value unless you list all of the domains in WMT or redirects URLs to the new version.

I usually experience ranking bouncing around for a couple weeks after on-site optimizations, domain changes, or any other changes made to the site.

When I first started SEO, I had to learn to swallow hard and wait a coupe weeks after making changes.

 

[samimnoorzaitgc]

Is there anywhere that you can show-off to your old visitors that you have a new https version? can you have a page with http version that shows a message so the visitors will be automatically redirected (forwarded) to https version?

 

[DotNetNerd]

DotNetNerd

Yea, you can make a page saying you have moved to HTTPS, then give them a link to click or automatically redirect them. But why would you? That will screw up rankings even worse. Just do proper 301 redirects and you will be fine.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

That would be an incredibly bad idea and a great way to lose all rankings.

The question is not about visitors. It's about search engines.

 

[samimnoorzaitgc]

Then a 301 Redirect will be a great solution. This type of Redirect tells google that the website has been moved to another, even some of the old links might point to the new domain.