If you’re worried about a traffic decrease after switching to HTTPS, here’s my experience!
First off, if you haven’t switched to HTTPS yet, now is the time! In fact, here’s a direct quote from Google’s Chromium blog:
“Beginning in October 2017, Chrome will show the ‘Not secure’ warning in two additional situations: when users enter data on an HTTP page, and on all HTTP pages visited in Incognito mode.”
This is why bloggers are rushing to switch to HTTPs before October gets here.
I recently wrote about how I switched to HTTPS in just 5 minutes (seriously, it was so easy!). My BIGGEST fear that stopped me from doing it sooner was that switching to HTTPS would hurt my search engine rankings and therefore decrease traffic. There’s a lot of mumblings going on in the blogosphere about this.
Now that it’s been two weeks since I made the switch, I wanted to write a follow-up to show how switching to HTTPS has affected my blog.
*This post has affiliate links, which means I get a commission if you choose to purchase through a link I provide (at no extra cost to you!). I link to products here that I myself use and recommend! Thanks so much for supporting the work I put into this site.Â
Did switching to HTTPS hurt my search rankings?
Grayson of iMark Interactive switched my site to HTTPS late night on September 8. Here’s a comparison of my organic search traffic before switching to HTTPS (orange) and after switching to HTTPS (blue):
As you can see, switching to HTTPS did not hurt my search rankings. If anything, it may have slightly improved them.
It’s important to note I only published ONE new blog post in the 2 weeks after switching to HTTPS, so I don’t think the increase in search traffic was caused by this one blog post, but it’s a possibility.
Now that I’ve switched to HTTPS, are any of my old links broken?
Another major concern many bloggers have before switching to HTTPS is that their old links will be broken. This should NOT happen if you set up redirects correctly (I had my WordPress support guy, Grayson of iMark Interactive, do this for me).
After all was said and done, NONE of my links are broken.
For example, you may worry that the old links on all those pins on Pinterest will no longer work. Allow me to put your mind at ease.
Below is a screenshot of one of my most popular pins. I pinned that last year, when my site was still HTTP. As you can see, on Pinterest, that pin is STILL linked to my old HTTP site:
But, when I click on it, it properly redirects and leads me to the correct article in HTTPS!
When you change your site from HTTP to HTTPS, you have to set up redirects because now you have two separate addresses. If you fail to set up redirects, then yes, you’ll wind up with broken links.
Again, I highly recommend having Grayson of iMark Interactive do it for you. He charges a VERY reasonable flat fee of $47 to do this, and it takes no time at all. I emailed him on a Friday evening, and he had everything done by late Friday night!
Did I lose my social share counts after I switched to HTTPS?
Nope! I kept them all! To keep my social share counts, I paid only $29 for Social Warfare Pro, and that allowed me to use the “share recovery” feature.
Unless you use this or another paid plugin, you WILL lose social share counts when you switch to HTTPS. This is because Social Warfare sees them as TWO different URLs (which they are), so you need the Pro version to use share recovery.
So there you have it! Switching my site to HTTPS did NOT negatively affect anything. So have no fear! Make the switch. You’ve got 1 week left!
Click here to read how I switched to HTTPS in just 5 minutes!
Recommended Resources for Switching to HTTPS:
- Grayson of iMark Interactive – He will do it for you!
- Social Warfare Pro plugin – This is the plugin that makes sure you don’t lose all your social share counts.
- SiteGround – My favorite web host—it comes with a FREE SSL certificate so you can switch to HTTPS. Plus, you can get up to 60% off your first year of hosting!
Have any questions about the switch to HTTPS? Comment below!
Excellent information. I like the pictures with the highlighting. Very good instructions.
You mention one week left to switch to https and I was wondering why only one week.
Hey Kirk! Great question. I should’ve mentioned it in the post. I wrote about in the prequel to this post, which you can find here: https://www.whereverwriter.com/how-to-switch-to-https/
Basically, Google has announced it will mark HTTP sites as “Not secure” starting in October. That’s what the “1 week left” is referring to. Details from Google here: https://blog.chromium.org/2017/04/next-steps-toward-more-connection.html
Yeah, if you do this right, switching from HTTP to HTTPS shouldn’t be a problem. What’s more it should benefit your website in more than one way. Good post.
Glad to read this, however, I can’t connect with my Google Analytics. Been working on fixing this for over a week.
Thanks for the comment! Did you already switch to HTTPS? I’m trying to understand why you’re not able to connect to your Google Analytics. If you switched from HTTP to HTTPS, you need to update your Google Analytics account to track your new HTTPS URL. I describe how to do that here: https://www.whereverwriter.com/how-to-switch-to-https/ If there is a different problem, I highly recommend contacting iMark Interactive (mentioned in this post), as I’m sure he could help you out!