Google Analytics Tips for HTTPS Migration

Serina Fignole - March 29, 2018

Most users expect a secure and private online experience when using a website. HTTPS (or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) is a way to ensure privacy for your users and to protect your website. HTTPS is an internet communication protocol that protects the integrity and confidentiality of data between a user’s computer and the website.

MoreVisibility strongly encourages website owners to adopt HTTPS in order to protect users’ connections to your website. That being said, there can be some concerns and complications when upgrading a website to HTTPS.

Here are some tips to make this transition easier:

#1 Crawl Your Website and Draft a Plan

Before migrating to HTTPS, you should carefully crawl your whole website. Doing so, will help you evaluate the current state of your website and visualize its structure. Moreover, making a list of things that could break when migrating can be help. For example, payment gateways, downloadables, external scripts, and APIs.

#2 Check Your Rankings and Analytics Data

If you are migrating your website from HTTP to HTTPS, Google treats this as a site move with a URL change. This could temporarily affect your Analytics data and rankings. While there is no way to completely avoid this, checking and tracking your data and rankings the week before you upgrade your website will give you a complete picture of where your website typically stands.

#3 Obtain the HTTPS Certificate

To enable HTTPS for your website, you’ll need to get and configure the required SSL/TLS certificates on your server from a certificate authority (CA). Google recommends choosing a certificate with a 2048-bit key, or upgrading to it, to ensure a high level of security. Depending on your website, you will also need to pick either a single domain, multi-domain, or wildcard certificate (for many dynamic subdomains).

#4 Use 301 Redirects

Implementing server-side 301 redirects will ensure you’re sending users and search engines to the HTTPS page or resource.

If you have any questions about upgrading your website to HTTPS, reach out to the experts at MoreVisibility.