SEO drop after implementing https on our website

CMS & WordPress
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Implementing Https

We are using a CMS system called Squarespace and I am sure that many of you know about it. Recently they implemented a function to convert your website from http to https. This all sounds great because Google mentions that it is one of their ranking factors and websites that convert should see a small bounce in SERPS.

Our Experience

Our experience to date has been somewhat different. We implemented https before Christmas and everything looked ok, the new https version of the site began to index and no errors have been identified. Just after Christmas the website took a huge drop in the SERPS for all keywords. This is annoying because we are a web agency and most of our business comes through organic search.

Google Search Console

After getting on to Search Console I discovered that Google needs to re-index each and every page and that takes some time. To-date they have only re-indexed 6 of the 102 pages so we have a long wait ahead of us. I was wondering if anyone had any experience of this and any idea of how long the process will take to get back up in the rankings?

As mentioned we are a web design company and we would like to fully understand the impact on SEO by going secure so we can advise our clients. You can see our website if you need a better look www.bignetdesign.com

2

Did you set up 301 redirects from http to https?
That should take care of it, as the pages already indexed will be redirected while the index updates.

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Google has some guidelines for such moves. (It may be a bit late for your own, but helpful for future clients.)

What is a site move?

Secure your site with HTTPS

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Hi Sam,
Yes Squarespace automatically sets up 301’s for all the pages. To be honest I think it is just a drop due to the re-indexing but really hoping it is not going to take much more time. Already we are starting to see a small jump in the SERPS but very small at that. I’ll give it another week before I start to worry :slight_smile: Thanks for the advice!

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Hi TechnoBear,
I think the implementation went fine as it is all automatic, just Google doing it’s thing. Although I really wish we could see a reasonable bounce when it is all complete. My guess is that we won’t.

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