How to properly migrate your site from HTTP to HTTPS

Fix your current site before any migration

You don’t want to have to deal with broken internal links after the move. Do a quick SEO audit. I usually use Screaming Frog for fixing internal links.

Test if your certificate is valid

You can use https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

Use your favorite rank tracking software to start monitoring https rankings

For mass rankings checker I like to use Looker Data Studio that gets results from Google Console.

Start the migration

Update canonical tags

With absolute HTTPS links, obviously

Sitemap and robots.txt

Make sure sitemap and robots.txt use HTTPS versions

Register both HTTP & HTTPS in Google Search Console

Do the same thing with subdomains for that domain. Bing will just bunch them up together, so you don’t need to go into Bing tools. Update any other settings that in Google Search Console, such as disallow file, removals, sitemaps…

Set up 301 rules


RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}
[L,R=301]

Test redirects

Make sure there are as few redirects as possible, from non-www to www, or with slash and non-slash.

Check if breadcrumbs and URL structure is still the same

Make sure breadcrumbs point to HTTPS.

Start monitoring important pages

Prioritize them by looking into Google Search Console and Google Analytics reports.

Check plugins and CDN

Make sure CDN can handle the migration and all the plugins are still working properly.

Crawl the site one more time

Check all the broken links and canonicals and redirects. Once again I will probably use Screaming Frog for this.

Try to update external incoming links

If possible try to link to HTTPS from external sources, such as social media.

Monitor Google search console and analytics

To make sure they are tracking everything properly. It is very important to check GSC for errors at this stage.