Duplicate content - 4 sites - http vs https Naked domain AND www

[SEO Lady]

Hello everyone

Just been noseying into a new client today and noticed he has 4 versions of his site:

• www address
• naked domain address
• https www address
• https naked domain address

I thougt https was only for the ecommerce backend of the site when people are paying?


Obviously the https entire website displays shockingly


Is this coding like a chicken on smack [to quote Ali-V-8] or am I reading too much into this?


I want to advise the client to do the naked domain 301 redirect to the www address & stop all the stupid https duplications of the other addresses and stick the https:// only in bits of the site for e-commerce.


Have I got SEO OCD?


Why would anyone put an entire site on https if you are not a bank ffs?


........ and another thing, in the address bar the http://'s are always there as well - am I a girl but I don't find this aesthetically pleasing to me.Why is this in place you think?


Any SEO negatives as I can hear the old 'doop' warning in my head.



Thank you
- Nina

 

[andygambles]

Why would anyone put an entire site on https if you are not a bank ffs?

Because with EV certificates it makes the address bar a nice Green colour in most browsers. This can increase conversion rates due to the additional trust it provides (ours increased by 38% by going completely https).

 

[SEO Lady]

Because with EV certificates it makes the address bar a nice Green colour in most browsers. This can increase conversion rates due to the additional trust it provides (ours increased by 38% by going completely https).

I can get this if the average spend is hundreds of pounds, or the turnover is millions, but the site displays shocking in any browser, and the average spend is a tenner.

This is the first ecommerce site I have ever worked on that has 4 sites and I was questioning the sanity behind this structure.

The demographics of the site in question would not know what the green colour in a browser means, coupled with the fact that no one uses the https version anyway, the only people that know about this is the dev and the site owner.

I can understand if internet savvy people would view an ecommerce store and note the 's' is in place and feel secure, but this doesn't add up.

What industry gave you the 38% additional trust? Was this finance orientated?

Many thanks
- Nina

 

[webgeek]

Personally, I'd 301 everything to the https://www.domain.com

We're getting more and more clients on full https, which I thought was odd, but have just accepted as the way things are going to be. It's not a 50% split, yet, but is a trend!

 

[SEO Lady]

Personally, I'd 301 everything to the https://www.domain.com

We're getting more and more clients on full https, which I thought was odd, but have just accepted as the way things are going to be. It's not a 50% split, yet, but is a trend!

The site looks sexy as hell without the secure domain, but using the https it displays like a 1980's dogpile orientated piece of rubbish.

Does flash or large image sliders affect the way it's displayed?

TBH just a quick fix would solve everything, Google seems to have indexed 11k pages for everything which is insane for this particular client.

I'm wary of asking for changing too much of the current setup in http as the work I've done in the past 2 days has resulted in a rocket in UK SERPS and a huge intake in unexpected wholesale orders and I'm the blue eyed girl.

I don't know too much about https and conscious that the results I've built will drop.

Thank you geniunely for all of your advice.

- Nina

 

[SEO Lady]

Personally, I'd 301 everything to the https://www.domain.com

We're getting more and more clients on full https, which I thought was odd, but have just accepted as the way things are going to be. It's not a 50% split, yet, but is a trend!

So how about 301'ing everything to the http://www but then what about the shopping cart https parts that should be there?

 

[terryuk]

I think you'll find any website which passes personal information of any sort should have SSL enabled if they have any sense.. not only does it look green but it provides some kind of encryption to data passed i.e credit card details etc.

You can use robots.txt / htaccess to block out the SSL pages

 

[webgeek]

If you're not getting the same display on http as https, it probably means you've got unsecured content which is not displaying on the https url's.

Once you sort that, it should be impossible to tell which is which, without looking at the address bar

Some folks just set up a cron job to mirror one to the other every now and then (rather than force everything onto one or the other).

Personally, I'd just cp the site over to https, look for any hardcoded links back to the http side, set the 301 in place and never look back!

 

[webgeek]

Yeah you can 301 everything to https and nothing should break. But you can't force secure back to http, otherwise transactions are toast.

 

[andygambles]

I can get this if the average spend is hundreds of pounds, or the turnover is millions, but the site displays shocking in any browser, and the average spend is a tenner.

The main question was regarding duplicate content which has not been answered by your good self or the troll before you.

This is the first ecommerce site I have ever worked on that has 4 sites and I was questioning the sanity behind this structure.

The demographics of the site in question would not know what the green colour in a browser means, coupled with the fact that no one uses the https version anyway, the only people that know about this is the dev and the site owner.

I can understand if internet savvy people would view an ecommerce store and note the 's' is in place and feel secure, but this doesn't add up.

What industry gave you the 38% additional trust? Was this finance orientated?

Many thanks
- Nina

We do as below. The 38% increase was on my site as per my sig (I sell SSL and EV Certs so the large increase is most likely due to what I sell). Many customers are reporting double digit increases when going completely https.

Personally, I'd 301 everything to the https://www.domain.com

We're getting more and more clients on full https, which I thought was odd, but have just accepted as the way things are going to be. It's not a 50% split, yet, but is a trend!

 

[SEO Lady]

Yeah you can 301 everything to https and nothing should break. But you can't force secure back to http, otherwise transactions are toast.

That's probably the only thing I do know about https

If you're not getting the same display on http as https, it probably means you've got unsecured content which is not displaying on the https url's. Some folks just set up a cron job to mirror one to the other every now and then (rather than force everything onto one or the other).

Why would people do that? I do know the work was placed overseas.

That sounds like sloppy work to me?

 

[andygambles]

Why would people do that? I do know the work was placed overseas.

That sounds like sloppy work to me?

It is normally third party scripts that have been included such as twitter/Facebook buttons referenced via http rather than https.

Other things can be use of a CDN via http or hard coding the CSS/image files (usually because the are shared cross domains).

 

[SEO Lady]

Thank you to everyone who has helped me understand this by posting replies.

Aside: I did notice that yesterday when I visited the https site there was an error message at the bottom of the page "Some unsecured content has been blocked / view unsecured content?" which really was a facepalm moment because now it all makes sense. That yellow box would not have been displayed on an https would it if all content was secure?

Working with the client and dev has resolved everything now.

A big thank you again.

- Nina

 

[DesignerNick]

Check image links / links to CSS and JS as they are usually the culprits for not displaying.

I have a feeling if it is looking REALLY bad it will be the CSS

Just take a look in the source code at how the css call is being referenced, it might be set to http://www..... rather than /css/