We all know HTTPS is far more secure than HTTP. A website that uses HTTP has http:// in its URL, while a website that uses HTTPS has https://. The ‘S’ in HTTPS stands for secure, hence it is suggested by google to replace all HTTP with HTTPS and not redirect them.
John Mueller, Google’s Search Advocate, advises always attempting to replace internal links pointing to HTTP URLs with the most recent HTTP versions.
This is stated in a Reddit thread that asks whether it’s worthwhile to switch internal HTTP links to HTTPS versions even when redirects are already in place.
Why Replacing is Important?
Mueller offers two rationales for updating older HTTP internal links.
In the first place, it’s cleaner than using several redirects. Furthermore, you have full control over the URL that visitors are redirected to, unlike external links.
Mueller states:
“I’d always try to fix internal links, it just makes things cleaner, and is under your own control. I doubt it would have any visible effect though.”
Although Mueller claims that replacing HTTP internal links won’t significantly affect search rankings, it’s still worthwhile to do so.
Why?
Instead of relying on redirection, changing the links might improve the performance of a website.
Any user who clicks on a link that sends them to HTTPS must first navigate through the HTTP version. Visitors will access the material more quickly if the extra “hop” is eliminated.
Furthermore, it is a fool’s game to rely solely on redirects for internal links. Broken links, redirect chains, and redirect loops are just a few of the potential problems.
Browsers may display a “not secure” error message when a website loads photos via HTTP URLs, preventing visitors from sticking around.
Although replacing internal links automatically is simple, the process will differ based on how your site is set up.
Running a find and replace in the database is all that is necessary to replace internal links in bulk. You may instantly switch every mention of an HTTP URL to the HTTP version.
It’s important to save a backup you can restore because there is always a chance that making large-scale updates will break your site.
