Topics in Mobile Redirect Issues Part 4: SSL-Secure Pages Redirect-Problem and Solution

Glenn E. Fleming, MD, MPH, Contributor, MarketHive

(Reposted from Patrick Sexton, https://varvy.com)

There are four common types of redirects that affect how your users and Google see your mobile pages. Each of them is bad for performance (speed). They include:

       *    Initial redirect — canonical (www.example.com vs example.com)

  • SSL — secure pages redirect
  • Redirect to mobile version
  • Content driven redirects

SSL-Secure Pages Redirect

  1. Problem

               Pages that use SSL will often be redirected from the url

              "http://www.example.com" to the secure version of that page at "https://www.example.com"

              This redirect usually occurs when a webmaster uses a site-wide 301 redirect as a simple step to forward all pages to               the secure versions of the page.

       b. Solution

              A redirect exists for SSL sites typically because the webmaster used an "easy fix" of doing a site-wide 301 redirect to               make all traffic forwarded to the secure version of their pages.

             A better option would be to use HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) which forces all traffic to use secure pages.                  This means your pages will be more secure and load faster by not using that 301 redirect.

 

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member