After HTTPS upgrade, should I change all internal links, or a general 301 redirect is better?

[micvitale]

I recently upgraded to https.

Of course most internal links of my old posts are still http.

So I set up a 301 redirect in order to make the old link works.

In terms od SEO this is good or it is better to update all the internal links to https, manually?

In that case can I do it in batch with a search/replace command in the phmyadmin database?

any other suggested method?

thank you

[DmitriiK]

Hi again. I've seen it. Quite honestly I disagree with absolutes being a priority. The arguments, presented in that WBF don't really work for me against the pain in development (I believe she mentioned even more drawbacks). Also, from my experience I have not seen any (at all) benefits in any way (SEO or loading speed) from having absolutes, rather than relatives.

[ChrisAshton]

Interesting Giorgio, I hadn't seen that WBF before.

Absolutely no disrespect to Ruth but that's the first WBF I've disagreed with. The scraper risk is something I'm willing to take a gamble on for the benefits of relative links and the other points are moot if your website is setup correctly (htaccess deals with the potential for different versions of your domain and IMO canonicalization should always be used).

Going by that WBF, if your site is set up correctly with redirects and canonicalization, the only benefit here is if a scraper copies your site and there's a very slim chance of this actually happening.

[micvitale]

but...

wait a minute. this Moz posts suggests keeping you links absolute is "a priority" , from a seo perspective.

under point 2):

https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/relative-vs-absolute-urls-whiteboard-friday

[ChrisAshton]

Exactly how to implement it will depend on your CMS but basically, all you need to do is update the hyperlinks from showing the entire link path to a simple, relative one like the examples below.

Absolute Anchor Text

Relative Anchor Text

With hyperlinks, if you don't specify the full address path including http://www then the current website path will be added to the beginning. In this example, since there is no full and complete path before /contact, it's correctly assumed that the link is to point to http://www.example.com/contact.

This is important because it means no matter what changes you make to your domain (www to non-wwww, moving to https, moving the site to a new domain etc) the links will always work perfectly. If you use an absolute path, the minute your change anything about your domain, all the links break because they're manually pointed to the old one.

Here's a bit more info on the topic if the above is a little confusing. It's not a link to my site, just the first I found in a Google search

[micvitale]

Thank you very much /Dmitrii.

Can I change them to relative?

How should I do?

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

So, you have all your links absolute? not relative? Gotta be painful to manage..

Well, anyway, to answer your question - the only bad part about not changing links to https would be that extra redirect. If your servers are good, fast and very reliable, nobody would probably even notice it. I would check loading speeds though, especially for mobiles.

Personally, I would change all links to relative and never worry about stuff like this. If you want to keep them absolute, then yes, I recommend changing them all. Just for clean conscious sake

About find-replace. That would depend on how your website is built. I assume you're talking about wordpress? Then yes, you should be able to. As long as you know where to search.

Cheers.