Migration of WordPress to HTTPS - Concern about Google Rankings

Server
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A little introduction: I am not a technical person, just a (WordPress) website owner. I’m preparing to activate Let’s Encrypt using the setting in my Cosmos hosting panel. My question is about the TLS settings I see in Cosmos.

There is a setting called ‘Force TLS’. When I enable this, do I still have to create a 301 rewrite rule in the .htaccess?

My main concern: losing my Google rankings. What’s the best approach for keeping the current rankings in the SERP’s when migrating to https?

Hope anyone can advise on this. Thanks in advance!

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search wordpress on this site for recommendations on how to migrate from HTTP to HTTPS

google is preferring content served over HTTPS

wordpress has a concept of a home path which can be updated and if you do it right your previous content will be automatically redirected

for example: https://wordpress.org/plugins/really-simple-ssl/

I have also updated your title so others can chip in who have more knowledge of wordpress (human SEO is always best :P)

Andrei

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Nope!

As @ahaw021 said, Google has said publicly that they are providing a slight ranking bump for HTTPS. A few large sites have reported a temporary dip in rankings when they move over, but they quickly recovered. Wired's article on their migration is a great source.

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this article suggest that after you migrat to HTTPS you should submit your site again for crawling

To inform Google about the change in URL, re-add your WordPress site to Google webmaster tool (but this time with https://) and follow this this guide to let Google know about the change of URL.

Andrei

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