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Odierno851

: Link to External Sites as HTTP or HTTPS? While migrating from HTTP to HTTPS, I am recreating all internal links and canonicals as HTTPS, but it is not clear what to do for external links.

@Odierno851

Posted in: #Https #Links

While migrating from HTTP to HTTPS, I am recreating all internal links and canonicals as HTTPS, but it is not clear what to do for external links.

Some links point to sites that support both protocols and some that redirect but even so, what is the best practice? For example, links to Twitter now get redirected to HTTPS even if the link is HTTP but both links work.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of changing external links to HTTPS?

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@Berumen354

It's SEO best practice to link to external sites as https, if available. In practice, if they are handling their requests properly, an http should redirect to https anyway.

I don't really think it has much impact realistically though, and would use http when in doubt simply to avoid showing warnings to readers.

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@Goswami781

Link to http.

If you link to https and the target doesn't have an SSL certificate the user is going to get the Your connection is not private warning.

I can't speak for all sites, but any that I set up have the following in .htaccess to redirect http to https since I do have free LetsEncrypt certificates.

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} =80
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

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