The movement to make the Internet more secure through HTTPS brings several useful advancements for webmasters. In addition to security improvements, HTTPS promises future technological advances and potential SEO benefits for marketers.
HTTPS in search results is rising. Recent MozCast data from Dr. Pete shows nearly 20% of first page Google results are now HTTPS.
Sadly, HTTPS also has its downsides.
Marketers run into their first challenge when they switch regular HTTP sites over to HTTPS. Technically challenging, the switch typically involves routing your site through a series of 301 redirects. Historically, these types of redirects are associated with a loss of link equity (thought to be around 15%) which can lead to a loss in rankings. This can offset any SEO advantage that Google claims switching.
Ross Hudgens perfectly summed it up in this tweet:
"HTTPS is a ranking factor". 301 HTTP to HTTPS. Links lose equity through 301. HTTPS gain is less than amount of equity loss. Lose traffic.
— Ross Hudgens (@RossHudgens) June 15, 2015
Many SEOs have anecdotally shared stories of HTTPS sites performing well in Google search results (and our soon-to-be-published Ranking Factors data seems to support this.) However, the short term effect of a large migration can be hard to take. When Moz recently switched to HTTPS to provide better security to our logged-in users, we saw an 8-9% dip in our organic search traffic.
Problem number two is the subject of this post. It involves the loss of referral data. Typically, when one site sends traffic to another, information is sent that identifies the originating site as the source of traffic. This invaluable data allows people to see where their traffic is coming from, and helps spread the flow of information across the web.
SEOs have long used referrer data for a number of beneficial purposes. Oftentimes, people will link back or check out the site sending traffic when they see the referrer in their analytics data. Spammers know this works, as evidenced by the recent increase in referrer spam:
This process stops when traffic flows from an HTTPS site to a non-secure HTTP site. In this case, no referrer data is sent. Webmasters can't know where their traffic is coming from.
Here's how referral data to my personal site looked when Moz switched to HTTPS. I lost all visibility into where my traffic came from.
Its (not provided) all over again!
Enter the meta referrer tag
While we can't solve the ranking challenges imposed by switching a site to HTTPS, we can solve the loss of referral data, and it's actually super-simple.
Almost completely unknown to most marketers, the relatively new meta referrer tag (it's actually been around for a few years) was designed to help out in these situations.
Better yet, the tag allows you to control how your referrer information is passed.
The meta referrer tag works with most browsers to pass referrer information in a manner defined by the user. Traffic remains encrypted and all the benefits of using HTTPS remain in place, but now you can pass referrer data to all websites, even those that use HTTP.
How to use the meta referrer tag
What follows are extremely simplified instructions for using the meta referrer tag. For more in-depth understanding, we highly recommend referring to the W3C working draft of the spec.
The meta referrer tag is placed in the <head> section of your HTML, and references one of five states, which control how browsers send referrer information from your site. The five states are:
- None: Never pass referral data
<meta name="referrer" content="none">
- None When Downgrade: Sends referrer information to secure HTTPS sites, but not insecure HTTP sites
<meta name="referrer" content="none-when-downgrade">
- Origin Only: Sends the scheme, host, and port (basically, the subdomain) stripped of the full URL as a referrer, i.e. https://moz.com/example.html would simply send https://moz.com
<meta name="referrer" content="origin">
- Origin When Cross-Origin: Sends the full URL as the referrer when the target has the same scheme, host, and port (i.e. subdomain) regardless if it's HTTP or HTTPS, while sending origin-only referral information to external sites. (note: There is a typo in the official spec. Future versions should be "origin-when-cross-origin")
<meta name="referrer" content="origin-when-crossorigin">
- Unsafe URL: Always passes the URL string as a referrer. Note if you have any sensitive information contained in your URL, this isn't the safest option. By default, URL fragments, username, and password are automatically stripped out.
<meta name="referrer" content="unsafe-url">
The meta referrer tag in action
By clicking the link below, you can get a sense of how the meta referrer tag works.
Boom!
We've set the meta referrer tag for Moz to "origin", which means when we link out to another site, we pass our scheme, host, and port. The end result is you see https://moz.com as the referrer, stripped of the full URL path (/meta-referrer-tag).
My personal site typically receives several visits per day from Moz. Here's what my analytics data looked like before and after we implemented the meta referrer tag.
For simplicity and security, most sites may want to implement the "origin" state, but there are drawbacks.
One negative side effect was that as soon as we implemented the meta referrer tag, our AdRoll analytics, which we use for retargeting, stopped working. It turns out that AdRoll uses our referrer information for analytics, but the meta referrer tag "origin" state meant that the only URL they ever saw reported was https://moz.com.
Conclusion
We love the meta referrer tag because it keeps information flowing on the Internet. It's the way the web is supposed to work!
It helps marketers and webmasters see exactly where their traffic is coming from. It encourages engagement, communication, and even linking, which can lead to improvements in SEO.
Useful links:
Great Post Cyrus,
I'm also pretty sure that most big sites if/when they move to https, won't add this referral tag.
I'm just thinking about how an outreach/content marketing/PR team can prove that their article has brought in traffic if you can't see it in GA. Obviously there is the shortened link with tracking option like bit.ly but a lot of publications don't like shortened links... a little catch 22.
Is it just me or does someone else feel like this is one of the reasons why Google is promoting the new protocol. So only they can see where the traffic is coming from?
Рeferrer is stripped only when HTTPS -> HTTP. If both sites are HTTPS then referrer was sent without meta tag.
Probably with mass deploy of HTTP/2 where all communication is encrypted this will became obsolete as meta keywords tag.
Right! (first time I read your comment I misunderstood)
Without the meta referrer tag, referrer data is only stripped when you go from HTTPS to HTTP.
With the meta referrer tag, you can control to a degree what you send downstream, regardless if the site is HTTP or HTTPS.
For example, ere's what the spec says about the "orgin" state:
"If a document at
https://example.com/page.html</a>sets a policy ofOrigin Only, then navigations to <strong>any origin</strong> would send a <code>referer header with a value ofhttps://example.com/</a>, even to a priori insecure origins."If I understand correctly, this means that you instruct server headers to send your designated state to both HTTP and HTTPS sites alike (with the exception of the "none-when-downgrade" state)
This is correct. When set to "origin", only the origin (i.e. protocol + domain name) is sent to insecure, secure and even to the same origin (which is within your own site, you might like to not throw away that information!).
When set to origin-when-crossorigin, it sends the full URL to the same origin, but only the origin to both insecure and secure other places.
Since the default is "none-when-downgrade", HTTP->HTTP, HTTP->HTTPS and HTTPS->HTTPS is sent fine by default. At a time when all comunication is encrypted, the default would work "like the old days".
Edit: "origin-when-crossorigin" is apparently a typo in the spec, in the future this should be "origin-when-cross-origin".
When set to origin-when-crossorigin, it sends the full URL to the same origin, but only the origin to both insecure and secure other places.
So what you are saying is that in order to pass the full URL to a third party site (moz.com/example) you will need to use unsafe-url? All other settings either strip off the URL or just provide the origin (moz.com)
There are two options that can supply the full URL:
Only "unsafe-url" and the default "none-when-downgrade" supply the full URL, with the default "none-when-downgrade" not supplying anything when going from a HTTPS origin to a HTTP.
I guess it would make sense if there were an "origin-when-downgrade" option, but there is not.
True. I'm talking about plain referrer in HTTP header. Not this one.
So there are 4 cases:
And here is why:
Clients SHOULD NOT include a Referer header field in a (non-secure) HTTP request if the referring page was transferred with a secure protocol.
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-15.1.3
But in future when all sites (or just your site) migrate to HTTP/2 where everything is encrypted by-default referrer will be sent and processed.
Of course now we're 25 years later than original concepts in Web and HTTP so this extension (now in draft) is designed to provide better user privacy. I was understanding something new because i just hate to read IETF RFC documentation.
And... one of links there didn't works "(it's actually been around for a few years)"
Gotcha! Totally understand now.
Great Peter, It has cleared my confusion about putting the referrer tag in a non-secure HTTP request. So It means the tag is useful for secure HTTP requests and will be obsolete in some time.
Yes and no - for being obsolete.
Yes - will help if most of users comes from HTTPS to HTTP.
No - it's 2015 now and everyone talk about user privacy. With this tag you can strip referrer data from your site and override current sending.
Imagine that you make site like Wikileaks for example. Site can be HTTP or HTTPS. But your editors links companies in articles. There you can implement this tag and keep your user privacy secret.
Super useful post, Cyrus.
Ohh didn't know that before...It would be great to save referral traffic.
Thanks for sharing, Cyrus. Was not aware of this tag.
This is extremely helpful Cyrus. I have to admit that I was not aware of the meta referrer tag. I'd like to confirm that I understand what you're saying, and then I have a couple of questions.
So, I am soon about to launch a new site and the site will be https. I am assuming that if I do not use the meta-referrer tag that if I linked to your site, and people visited your site by clicking on my link, you would have no way of knowing that I am sending you traffic. But, if I use the meta-referrer tag, then you will start seeing my site in your analytics referrer data. Is this correct?
I have a question about the types of tags that you described. I see that you have set Moz to "origin", but why not show the full url? Why is this considered unsafe? If I wrote an awesome blog post and I mentioned Cyrus Shepard in my post and linked to you, I'd sure like you'd like to see the blog post and not just my domain. I'm pretty sure my site is unlikely to have urls containing personal information...but is it still best to choose origin over unsafe-url?
Second question...Do you know if there is a Wordpress plugin to allow people to set this up? I don't see it as an option in the Yoast SEO plugin.
Hi Marie!
1. "if I use the meta-referrer tag, then you will start seeing my site in your analytics referrer data. Is this correct?"
-Correct, as long as you chose one of the states that passed this information (origin, unsafe-url, etc)
2. The reason we initially didn't use "unsafe-url" is two-fold
Our solution to this is to use "unsafe-url" for logged-out users, and "origin" for logged-in users, starting later this week.
3. Because knowledge of the meta referrer tag is so new (even though it's been around awhile) I don't think you'll be able to find it in many plugins yet. Hopefully soon though!
Have you considered "origin-when-crossorigin" (or "origin-when-cross-origin" when/if the spec is fixed)? The full referrer for requests within your own domain might be information you do want to keep for analytics' sake, while still only sending the origin when linking to an external site. This seems to be the best-of-both-worlds setting, since it still fits the security/sensitivity/privacy considerations you mentioned (and which are definitely very valid).
If you have considered this option, any reason you decided against it?
Great post Cyrus!
Meta tags provide relevant information on the categorization of our website. There are many meta tags and did not know this. I find very useful.
Thank you for your contribution.
Great post, Cyrus - exactly the type of actionable insights I've come to expect from Moz. I just launched a site last month with site-wide https & while we haven't noticed any loss of data, I do see this becoming an issue as more sites make the switch. Before I shoot this over to my dev team to implement, can you share more about the impact on the Adwords analytics? Did you find a workaround?
Edit: * Adroll, not Adwords.
Hi Sheena,
It was Adroll, which Moz uses for retargeting. Adwords wasn't impacted. Regardless, the solution to get Adroll analytics was to use the "unsafe-url" state.
Hope that helps!
Nice post cyrus, I haven't tried meta referrer tag because I was using redirection techniques. It will surely help.
Boom! IE don't care... :)
IE can eat a bag of Doritos! I tested in Chome, Safari, Firefox and even the Android browser on my phone.
Nope, did not test IE.
ROFL. Some people still use AOL too... but I don't know any of them personally. IE is horrible.
OK - I logged in simply because "IE can eat a bag of Doritos". That's made my day.
Implemented on Builtvisible dude - thank you for the insight!
Great to hear. Thanks Richard!
I think what needs to happen is a change to how HTTPS handles the referrer in the headers rather than using an additional head tag.
It doesn't exactly bode well if the referrer is passed by default from HTTPS to HTTPs (likely where the majority of websites will end up) if it is supposed to be 'protecting' data - seems like an oversight to me.
You always come up with some great points! :-)
Here, I just want to add few other Issues for origin which I read on the web.
1. If the origin is unique than the referrer should be excluded.
2. The origin isn't a canonical URL. so the user agent will just add as a path.
I'll surely implement for my client websites and do share the result.
Cheers!
Nice article, but i have a question, MOZ reports all the advantages of good technical seo attributes like meta descriptions,proper page titles, no duplicate tags, no broken links, correct length of all the above but when i checked MOZ.COM to see if they follow their own advice they don't seem to be so??
i found
40 pages with frames
700 broken links
18 duplicate tittle tags
118 tittles that are to long
147 empty meta descriptions
8 duplicate meta's
273 meta's that are to long
So im kinda wondering WTF
I checked with well known industry tools and got the same results when compared
the test was done about 7 months ago and i re did it about 6 weeks again to see if things had changed they have gotten a little better but still basically the same amount of errors
Either there doing this deliberately or im missing something, or there just no focused on maintaining there own house, its like mechanics often drive crappy cars as they fix them all damn day they never want to do there own.
This is not posted out of spite etc, i m doing it to learn and hopefully understand if i am looking at things incorrectly or what i am doing is correct,
Thanks
Very interesting post. To be honest, I didn't noticed about this tag until now, but I'm sure is pretty useful. It's time to study a little.
Only one question: what happens if an HTTP website uses the meta referrer tag? Does it have any consequence? I understand that it's useless but, can it affect in a negative way? (imagine someone implements the tag in his HTTPS site and then downgrade it to HTTP later).
Thanks Cyrus!
The referrer meta tag isn't useless for non-HTTPS origins if you want it to behave different from the default. Granted, the default "none-when-downgrade" will pretty much act as "unsafe-url", since there is no "downgrade". However, you can still set it to "none", "origin" or "origin-when-crossorigin" and it still has an effect (which is a negative effect, if you interpret supplying less information as negative).
Edit: "origin-when-crossorigin" is apparently a typo in the spec, in the future this should be "origin-when-cross-origin".
I'm wondering the same thing...
Hi Virginia,
The best option is going to vary depending on the type of data you want to pass to other sites. At Moz, we use a combination of "origin" and "origin-when-cross-origin" and "unsafe-url"
But yes, simply put this in your header and it starts working immediately.
Not much new in my answer, but I hope that helps! ;)
Hey Cyrus,
Thanks for this...
So if the person/company who owns the site for the last outgoing link doesn't set meta referrer tag they will not see the data for the user who went to their site in GA?
So say you participate in a ‘trade show’. Then the trade show has your web link on their site to yours, and the user clicks on that via the tradeshow site but the data is lost (invisible to you) without meta referrer on your site?
I think its a bit confusing when you say ‘’meta referrer tag controls how browsers send referrer information from your site’’. Its almost vice versa really from a common sense perspective. If I have a link on another site then how can the browser see my meta tag? I think I am confused, or perhaps I am completely confused down under ;-)
Need a diagram LOL
Rgds
Virginia
"So say you participate in a ‘trade show’. Then the trade show has your web link on their site to yours, and the user clicks on that via the tradeshow site but the data is lost (invisible to you) without meta referrer on your site?"
Almost right. The data is lost to you if:
The meta referrer tag controls how you pass information to other sites, but not how you receive information. Hope that makes sense.
Yup got it buddy! Guess I have to renew HTTPS on my website. Looking at a few SSL options, its hard to know what to choose from now as seem too be many options, Geotrust was the one I had before but seems there are lot more now. Also need to move to TLS as should be the norm now. However, there seem to be way too many users experiencing problems with out of date browsers OS etc.. Perhaps this could be another post Cyrus?
Great article Cyrus. I'm late to the party but this is going to be pretty useful moving forward.
Quick question about the way this tag works on mobile devices.
I clicked the "Check Referrer" link in the article from my desktop browser (WIn 7, Chrome/Firefox) and the referrer URL that shows up was "https://moz.com" which works as intended with the 'origin-when-crossorigin' policy that Moz has implemented.
However, when I clicked the same button from a mobile device (Chrome on iOS 9 and Chrome + Firefox on Android Lolliop), it shows me the full referral URL "https://moz.com/blog/meta-referrer-tag"
Do you know if this referrer meta tag works differently with mobile browsers?
Small problem in your "how to use" section:
You specify "origin-when-cross-orgin", while the correct content value is "origin-when-crossorigin". You typoed "orgin" and added an extra hyphen.
Nice article otherwise! This information needs to be spread in this time where there's so many websites switching from HTTP to HTTPS.
In fact, origin-when-cross-origin is correct, and the version without the hyphen is incorrect (but works in Chrome). https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webappsec/2015May/0064.html
Awesome, typos in specs! Thanks for that.
The problem with the "orgin" type still needs fixing, though. :-)
Nice catch! I've updated the post. Thanks!
Almost! :-D
It still says "orgin", instead of "origin" (note the "i" missing).
On top of that, jamescriland pointed out that the current spec says "crossorigin", but one of the authors mentioned it's supposed to be "cross-origin". New version of the spec should/may have that changed. Might be worth mentioned in the post as well. :-)
Good post @cyrusshepard.
Have to say I initially started to read this article via email and it was not making sense. The examples of the types of URL's you can use i.e ......<meta name="referrer" content="origin">.....which seems to be the best option? (pls confirm), did not show up so I was confused.
Guess it got me looking and had to come here. So just to ask a dumb question then. So sounds like we just add this to the head of our code on every page of a website so that the results will be seen in referral data?
Another grey Google moment is occurring me thinks....."lets hide more data from these folks who don't know this stuff...!" A bit like.....lets get everyone to use Google Authorship and then when they do adopt it, lets take it away, and not forgetting that it took long to implement right? What with their convoluted process and instructions that your average Joe would not be able to do.
With HTTP and HTTPS - I understand that the way forward is that every website regardless if they are a eCommerce site should have HTTPS now. I have been recommending this to clients but SSL's over in OZ were around $600 per year so many were reluctant.
A client just paid $640 AUD for a year for one SSL for one site, go figure.
I think this pricing may have changed but this was back in November 2014 so not long ago, perhaps we can get one overseas, but not always the case.
My 10C - (possibly 50!) - 'rant' over......that's an Aussie term if anyone is wondering. Google 'rant'.
Cheers Cyrus!
Virginia
I hate to admit this but I've literally never heard of this tag. This is super-useful and excellent info. Really appreciate it - this is why I read the blog!
Very useful post. Thank you Cyrus.
have same problem with https. meta refferer helps :)
Interesting. I didn't know about the problem with referrals when dealing with https and http.
I didn't know this before, It would be great to save referral traffic.
Very useful, thanks for this
Hello
Your blog is very informative.
https://www.policymantra.com
Why should i use this tag when i can get same results via redirection. I am not saying its not useful.
hey Cyrus,
i think you have an error on the post? you said that:
We've set the meta referrer tag for Moz to "origin", which means when we link out to another site, we pass our scheme, host, and port. The end result is you see https://moz.com as the referrer, stripped of the full URL path (/meta-referrer-tag).
But when you click the green link, then you get
What is my Referer? Your referer:
https://moz.com/blog/meta-referrer-tag
This seems to happen if you are not logged in though (found in the code <meta name="referrer" content="unsafe-url">)
BUT if i am on, it works correctly as it's said in the article and the tag seems to change to <meta name="referrer" content="origin-when-crossorigin">
what's the deal?
thanks,
Gab
It's not "none", it's "never" to never send referer. "none" this still works in FF, but not in Chrome. Please fix your post, as it appears in google top, and is misleading.
Interesting. However I would like to add that using the 'referrer' tag can cause issues for eCom sites. I used this on my site and my customers could no longer send payments using Interac Online, the Interac site would reject the connection. I also had another issue ( only on iphone/ipad with safari ) when validating referral ( to prevent a direct connection to the paypal checkout thus bypassing the cart ) for my PayPal checkout. It took me almost a whole day to figure out that the "referrer" tag was the cause of these issues.
I have a question regarding this.
We implemented the <meta name="referrer" content="unsafe-url"> tag sitewide on Jan 3rd, and on Jan 4th our crawl rate plummeted. https://imgur.com/a/wYOKw (see image)
Any insight into whether or not this tag affects crawl rate?
It's literally the only change we made this year and the after switching to HTTPS back in November.
I'm very confused. Thanks in advance.
Wow this is great. Normally I would say good luck getting the developer community to comply but I feel algo updates like panda and penguin have really woken them up to how they code sites for search engines.
Thank you for this information, when my customers change to https I will implement this meta referrer.
I switched to https in 2013. Saw a about a 30% decrease in sales. Definitely wish I could turn back the clock. I've always wondered why my Analytics took a nose dive, so thanks for helping solve a closed case file!
Thanks a ton, I have experienced same problem, in early October 2014, i have changes website from http to https, traffic dropped to 5000 from 50000. Still till date i managed to made it 15000/day. My question is that will referrer will work for my website as it was moved long back in October?
And one ,more thing if i add referrer tag today, Will it have any drop in traffic?
Fantastic post, Cyrus!
One never stops learning and this Meta-tag was complete news to me.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Great post Cyrus,
Certainly, it is something that I will take into account when moving to HTTPS.
Thank you very much for explaining the steps.
Mr Shepard, thanks for sharing this valuable information! we hear about Meta referrer but we didn't know about the functionality. We already added the tag in our Website. Just now that we are migrating our site from HTTP to HTTPS.
Have a nice day!
https://www.mydeswebsite.com
@Cyrus, could you please explain a bit more detailed, where / how you got the data about 15% loss of link equity on http→https redirects?
Great question! This is the number that's been batted around the SEO community for a number of years. More accurately, it's thought to be 10-15%. This is suggested in search patents, conforms to the modeling Moz has done with MozRank, and Matt Cutt's seems to suggest as much in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Filv4pP-1nw
Interesting info. However, article title and article intro is slightly misleading.
Using referrer meta tag will not help HTTP/HTTPS transition nor SEO issues, especially those connected to ranking, and backlink juice.
Referrer tag will help in analytical part and marketing part of broader webmaster picture. But do not get confused, it will not help you boost rank and conserve backlinks continuity from http to https. You will just get better insight into referrer traffic. And only when referring website implements this tag.
At the end I would not be too much worried about negative SEO impact of http to https transition. This trend is primarily fueled by Google, they would be shooting in their leg if this transition would end up with rank dongrade. In recent webmaster meeting John Mueller confirmed that webmaster should just do regular stuff when going to https, and Google will make sure they pickup and conserve your domain authority and keep your rank as before. In some cases even increase rank as a consequence of SSL=more secure website.
Anyways listening and speaking with John Mueller I'm pretty sure this transition is not so smooth at Google's side of wire, but because of the Google's involvement in this trend, they must make this process goes flawless on SERP ...
The reason we say passing referral data helps with SEO is that many sites (including Moz) use it as a method of link building and outreach. We find that when folks see where their traffic is coming from, they are more likely to interact with and link back to the source of traffic. Not always, of course, but it's a very scalable, low effort process.
Awesome Articles....Great Learning for me....Thanks for a good article and o nice comments on this post thanks a lot to all who ever participating in this comment discussion....
I honestly do not know the real extent of the referrer goal. I had planned to do an experiment and have a project through HTTP to HTTPS redirection 301 and this information about the referrer goal comes great.
Thank you Cyrus! I didn't know about the existence of this tag. I will start using it from now on.
Super useful!
Thanks Cyrus
Great research Cyrus! keep us posted on the updates, as there surely will be and it has effected many of our clients.
Hi Cyrus,
Another great article here.
Does this mean that we can choose whether or not to let others know that we are linking to them?
Can this be applied site-wide?
It's a page-specific meta (as all of them are) but it can be site-wide, depends on your CMS. It's just a HEAD META. Nothing special.
The after graph still seems to be vastly different to the before. I am guessing that is mostly down to IE? Any idea if this is going to be supported in edge?
in your example, your button to www.whatismyreferer.com keeps the referral info, but here we are talking about redirecting from http to https with 301 and not losing that info right?
so if you set this meta in new https pages, it keeps that info?
The meta tag is relevant for links on the page the tag is present on (i.e. page X has this meta tag, and links to page Y, the referrer policy is set for this link to page Y). It is not relevant for these kinds of redirects, however, as far as I'm aware, browsers currently apply the referrer policy from the original request to the new (redirected) request, and send the original referrer if this policy allows it. (And the default policy allows supplying referrer information from a HTTP origin to a HTTPS origin.)
HTTPS to HTTP drops the refs. HTTP to HTTPS keeps the refs.
Thanks a lot for this post Cyrus. It was very helpful.
Quick question. This won't effect or have any impact on the internal tracking of a site? This will only make an impact for other sites to see the referral data? Or is there any considerations one should keep in mind for internal domain analytics?
In most circumstances, it should have no impact on internal site tracking.
Great article as usual Cyrus. I too would vote for an origin-when-downgrade tag.
Thanks Cyrus! A great informative post.
This article is very good for all webmaster
This interesting article, I'm really sure that with the passage of time this figure of 20% increase greatly.
Good point. The truth is you can "optimize" forever, there's no such thing as a "perfectly optimized" site, and optimization isn't free. You have to weigh the benefit of all optimization opportunities against the cost.
We produced a Whiteboard Friday on this very subject:
How to Stop Over Optimizing and Start Creating for SEO
The things about "best practices" is they are not universal law. You don't have to follow best practices to the letter to succeed at SEO, and in fact you probably shouldn't.
"Best practices" in SEO are techniques that are generally accepted as being the most effective, all other things being equal. In the real world, things are rarely equal.
Case in point: Best practice for title tags is less than 512px, or usually somewhere between 55-60 characters (approximately). This means most of the time less than 512 pixels will work best, but there are 100 reasons why you might want a title longer than that (titles targeting social media, clicks, email conversions, etc)
Also, SEO on a site like Moz with 10s of thousands of pages is a time-intensive process. Broken links suck, and we fix them whenever we can, but the reality is dozens of new links go dead everyday (that's the Internet for you) and the time/effort of keeping up with all of them is hard to justify on pages that very few people may visit, or exist wholly for historical reasons (in fact, in some cases we may want to keep broken links so we know where they once went)
Hope that helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
Dear Cyrus
thanks for this article, i have a question, in relation to the correct length, you mention 55-60 char, however you say that for email /social u can go longer, with going longer are you talking about tags in social posts like FB and email subject headings or are you still talking about meta tags here, thanks
Good read and insightful too. It has been noticed that there is a abrupt increase in the number of sites routing to HTTPS for secure concerns. Obiviously, a ranking dip owing to the 301 redirects will be compounded with the loss of visibility of referral traffic. Seems meta referrer is a recommended option to get hold of our referral source.
Cyrus, i have a quick question. What about traffic from search engine, https://www.google.com (query) and visitors click on my site https://www.example.com. is the referrer data not passed? does this mean all the website should switch to https just to see all data in analytics tool? please advice
Fun question! In fact, Google was one of the first users of the meta referrer tag when it first came out. Today, I believe they pass all search queries through redirects, the end result is that you will always see Google referrer data in your analytics (same thing with Facebook and others).
How to use the same meta tag with WordPress site ?
This is some really useful information on the Meta Referrer tag by you Cyrus! My site is soon going on HTTPS and I will make sure this tag is implemented along with it.
Very useful post once again. I'd really like to implement this tag asap on some of my sites but I also want to know what are the other negative aspects of this tag so we may know how to get the maximum out of it.
Cheers,
very use full post. Just yesterday i have chnaged my one http site to https.