Our parent domain "parent.com" currently does not employ SSL protection for encrypting data within our approximately 1,300 web pages. Our child domain "child.parent.com" does. The child is where our e-commerce basket resides so it makes sense and all is well.
However, we are interested in purchasing an EV Certificate (extended validation) from thawte for our "child.parent.com" to replace the standard SSL certificate. The EV certificate would be a new purchase for the "child.parent.com" and so they agreed to transfer the existing standard certificate to the "parent.com" domain. This would mean complete SSL throughout the searching and ordering process in our e-commerce basket; however it would result in all of our approximately 1,300 "parent.com" pages becoming "
https://parent.com" and not "
http://parent.com" as they currently exist via search engine indexing bots (especially GoogleBots) so we are fearful that our page rankings will be lowered as a result; however, I have read that search engine indexing bots like/friendly to SSL protection on websites. Is that true?
Also, we are afraid we will be penalized in the indexing process because we plan to leave all "
http://parent.com" pages up live as well as the new "
https://parent.com" pages just in case and also so that we will not have to re-direct them to the "secure" page URL becuase bots don't take to kindly to re-directs and we could be penalized for that as well. Is having both "
http://" and "
https:" pages (exactly the same) a good idea?? Do we need to copy all "
http://" pages to a new "
https://" and double the size of our site with respect to pages?? Or is this automatic when you implement the SSL certificate on your web server?? Will we be penalized for having duplicate (somewhat) pages on our "parent domain"?? Cause' it seems that on our "child.parent.com" domain, if you simply remove the "s" from the "
https://" both actually exist??? Could someone please explain the logic/process behind the whole SSL Certificate and web server relationship as it pertains to search engine bot indexing, page rankings, and visibility??
Thank you for taking the time to read and possibly respond.
-Concerned Dot Com Seller
