Question

Topic: SEO/SEM

Seo Re Dealing With & W/out "www"

Posted by becca_l on 7/28/2012 at 6:48 PM ET 250 Points
Hello,

My site is stylishmode.com

I've got all kinds of backlinks to https://stylishmode.com AND https://www.stylishmode.com

More backlinks are to https://stylishmode.com (without the "www")

I just learned that google reads sites like mine as two separate entities, so rankings, SEO etc. are split into two.

After learning that, a couple of days ago I set my google preferred domain in webmaster tools to "www", and went through all of the main pages on my site and changed all links to: "https://www ..." where they were missing the "www". I selected to go with "https://www ..." as the preferred domain because I think it sounds better and when blog or site owners drop a link to my site I'm assuming they'd type it that way.

My next thought was that I was going to do a 301 redirect with my webhost, and redirect "https://stylishmode.com" to "https://www.stylishmode.com". I know very little about a 301 redirect - just what I've read recently. Will this not advise google to give all link "credits" shall we say to one site - "https://www.stylishmode.com", because that's the one I have marked as preferred? And also after a 301 redirect, does it matter whether there's a "www" or not on any link anywhere?

I've been advised that I should have selected to go without the "www" because of the backlinks. Should I be switching my google preferred domain then back to "https://stylishmode.com", or does it even matter? Perhaps someone's got a good link checker can tell in my specific case if due to my # of backlinks / internal links etc., it's worthwhile to even worry about.

If I should switch my google preferred domain to "https://stylishmode.com" do I then need to go back to all the pages in my website and change ALL links within my website to "https://stylishmode.com ...", ie. without the "www"?


So before I go any further changing things, then changing them back, etc, etc, I'm looking for advice (explained very simply given my limited knowledge on this topic), on what exact direction to take from here as I'm a bit confused. A list of steps, one by one, on what I should be doing to complete this task would really be fabulous. Also, any other advice on the topic and info that I may be missing or misinterpreting is greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much.
Rebecca

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RESPONSES

  • Posted by excellira on 7/28/2012 at 9:56 PM Accepted
    You're on the right track, canonicalizing your domain will help to concentrate the value of the links passing to your site. Choosing www or non www can be a difficult choice though.

    You are also on the right track by thinking about whether the www or non www version of your domain have more backlinks. I did a quick look on opensiteexplorer.org of the www and non www versions of your domain and confirmed that the non www version had significantly (10x) more backlinks.

    I Then did 2 queries on Google using the "site" advanced operator in this manner:
    site:www.stylishmode.com
    and
    site:stylishmode.com/
    Your webmaster account is a better place to verify this but the site operator can be helpful for a quick check.

    I show 1,100+ results for the non www version. The www version had no results. So google is indexing the non www version of URLs of your site.

    In my opinion, based on the above I'd canonicalize to non www, change the internal links back to non www, switch your webmaster account to non www. It's a good idea if you want to do this to do so before Google starts to index the www version so I'd not let any time lapse before you make the switch back.

    There are benefits to using the www version but another advantage to the non www vesion is that you have 4 fewer characters "www." when inputting URLs in Twitter, reducing the potential for URL shortening.


  • Posted by becca_l on 7/29/2012 at 12:05 PM Author
    Thanks very much, Greg.

    - I've reverted the google preferred domain back to non "www"

    - Changed all urls within the site

    - Completed a 301 redirect for "www's" over to non

    That should about cover it. There isn't anything I'm missing is there?
  • Posted by excellira on 7/29/2012 at 8:36 PM Member
    Yes, you've got it.

    Just to confirm I ran a header check on the site just to make certain the redirect was correct and I got a 301 response which is perfect. Good job.
  • Posted by becca_l on 7/29/2012 at 10:18 PM Author
    Wonderful, muchly appreciated Greg, thanks again!
  • Posted on 9/15/2012 at 3:40 AM Member
    New to SEO? The Free Beginner's Guide to SEO has been read over 1 million times and provides the information you need to rank better. https://blogaboutseo.com/
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