Canonical tag, CNAME and 301 redirect

[casper434]

I have a website with a couple of domains pointing to one IP address. Let's say I have two domains   www.example.com and www.example.ca

I also see during my SEO analysis that the example.com and the www.example.com (same for the example.ca and the www.example.ca) are triggering server responses.

How do I deal with this issue for best SEO. Canonical links? CNAME, or 301 redirects?  thanks

[gfiorelli1]

Oh yes... it was a mistyping from my part, sorry

[casper434]

Gianluca, thanks for your time. Before I ask my web host to do this one point of clarification. In step 2 you mention redirect of example.com to www.example.com   Since www.example.ca is my focus should this be example.ca to www.example.ca or is it correct as stated?

[gfiorelli1]

It always better to do a 301... also because exists also Bing as a search engine, and it does not know what you have done in GWT

[casper434]

thanks very much. As suggested above I just went to google webmaster tools and did specify www.example.com and www.example.ca as the preferred domains. Do I still need to do 301 redirects as well or just a redirect from www.example.com to www.example.ca

[gfiorelli1]

301 all the other versions to the www.example.ca domain.

I mean...

1. redirect 301 the .com domain to the .ca domain (this will take care both of sub-domain and root domain)
2. redirect 301 example.com to www.example.com via .htaccess

If you don't do it you have a massive duplication issue... being www.example.ca stronger in link building, it is normal that the other (which are dupes) doesn't go well.

[casper434]

all four (www.example.com, example.com, www.example.ca and example.ca) have same content. I have focused all of my SEO efforts on the www.example.ca  version. It now ranks well and has good authority and PR but I am concerned about the other versions. I though of adding a canonical tag to the header of the pages on the website making the www.example.ca  version the canonical version and then doing 301 redirects  (Do I redirect the www.example.com to www.example.ca and then redirect the example.ca to the www.example.ca or is there more to this?). I can easily go the cname route with my server host but I had heard that a 301 is better. Does this added info add clarity to what I am asking? thanks very much for your answers and time til now

[jbrabants]

First of all you have to choose what u are going to use www or no-www, then stick to this! I suggest the www version as most of the people use this when typing in urls directly in their browser.

Then go to your Google Webmaster Tools and set your preferred domain to your choice.

Last but not least make sure you have a redirect for the traffic that does use url without www... You can do this with an .htaccess file. This is a small text file that can handle your redirects.

I don't quite understand the other part, do all the domains share the same content? If so, you should use those canonical tags to indicate where the original content comes from...

[gfiorelli1]

Delete this for double posting (sorry)

[gfiorelli1]

In fact that's the way to have just the sub-domain www. appearing online.

And, sorry, I don't really understand the .ca e .com question... does those domains show the same content. In that case one of the two (.com if you target public worldwide or .ca if you target only Canada) should be redirected 301 to the other.