Keep www in the domain or not?
-
I have a client who had a wordpress website built about 1.5 years ago without the www in front of the domain. In May of this year client decided to have his website rebuilt. The new web designer built the site in Joomla and changed hosting company (first website hosted by Go Daddy) the new web designer built the new site with the www in front of the domain. He put redirects from the old to the new. Client wants to go back to wordpress design. My question is: do we keep the www as the new site has this or revert back to the domain without the www. (domains are the same between the new and old site, only difference is old site has no www and new site does) web designer put in redirects to go from non www site to new site with www however I don't think he did it right. New site is still getting errors and when I look in the hosting account there are 9 pages of redirects. The old and new site are not that big. The hosting company tech support was a little shocked that there were 9 pages of redirects. My question is: will client loose what momentum we've built with redirecting traffic to the www new site? We've been working hard since the new site launched to get it indexed. Thoughts? Feedback please. We are going to move back to wordpress platform but I'm not sure about this www whether we keep it or not. I just don't want to mess up any indexing that we've achieved with the new site if we revert back to the domain without the www in front of it. Thank you
-
I do have lots of experience personally and professionally on WWW and non-WWW websites.
I guess you have expertise in WP and SEO, so giving only main points to determine without explaining the story of SEO and WORDPRESS.
Lets consider the example scenario:
domain.com occupies 9 characters in the search engine URL data
www.domain.com occupies 12 characters in the search engine URL data (extra 3 characters)if you are very much serious about SEO and wanted to rank and optimize your site for search engine traffic better to remove WWW in the website URL
Points to remember: 1. Inform google webmaster tools about your website (either www or non-www)
2. use .htaccess from www to non-www redirection
3. Use Wordpress Redirection plugin initially for monitoring what urls are being redirected and howIf you aware of Canonical URL concept, please go ahead and use properly
www.example.com
example.com/
www.example.com/index.html
example.com/index.phpNote: As you might be using Wordpress, using SEO Plugin will help you in applying a Canonial URL
When to use What - if you are looking for branding and not expecting too much search traffic use the extra WWW prefix
- if you are only interested to get search traffic and the website is not a brand (example: services, blog, keyword-rich domain) remove WWW
-
If there's that many redirects, I'd agree something is off - which is a bigger concern.
-
Thanks for your responses. So to clarify you both think we should stick with the way we originally had it (before the redesign) I don't think the new web guy set up the re-directs correctly to go from first site (old one) to the 2nd site (new one)
-
I agree with Mike. Keep what you had, since it's part of the online brand at this point. And redirects are harmless, assuming they are done correctly and people can find your site (without the feeling like they are dealing with something spammy).
-
There is no definitive benefit of having WWW vs. not having WWW... best to choose one and stick to it. If you're switching from one to the other, make sure that all of the necessary redirects are correct and change your preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools. My personal opinion would be to stick with the way they had it originally when it was first set up.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Verification of https domain in webmaster tool
Hi guys, I'm having a problem to verify domain with https in webmaster tools. Does anybody know how to verify it? Thanks
SEO Learn Center | | odmsoft0 -
Tools to see how many times a domain has been bought and sold? Domain Owner History?
Hi Folks! I'm in the process of trying to buy a domain off someone who isn't really using it for much other than a single anding page for his defunct company. The current ower is putting a massively high price on the domain (five figures) which is WAY more than what any regular buyer would value it at. He claims he paid that price several years ago when he bought it. I don't believe him, and I feel he's just using that as an excuse to value his domain very highly. Does anyone know of any tools I could use to help me see how many times the domain has changed owners? I have a sneaking suspicion that he is the original owner, but I have no way to tell. It currently has privacy on it so I can't tell much by looking at whois.sc or using my subscription to whorush.com. Any one have any other ideas for me?
SEO Learn Center | | shawn810 -
I changed the {Site Name} of our domain by capitalizing a letter. 48 hours later our SEO rankings are bad. How long does it take to rebound our prior rankings. The {site name} was at the end of every page title.
I changed the {Site Name} of our domain slightly and capitalized a letter. The impact 48 hours later on SEO is really, really bad. How long does it take to recapture our prior rankings and should I change the site name back to the original? The {site name} was at the end of every page title. Thanks for any help/advice on this. We worked so hard to get our business on the first page for many keywords and "POOF" we are gone now.
SEO Learn Center | | LinckB0 -
Over $100 per click? How to keep competitors from clicking...
I was doing some investigating on high priced pay per click keywords. I had a client ask me if there is a way to prevent your competition from just repeat clicking your ads which in turn cost him money... Suggestions? Also, can you believe this: | Keyword | Search volume | Average CPC | Category |
SEO Learn Center | | JChronicle
| mesothelioma settlement | 1,900 ∼ | $142.67 ↑↑↑ | asbestos |
| mesothelioma asbestos attorney | 5,400 ∼ | $121.68 ↑ | asbestos |
| asbestos attorney | 9,900 ∼ | $117.23 ↓ | asbestos |
| asbestos law firms | 2,900 ∼ | $106.77 ↑ | asbestos |
| sell annuity payment | 1,900 ∼ | $95.16 ↑ | annuity |
| annuity settlements | 5,400 ∼ | $92.36 ↑ | annuity |
| structured annuity settlement | 6,600 ↑↑↑ | $92.36 ↑ | annuity |
| auto donation | 33,100 ∼ | $84.51 ↑ | donate |
| virtual data rooms | 4,400 ∼ | $79.59 ↑ | data |
| donating a used car | 2,900 ∼ | $79.35 ↑ | donate |
| auto accident attorney | 135,000 ∼ | $73.12 ↑ | auto |
| mesothelioma cancer | 9,900 ∼ | $71.30 ↑ | asbestos |
| data recovery RAID | 8,100 ∼ | $70.80 ↓ | data |
| motor insurance quotes | 301,000 ↓↓↓ | $67.09 ↑ | insurance |
| auto insurance discounters | 2,400 ∼ | $66.00 ↑↑ | insurance |
| auto accident lawyer | 135,000 ∼ | $64.54 ↑ | lawyer |
| RAID data recovery | 8,100 ∼ | $64.22 ↓ | data |
| asbestos cancer | 14,800 ∼ | $61.13 ↑ | cancer |0 -
Top Domain Authority Sites
Is there a list like the IR500, but for the top domain authority sites? If not, could you build one?
SEO Learn Center | | adam-1869630 -
Question regarding redirect to www.
Good afternoon – I was wondering if someone could help me with regards to my site @ allrmc.com I have been generating good content and building links for some time and we're getting great results but I was wondering if my site may be suffering from not redirecting to the www. I have heard that google treats “website.com” & “www.website.com” separately and wanted to know if this has been true in anyone’s experience? For instance through site explorer I am finding that using site explorer without the www. We have a 39 PA but with www. It’s 63. If I redirected all visitors to www. Would my SERPS potentially improve? I know this is probably a SEO101 question but would love feedback on this I’m too afraid to do anything drastic without asking first. Thank you for your input! – Cliff
SEO Learn Center | | CliffAuerswald0 -
What are the things I should tell my website developer to keep in mind for on-page SEO wise while outsourcing it?
I have done the keyword research for my target and will do the copy writing in-house suited for both visitors and bots.Like suitable headers and mention of keyword in the content,mention of keyword in link,having video in the page if possible etc. I need some help for a proper interlinking strategy and main question is, what are the things to be taken care of in coding/development SEO wise,which should be told to developer. I am going for custom development in .NET platform( if it matters anyway ) My site will have 3 products/services page and rest are resources and Q&A community. I am targeting the keywords for 3 products. Q&A community and resources should help me in long tail keywords. Any kind of advice,suggestion is welcome. Thanks
SEO Learn Center | | RyanSat0 -
Subdomain Structure vs Top Level Domain Site; An Actual Case
A major non-profit with 360 locations just completed a new program. The non-profit has updated its site at URL www.mysite.com. Each of the 360 locations has a subdomain site with URL http://mylocation.mysite.com which reflects the branding of www.mysite.com and has a Drupal content management system. The company is asking each location to transition the top level domain of each location ( example www.mysite.com to http://mylocation.mysite.com). The subdomain location sites are tied to a CRM system, which initially hasn't worked. But the long term objective is to gather CRM data via the subdomain location sites. The main site has an Alexa Global Rank of 30,400 and a US Rank of 7900. The main site has 2600 backlinks, and is a pretty powerful site. Some individual locations in large metropolitan areas have decent backlinks, but most don't. The PR of most local sites is 3 to 6. The SEO experts at www.mysite.com have maintained that the power and authority of the main site www.mysite.com would propel the local rank of each location to a position of high visibility. Using Market Samuari and Majestic SEO, a test on each of the 360 location subdomains was performed. It was determined that Page Rank did pass from the main site to the local site in 15% of the cases. However, 85% of the subdomain sites had 0 Page Rank. Page Rank did vary from 2 to 5 on the 15% that passed rank, but there was no cross checking to see if the subdomain location had the same page rank as the locations top level domain. Referring Domains Domain (RDD) was usually -1; Referring Domains Page (RDP) was usually 0; Page Backlinks (BLP) was usually 0; Back Links to Domain (BLD) was usually 0; Google Cache age was all over the map from unknown to 58 days. Questions: Anyone suspect why some sites pass Page Rank and others don't; Should we continue on the path towards using the subdomain sites, or should each location keep its top level site and work on improving their local search visibility there? There is no way to check Google Analytics (GA) on the subdomain sites without having to access GA on the main site www.mysite.com. Right? Will Google Places and Bing Local honor the subdomain URLs for their respective Local Search pages. Would there be a compelling reason or reasons to abandon the subdomain sites? Thanks much for your comments!!
SEO Learn Center | | VernonWanner0