301 redirect to WWW on a 2 year old website with good SERPs and organic traffic?
-
Hi everyone,
Recently someone pointed out that my website can be accessed in both ways i.e. by typing www.example.com or example.com. He further added that Google might identify this as duplicate content and penalize my website. So now I'm thinking about 301 redirection from non WWW to WWW using htaccess method. But my website is 2 year old now and I'm getting some decent traffic from Google. Will this redirection have an adverse effect on my rankings? Is there any other way to resolve this issue? I don’t want to lose my current rankings or organic traffic. Any help would be very much appreciated.
P.S. Currently Google index my website pages with WWW.
-
/index.html should 301 redirect to the root domain (www.example.com/index.html and example.com/index.html should redirect to www.example.com)
For multilingual, you will need to set up hreflang for each language via tags or sitemap. Check out https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en for more info.
-
yes you do
-
Thank you for the reply. I will do this redirect ASAP!
-
Thank you Andy for your detailed answer. My site is also accessible from example.com/index.html Do I also need to include this URL in htacess file while writing the rules for 301 redirect?
-
Thank you for the quick reply. My site is also accessible from example.com/index.html Do I also need to include this URL in htacess file while writing the rules for 301 redirect?
I also have sub-domains like fr.example.com, de.example.com So do I also need to write septate 301 redirect rules/codes in their htaccess file?
-
"...duplicate content and penalize my website"
---> duplicate content is not penalized, it's often just deemed somewhat irrelevant as Google has seen the content before and has an 'older' or in some few cases, 'considerably stronger' version of the content in its Index...."about 301 redirection from non WWW to WWW using htaccess ..."
---> perfect solution (this is the correct thing to do), and if anything, your site will be stronger. While 301's do lose a teeny bit of link equity, any links to the non-www version of your site will now be making the www page that much stronger."I don’t want to lose my current rankings or organic traffic"
---> this is highly unlikely*you may want to set your webmaster tools setting to "www "as well
All the best - Andy
-
I would do the redirect, essentially if you can access your site from www.example.com and example.com and both have the same content this will be classed as duplicate.
This won't do any harm to your current rankings and should actually have a positive effect
-
shouldn't hurt your rankings, only help. might see a temporary dip as google updates its index.
make sure the www. is the more authoritative version of your site by check PA/DA on opensiteexplorer
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
-
Redirects, 301's & 404's
I have tons of links that I have had added a redirect to after creating my companies new website. Is it bad to have all these 301s? How do I permanently redirect those links? Also, on Google Search Console it's telling me I have 1,000+ excluded links. Is this bad? Will it negatively affect me? Is this something to do with my sitemap? Any help would be greatly appreciated 🙂
Technical SEO | | sammecooper0 -
My WP website got attack by malware & now my website site:www.example.ca shows about 43000 indexed page in google.
Hi All My wordpress website got attack by malware last week. It affected my index page in google badly. my typical site:example.ca shows about 130 indexed pages on google. Now it shows about 43000 indexed pages. I had my server company tech support scan my site and clean the malware yesterday. But it still shows the same number of indexed page on google.
Technical SEO | | ChophelDoes anybody had ever experience such situation and how did you fixed it. Looking for help. Thanks FILE HIT LIST:
{YARA}Spam_PHP_WPVCD_ContentInjection : /home/example/public_html/wp-includes/wp-tmp.php
{YARA}Backdoor_PHP_WPVCD_Deployer : /home/example/public_html/wp-includes/wp-vcd.php
{YARA}Backdoor_PHP_WPVCD_Deployer : /home/example/public_html/wp-content/themes/oceanwp.zip
{YARA}webshell_webshell_cnseay02_1 : /home/example2/public_html/content.php
{YARA}eval_post : /home/example2/public_html/wp-includes/63292236.php
{YARA}webshell_webshell_cnseay02_1 : /home/example3/public_html/content.php
{YARA}eval_post : /home/example4/public_html/wp-admin/28855846.php
{HEX}php.generic.malware.442 : /home/example5/public_html/wp-22.php
{HEX}php.generic.cav7.421 : /home/example5/public_html/SEUN.php
{HEX}php.generic.malware.442 : /home/example5/public_html/Webhook.php0 -
Backlink management: 301 redirect unsuccessful.
I am managing my company's spammy backlinks using Open Site Explorer. Our company owns a few URLs that are related to our company or are iterations of our main URL. All of these additional URLs have 301 redirects to our main domain. Open Site Explorer has identified one of these URLs as having a spam score of 8 indicating a 56% chance of Google crawler penalization. Obviously, this is a red flag. Instead of being redirected to our main domain upon visiting the URL, I was directed to what seems to be an automatically generated, generic webpage with links that seem to have been generated by keywords from our main domain. I have seen this type of webpage before when incorrectly typing in URLs from other pages. They tend to look the same. They have a black background with the URL written in grey at the top and a rectangular related links bar. Is anyone familiar with my problem and could you offer any advice? Thanks, Ben
Technical SEO | | SOLVISTA0 -
Maintaining Link Value Of Old URLS With 301 Redirects
Large ecommerce site that has been around for a long time (15+ years.) During that time technology has changed a lot and we are running into issues maintaining 301 redirects for very old urls. For example we have a good amount of links to product and category pages. Some of the old links are to products that still exist and will exist for many years to come.(of note little to no traffic comes via these links. Most of them are close to 9 years old so they are buried deep within articles, forums, or websites) However as we make changes to the site and URL structure these old urls are taking up more resources to continue to maintain 301 redirects. I am Leary of no longer supporting them because I do not want it to impact rankings however there is concern on how much development time and technology resources it takes to continue to support as time goes on. Does anyone have experience handling redirects 3 or 4 url structures old? Looking for insight from someone who has crossed this bridge before.
Technical SEO | | RMATVMC0 -
What would happen if 301 redirects were not in place
Good Morning from 14 degrees C sunny Wetherby UK 🙂 My question is please.... "When a new site is given a total makover ie old urls are re written to radically different ones I know if you dont set up 301 redirects the infamous 404 error page will rear its head. But i wonder if 301 redirects were not configured how long on average does it take google to index the new site and serp links finally point to the new site". Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
Two companies merge: website A redirect 301 to website B. Problems?
Hi, last december the company I work for and another company merged. The website of company A was taken offline and the home page was 302 redirected to a page on website B. This page had information about the merger and the consequences for customers. The deeper pages of website A were 301 redirected to similar pages on website B. After a while, the traffic from the redirected home page decreased and we thought it was time to change the redirect from a 302 into a 301 redirect to the home page. Because there are still a lot of links to the home page of website A and we wanted to preserve the link juice. Two weeks ago we changed the 302 redirect from website A into a 301 redirect to the home page of website B. Last week the Google webmaster tools account of website B showed the links from the 301 redirected website A. The total amount of links doubled and the top anchor text is the name of company A instead of company B. This, off course, could trigger an alarm at Google. Because we got a lot of new links with a different anchor text. A tactic used by spammers/black-hats. I am a bit worried that our change will be penalized by Google. But our change is legit. It is to the advantage of our customers to find us if they search for the name of company A or click on a link to website A. We didn´t change the change of address of domain A in Google webmaster tools yet. Is it a good idea to change the change of address of domain A into domain B? Are there other precautions we can take?
Technical SEO | | NN-online0 -
Organic traffic down after 301 internal linkstructure
Hi, i have a question. On a wordpress site i made a change redirecting (301) all traffic from /category/subject to /subject/ - I removed the /category/. Now i have a big drop in visitors from google. I waited for the traffic to return for some over one month now but with no luck. What can i do best. return to /category/ with 301 redirect or will this hurt me more. Thanks, Robin
Technical SEO | | link0040 -
Too many 301 redirects - good or bad?
Hi, Currently, page A is redirecting to page B. I am in the process of developing new site for the same domain and this time page B will be redirected to page C. This is gonna happen on many pages. Is it correct or should i adopt some other strategy? Will it have adverse effect on the speed of my site? Page A -----> Page B ------> Page C Regards, Shailendra
Technical SEO | | IM_Learner0