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
-
Redirect if old browser or OS to other domain?
Hi, I use cloudflare free SSL option. All is fine except it wont work with windows XP . How do you think is it ok in case of old OS/Browser redirect visitors to other domain or subdomain? What could be impacts or consequences of such step? On the moment if page meko.lv is accessed from XP sp1,2 there is error. If it is possible how could such redirect look? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Mekounko0 -
Migration to New Domain - 301 Redirect Questions
My client is migrating their site to a new domain. I just did a big redesign, including URL structure change, and 301s from old URLs to new URLs. Now they want a new name, so we're moving forward with a new domain name. However, we're going to keep the site on the current domain while we ease customers into the new name. During that time, I'm going to be building links to the new domain name and 301 Redirecting that new one to the current domain name. Then, once we migrate the site to the new domain name, I'm then going to redirect the current domain name to the new domain name. So, my question(s) is/are: Is the above process the best way to use 301 redirects to to build links to the new domain while we transition everything? Should I (or can I) do 3 redirects from the oldest URLs, to the current URLs then to the new URLs? General question... I can't seem to find this anywhere online, but what is the best practice for what order URLs should be in in the htaccess file? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Kenny-King0 -
Redirecting pages from a website to another
Hello Moz community, I’ve got a question and hope you can help! I’ve been working to improve my website’s ranking for the keywords “singing lessons London”. My current website url is http://www.sonic-crew-london.com and the page dedicated to the singing lessons is http://www.sonic-crew-london.com/booking/singinglessons.php I’ve recently bought the url http://www.singing-lessons-london.com which I hope will help to climb Google’s ranks a bit more easily for my chosen keywords. I thought I could redirect the old singing page to the new url. Is that something you would recommend me to do? Is there any specific procedure I should follow to make sure the transition runs smoothly? Any help really appreciated! Many thanks
Technical SEO | | SonicCrewLondon0 -
301 redirect + new website copy
Hi There, We are currently redeveloping our website and we're rewriting and optimising our many of our service pages. I think I may already know the answer but should we apply 301 redirects from our old services pages to the new versions? The content subject matter will be the same on the new versions, they will just be completely reworded. I would be interested to hear your views. Thanks, Stu
Technical SEO | | Stuart260 -
.EDU via a 301 Redirect?
I recently received a link to my website from an .edu. However, the way they configured it was they pointed the link to one of their internal pages and then made that page 301 to my website. Is there anyway to gain any link juice from that sort of link?
Technical SEO | | gundogs0 -
301 Re Direct Question for www
Can smeone check this code to make sure it is right so thaqt my site uses www always. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^exercisebiology.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.exercisebiology.com/$1 [R=301,L] I had the hostgators customer service personnel perform this. But I cannot get it to redirect. But he says it works.
Technical SEO | | anoopbal0 -
301 Redirect "wildcard" question
I have been looking at the SEOmoz redirect guide for some advice but I can't seem to find the answer : http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection I have lots of URLs from a previous version of a site that look like the following: sitename.com/-c-25.html?sort=2d&page=1 sitename.com/-c-25.html?sort=3a&page=1 etc etc. I want to write a redirect so whenever a URL with the terms "-c-25.html" is requested it redirects to a specified page, regardless of what comes after the question mark. These URLs were created by our previous ecommerce software. The 'c' is for category, and each page of the cateogry created a different URL. I want to do these so I can rediect all of these URLs to the appropraite new cateogry page in a single redirect. Thanks for any help.
Technical SEO | | craigycraig0