Www or no www
-
OK. Let's get the obvious out of the way. We all know to 301 www to root, or root to www. However, my questions for discussion is, which is better?
Is it better to redirect the root to www or redirect the www to the root? I ask this from the context of links. Because, even though my client's sites are being redirected in the .htaccess file, I note different PA, DA, and link counts for www vs no www. It appears to me it doesn't seem to matter in the social signal arena.
What I am thinking is that redirecting the root to www is better because humans naturally link with www, so you take advantage this natural aspect.
Agree or disagree? Are there any other considerations to worry about?
Thanks,
GuyP.S. My opinion is to call BS on link juice through 301s. It may help, but it is never as good as a link with no redirects.
-
Again, if you are working on an existing site, see what people are using to link to you already, and go with the one people are using more.
If it's a brand new site, go with whatever you feel is best, just be sure to be consistent and ensure that external sites are using your chose url structure.
-
It does matter. A link to www.yourdomain.com is different than a link to yourdomain.com.
If you're 301ing www to yourdomain.com, then the link may not be as valuable (as evidenced by the difference in PA). I know from a content perspective it doesn't matter. But from a link perspective is what I am trying to get opinions on.
-
had the same issue, we direct to www. syntactically, our content is part of the world wide web, so we figured that www. was the way to go. it won't really affect SEO one way or the other, but for a consistency standpoint (as Takeshi mentions), choose one or the other via .htaccess.
-
It doesn't really matter from an SEO perspective which one you choose, as long as you are consistent about it.
If you are working on an existing site, look to see which version of the URL people are linking to you with. If everybody is linking to the www version of your site, then go with that. As much as possible, make sure that people link to you with the canonical version of the url.
My personal preference is for www.
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
-
Moving site from www to non www and also hosting to vps what will be the effect?
Hi SEO gurus,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoBlogs61
I am trying to move my site from shared hosting to VPS hosting and also moving from www to non www version.
What is the best possible way to avoid any issue and without losing the backlinks.
Is it good or bad to do? URL: https://buylikesservices.com/0 -
Google Search Console indexes website for www but images for non www.
On the google search console, the website data is all showing for the www.promierproducts.com. The images however are indexed on the non www version. I'm not sure why.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeSab1 -
Is it possible to direct HTTP www 301 to HTTPS non www?
I have a question that has been stumping me and if someone could help I would gladly buy your coffee for a month. I have a website that used to be www and http a year or two ago. Now it is https and non www. A lot of my older links point to the www and http version of my site. This results in two 301 redirects. I.e. A link on another site to my site points to http://www.mysite.com The network waterfall shows: http://www.mysite.com 301 -> http://mysite.com http://mysite.com 301 -> https://mysite.com https://mysite.com (finally) **2 part question. ** **--Do you think that this two 301 redirect hop would affect SEO performance? I can see it did affect page authority through Moz. ** --Is there away around this? I.e. to redirect http:// AND http://www directly to https:// with no hops in between. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stodzy0 -
Pages with Duplicate Page Content (with and without www)
How can we resolve pages with duplicate page content? With and without www?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | directiq
Thanks in advance.0 -
Why isn't www.devonshiredentalcare.co.uk ranking?
Hi, devonshiredentalcare.co.uk was hit badly by one of Google's algorithm updates due to some prior poor seo (by another company). We took this client on and followed all of Google's guidelines and after a lot of work, managed to lift the penalty. It's been almost a year since the penalty was lifted, but it seems to be impossible to get this website ranking for 'Dentist Glasgow', they are currently page 4 in the SERPs! They have 33 Google reviews, we've built good quality links and citations, they have a 'Grade A' for on page optimisation in moz, we are also about to make the website responsive due to the recent mobilegeddon update. Do you have any further suggestions to help get this website ranking? Thanks in advance, Faye
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dentaldesign0 -
How can I tell which website pages are hosted on the root domain vs the www subdomain?
One of the SEOmoz help desk professionals told me this today regarding some of my website pages. "it looks like you have pages hosted as separate pages on both the root domain and the www subdomain, which means that these pages are competing for rankings and authority. You may want to consider a 301 redirect or the use of rel=canonical tags.". Can anyone help me understand this? How can I tell which pages are which?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0 -
Open Site Explorer not Seeing 301 Redirect to non-www
I cannot figure out why open site explorer doesn't see that when you go to http://preferredroofingkc.net/ it redirects to http://www.preferredroofingkc.net/ This is a wordpress installation that uses a cannonical url http://www.preferredroofingkc.net/ The HTACCESS file also has a 301 redirect as follows: RewriteEngine On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertFisher
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^preferredroofingkc.net [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.preferredroofingkc.net/$1 [L,R=301] But, open site explorer still shows these sites separately without alerting that there is a 301 redirect.0