Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Solved Should I consolidate my "www" and "non-www" pages?
-
My page rank for www and non-www is the same. In one keyword instance, my www version performs SO much better.
Wanting to consolidate to one or the other. My question is as to whether all these issues would ultimately resolve to my chosen consolidated domain (i.e. www or non-www) regardless of which one I choose. OR, would it be smart to choose the one where I am already ranking high for this significant keyword phrase?
Thank you in advance for your help.
-
It may be that one version (www or non-www) has more historical links. You say your PageRank for both is the same, but how are you checking that? Google's public PageRank has not been updated in a decade or so.
Either way, I'd generally say that if you pick one version and stick to it (redirect the other, e.g. so every non-www. URL points to its www. equivalent), you should maintain all rankings. There is a theoretical advantage to picking the version with more links, but in my experience in practice this type of migration tends to be smooth.
-
Require the www Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.askapache\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.askapache.com/$1 [R=301,L]
-
Yes. I would recommend picking the version (either www or non-www) that has the historical data showing it performs better than the other version. Check the list of indexed pages for each of the versions to compare. Ideally both the www and non-www version of the website will be indexed in Google so it will help you to decide which version makes the most sense to consolidate to.
Once you identify the preferred version, set 301 redirects from the non-preferred URLs to the preferred version of each URL (the one that has more traffic, links, authority, etc.) of the site. This should be done site-wide so that all URLs are either www or non-www, it shouldn’t be a mix of both. In my experience, I’ve found that between 90-99% of the Site’s SEO Authority is preserved when setting a permanent 301 redirect.
-
@meditationbunny Sorry for the slow reply - but yes, I'd expect Page Authority to increase slightly, if the "other" version had any value to it.
For Page Optimization, yes. For example, for my own site I see:
http://tcapper.co.uk redirects to https://www.tcapper.co.uk/. This on-page analysis is for https://www.tcapper.co.uk/.
-
It may be that one version (www or non-www) has more historical links. You say your PageRank for both is the same, but how are you checking that? Google's public PageRank has not been updated in a decade or so.
Either way, I'd generally say that if you pick one version and stick to it (redirect the other, e.g. so every non-www. URL points to its www. equivalent), you should maintain all rankings. There is a theoretical advantage to picking the version with more links, but in my experience in practice this type of migration tends to be smooth.
-
@tom-capper
Thank you. Yes, I should be more clear. I am calling it page rank, when I am actually referring to Moz's domain authority and Moz's keyword ranking. Still, I believe you answered my question. Under page optimization, I can see what appear to be duplicate listings of my pages along with different SERP ranking. It was confusing until I realized that one was the www and the other was non-www. I have since added code to my .htaccess file that will send everything to www. Can I expect the page optimization section to now only show www versions of the pages? Also, can I expect page authority to increase because it is no longer a mish-mash and is all headed to the same domain and same pages (i.e. www version)? -
It may be that one version ("www" or "non-www") has more historical links. You say your PageRank for both is the same, but how are you checking that? Google's public PageRank has not been updated in a decade or so.
Either way, I'd generally say that if you pick one version and stick to it (redirect the other, e.g. so every non-www. URL points to its www. equivalent), you should maintain all rankings. There is a theoretical advantage to picking the version with more links, but in my experience, in practice, this type of migration tends to be smooth.
-
This post is deleted! -
This post is deleted! -
This post is deleted!
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
-
Page with "random" content
Hi, I'm creating a page of 300+ in the near future, on which the content basicly will be unique as it can be. However, upon every refresh, also coming from a search engine refferer, i want the actual content such as listing 12 business to be displayed random upon every hit. So basicly we got 300+ nearby pages with unique content, and the overview of those "listings" as i might say, are being displayed randomly. Ive build an extensive script and i disabled any caching for PHP files in specific these pages, it works. But what about google? The content of the pages will still be as it is, it is more of the listings that are shuffled randomly to give every business listing a fair shot at a click and so on. Anyone experience with this? Ive tried a few things in the past, like a "Last update PHP Month" in the title which sometimes is'nt picked up very well.
Technical SEO | | Vanderlindemedia0 -
Ranking penalty for "accordion" content -- hidden prior to user interaction
Will content inside an "accordion" module be ranked as non-hidden content? Is there an official guide by google and other search engines addressing this? Example of accordion element: https://v4-alpha.getbootstrap.com/components/collapse/#accordion-example Will all elements in the example above be seen + treated equally by search engines?
Technical SEO | | houlihanlokey1 -
Non-Existent Parent Pages SEO Impact
Hello, I'm working with a client that is creating a new site. They currently are using the following URL structure: http://clientname.com/products/furry-cat-muffins/ But the landing page for the directory /products/ does not actually have any content. They have a similar issue for the /about/ directory where the menu actually sends you to /about/our-story/ instead of /about/. Does it hurt SEO to have the URL structure set up in this way and also does it make sense to create 301 redirects from /about/ to /about/our-story/?
Technical SEO | | Alder0 -
Is it good to redirect million of pages on a single page?
My site has 10 lakh approx. genuine urls. But due to some unidentified bugs site has created irrelevant urls 10 million approx. Since we don’t know the origin of these non-relevant links, we want to redirect or remove all these urls. Please suggest is it good to redirect such a high number urls to home page or to throw 404 for these pages. Or any other suggestions to solve this issue.
Technical SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
NoIndex/NoFollow pages showing up when doing a Google search using "Site:" parameter
We recently launched a beta version of our new website in a subdomain of our existing site. The existing site is www.fonts.com with the beta living at new.fonts.com. We do not want Google to crawl the new site until it's out of beta so we have added the following on all pages: However, one of our team members noticed that google is displaying results from new.fonts.com when doing an "site:new.fonts.com" search (see attached screenshot). Is it possible that Google is indexing the content despite the noindex, nofollow tags? We have double checked the syntax and it seems correct except the trailing "/". I know Google still crawls noindexed pages, however, the fact that they're showing up in search results using the site search syntax is unsettling. Any thoughts would be appreciated! DyWRP.png
Technical SEO | | ChrisRoberts-MTI0 -
Why crawl error "title missing or empty" when there is already "title and meta desciption" in place?
I've been getting 73 "title missing or empty" warnings from SEOMOZ crawl diagnostic. This is weird as I've installed yoast wordpress seo plugin and all posts do have title and meta description. But why the results here.. can anyone explain what's happening? Thanks!! Here are some of the links that are listed with "title missing, empty". Almost all our blog posts were listed there. http://www.gan4hire.com/blog/2011/are-you-here-for-good/ http://www.gan4hire.com/blog/2011/are-you-socially-awkward/
Technical SEO | | JasonDGreatMaeM3.png TLcD8.png
0 -
What's the difference between a category page and a content page
Hello, Little confused on this matter. From a website architectural and content stand point, what is the difference between a category page and a content page? So lets say I was going to build a website around tea. My home page would be about tea. My category pages would be: White Tea, Black Tea, Oolong Team and British Tea correct? ( I Would write content for each of these topics on their respective category pages correct?) Then suppose I wrote articles on organic white tea, white tea recipes, how to brew white team etc...( Are these content pages?) Do I think link FROM my category page ( White Tea) to my ( Content pages ie; Organic White Tea, white tea receipes etc) or do I link from my content page to my category page? I hope this makes sense. Thanks, Bill
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0 -
Is "last modified" time in XML Sitemaps important?
My Tech lead is concerned that his use of a script to generate XML sitemaps for some client sites may be causing negative issues for those sites. His concern centers around the fact that the script generates a sitemap which indicates that every URL page in the site was last modified at the exact same date and time. I have never heard anything to indicate that this might be a problem, but I do know that the sitemaps I generate for other client sites can choose server response or not. What is the best way to generate the sitemap? Last mod from actual time modified, or all set at one date and time?
Technical SEO | | ShaMenz0