Www vs non www and understanding opensite

[wedmonds]

Hi Guys,

New guy here with some questions regarding the difference between www and non www.

I am helping with a site at the moment and gradually working my way through bits and learning all the time.  I was watching one of the seomoz videos and it brought my attention back to www vs non www.

I understand that google will treat these as two seperate sites but wanted to check what the stats are telling me.

I was under the impression that www.mydummysite.com was getting most links etc as this is what I have always used.  However when I used Opensite explorer it told me something different as follows:

www.mydummysite.com

32/100     29/100     5     16

mydummysite.com

32/100     29/100     2     1,500

Am i correct in saying that i should be adding a redirect from www.mydummysite.com to mydummysite.com ????  I am thinking that this is telling me that I am potentially missing out on 1,500 links to my site but it could mean I am missing out on just 16.  Eitherway I guess its something I should fix right?

Do I just redirect that page or would all pages beneith it such as mydummysite.com/news also need redirect???

Can i use Canonical Rel links for this now?

Thanks for taking the time to read and reply!

[wedmonds]

Excellent, thank you for taking the time to come back to me.

(*note for the admin... just tried to reply to this via my HTC Desire and clicking this text box does not bring up the keypad on the phone.  Not sure if this is a phone issue or the site not being recognised as a text box.)

[RyanKent]

My recommendation is....ignore everything and decide which URL version you prefer and go with that. Why? Because you have less then 10 linking domains and, in the long term, your site should grow and hopefully end up with hundreds of linking domains.

Also consider, you lose only a small amount of link juice (estimated between 1-10%) when you redirect a link. Of course you don't want to lose any, but you only have a few links and hopefully you will grow to many thousands.

The moz rank and trust factors will adjust after your URLs are redirected. Consolidating your linking power is the primary reason why this issue needs to be addressed.

If I was in your situation I would choose the "www" domain and update the links on your company's website. If you wish to go with the "non-www" site, that is perfectly fine as well. The important factor is that you make a decision, not which one you make.

[wedmonds]

Great that was what i thought also which means I am learning!

The 1500 links are coming from another site owned by the company and I was going to say that the Linking Root domains are higher on the www site so I would probably go with that.  However, I just check the Full List of Link Metrics and it shows :

www.mydummysite.com

Moz Rank 3.86

Moz Trust 5.59

mydummysite.com

Moz Rank 4.49

Moz Trust 5.68

Am i therefore correct in saying that mydummysite.com would be the better one to go with?

Sorry for the silly quesions, your help is appreciated. Its nearly 12pm here I should go to bed!

[RyanKent]

If those were 1500 links from 150 domains, I would definitely chose the URL version that was receiving those links. Since those links are only from 2 domains, they don't really weigh that much.

Who are the 1500 links from? Based on the information you shared it seems most likely those links are either from another site you control, or someone who is very friendly with your site. In either case, it should be a simple matter to update those links.

Your site's ranking on any given keyword can possibly change with any change you make to your site. There are too many unknown variables to even take a guess, other then for me to say I wouldn't expect this change to have any immediate impact to your rankings.

[wedmonds]

Thanks for reply Ryan.

That helps a lot.

Am i correct in saying that I should select the site with 1500 links? Seems like an obvious question.

I guess I am really trying to work out whether my current site rank and position can be improved on with a simple change and understanding the stats.

[RyanKent]

Hi Wayne.

The first step is for you to decide which version of your site is preferred, the "www" or "non-www" version. You are correct in checking existing links to your site and using this information as a factor in making a decision.

The 2 / 1500 figure for your mydummysite.com URL shows there are 2 domains which offer 1500 links to your site. I am going to guess that these are your sites, and you have a footer link or something similar which shows up on every page of the site.

If these links are under your control, you can update them to the "www" version of your site if that is what you preferred. Ultimately you need to make a decision one way or the other, and then stick with it.

The next step would be placing a redirect on your webserver to all traffic is redirected to your chosen domain. If you chose www.mydummysite.com, then whenever you enter "mydummysite.com" the address should automatically be changed to www.mydummysite.com once the redirect has been correctly set up. You can use seomoz.org as an example of how that should work.

The method of redirecting your site will vary based on software (such as Microsoft vs Linux servers) and hardware (such as Apache vs Lightspeed servers). If you are not familiar with how to make this change, contact your web host and they should be able to assist you.

This is a very common change which can easily be made. The single redirection will work for your entire site once it is properly configured. You could use canonical tags as well, but the 301 redirect process mentioned above would be the best solution.