Dropping the www

[SimpsonGareth]

We are planning on changing our domain next week. Everything has been covered including google change of domain procedure and redirects etc.

I plan on dropping the www during this move as it is redundant and dilutes the keyword density of the domain.

What do you guys think of this? Is it worth doing?

Thanks,

Gareth

[SimpsonGareth]

We have made the change!

http://burfieldcreative.co.uk/

We have put the redirects in place and carried out the domain change procedure with google. If anybody can check everything is in order  that would be most appreciated.

Thanks for all your advice.

[SimpsonGareth]

Thanks for the response. Yes the reason is that the company has grown and already rebranded to burfieldcreative. We need to make this switch one day...

There will be a like for like relationship on the urls and we have hired a .htaccess expert to implement the redirects.

We are carrying out the full domain change procedure in Google webmaster tools.

Please see my previous thread here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/change-of-domain-procedure

We are carrying this out today but I am still unsure if I want to put my neck on the line!

[RobertFisher]

As to question one, I believe it is force of habit. That is how they always did it.

As to question 2, Your issue with Burfieldcreative is that you have it 301'd to the JamesBurfield.co.uk. By virtue of that it has no links and will not have any links. Both the www and the non www of burfieldcreative.co.uk are 301'd to the old site. There is no value in either of the new domains at this moment. If they had a link, they would be passing the juice to the old site due to the 301's.

I think you are putting too much into BurfieldCreative vs JamesBurfield issue. If, your issue is you are already branded as Burfield Creative or you are going to put a lot of time, money, and other resources into BurfieldCreative being your brand, then you should stop and do this: Set the www.JamesBurfield.co.uk and the non www of same to 301to the new URL TO URL in the .htaccess file. If you do this any other way you are going to lose something that is hard to regain. You must be clear as to what you are doing. Do not proceed until you are. Once you switch, you are going to lose some of your links and some of your authority (up to ten percent). Be sure that is where you want to go. Remember you can put BurfieldCreative.co.uk all over and few will realize they landed on JamesBurfield. So, be sure it is  a necessary change.

You are a web design firm and you are doing well with domain and page Authority. If you screw this up you are going to hate yourself and it will take a lot of ale/beer/wine/whiskey, etc. to make you not feel it. Trust me PLEASE.

Everything in my body is saying leave it as you have it and set the preferred as explained before. But, there are other mozzers who might interject here.

Best

[SimpsonGareth]

Thanks for the response.

1. 60% use www. because:

a. There name server sets it up for them automatically

b. They think that is the only option

c. Don't realise that you maybe reducing diluting the keyword % of the domain name (A metric that is obviously considered by search engines)

2. Surely those numbers are mainly for www.jamesburfield.co.uk and not www.burfieldcreative.co.uk? It is hard to separate the back link numbers due to the new redirecting to the old. As we are doing a redirect anyway why not go to the non www?

The screen shots are great (thanks) but the tests we really need to do are:

www.burfieldcreative.co.uk

burfieldcreative.co.uk

As then we can compare the weightiness of the 2 options and see which is best.

What do you think?

[RobertFisher]

As to question 1, doesn't matter. As I see it most (about 60%) still use www, but since it resolves to the one selected it doesn't matter.

I am attaching images using the jamesburfield.co.uk. As it is now, your new url is 301'd to that anyway. Using OSE you will see that your www had a LOT more links. By doing a 301 to the non you would be losing some significant juice even though it is somewhere between less than 1 percent and 10 percent. (I advocate for 301's due to the small loss all the time; with yours, there is too much to lose by going with non www IMHO).

You have 4 linking root domains in the non and 165 in the www. Since no matter what someone puts they will end up on the www if you set the 301 to it and make it preferred in GWMT, you should do all to resolve to www as preferred domain. See images below.

TSn21.png UpQAR.png

[SimpsonGareth]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the reply. The old domain is http://www.jamesburfield.co.uk and the new domain is http://www.burfieldcreative.co.uk.

This new domain has been 'played around with' previously but it's pretty much a fresh start I think (worth checking though!). Therefore I thought we might as well get off to the best possible start and that would involve (I think) dropping the www.

So now I have 2 questions if I may...

1. Theoretically if this was a brand new domain with no history is it better to set the non www as the preferred? Of course we would redirect the alternative.
2. How can I find out which version is juiciest as the new domain is on the google radar, I want to choose the most prominent version.

Thanks for your detailed reply.

Gareth

[RobertFisher]

Gareth

Without knowing your domain it is a bit of a more difficult question. Assuming you have  not already selected non www as preferred domain in GWMT and done a 301 redirect in .htaccess file already, you need to consider this: If you www has the preponderance of links coming to it, when you make they change you will be giving up a larger amount of juice than if you did it from the other. But, in any case you need a preferred domain and you need to choose one or the other. If you choose www. even if someone puts the non www in it will resolve to the www. So, I would do it based on which had the least link value and make that one link to the one with the most. Then in GWMT select the one with the most link value as preferred.

Best