Should I 301 my non-www accesses to www accesses?
-
We have external links pointing to both mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com. I read this: http://www.stepforth.com/resources/web-marketing-knowledgebase/non-www-redirect/ and wondered if I should add this to my .htaccess file:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]so that the link juice all flows to the www version of the site? Any reason not to do it?
-
Mike,
This is best practice on all sites. Forgetting about the links for a minute; you have two versions of the same page (in search engines eyes) so the first step is to do exactly what you're asking and consolidate into one.
The next step is to ensure your URLs end with a trailing slash because if you have www.url.com and www.url.com/ you again have two different versions.
DD
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
-
www vs non-www
We have 2 variations of domains. www and non-www
Technical SEO | | aaaannieee
Both can be seen by users and have been linked to on press releases, but only the www one has data on Google Search Console.
In the case, what is the best practice for us?0 -
301 Redirect back to original domain
We have a site, domainA.com and we split part of the site off into it's own site a couple of years ago as domainB.com. All urls from DomainA were 301 redirected to DomainB, but with a different folder structure. For business reasons, we now shuttering domainB and rolling it back into domainA. For the 301 redirects for urls that were on the original domainA, should I overwrite them to the new folder structure directly from the original urls? In other words: 301 redirect domainA.com/oldstructure to domainA.com/newstructure rather than: Existing 301 redirect domainA.com/oldstructure to domainB.com/newstructuretopic with a new 301 redirect to domainA.com/newstructuretopictopic
Technical SEO | | ang0 -
WWW and Without WWW Backlinks
I have just seen through ahrefs and found without WWW have more backlinks instead of WWW. Is there any way to forward all those without WWW to WWW domain, is there any harm or effect in serp ranking?
Technical SEO | | chandubaba0 -
Canonicalising To A 301?
Hi there, We currently make use of a 301 rule to always return the trailing slash version of any URL on the site. Recently, it seems that the canonical tag was implemented incorrectly. Here's an example: http://www.zando.co.za/women/shoes is redirected to http://www.zando.co.za/women/shoes/ (trailing slash) However, our canonical tags, across the site, are going to the non-slash version, as follows: I'm right in saying this really damaging? Also, if I instruct the Dev team to implement a site-wide fix by adding the trailing slash in all cases, can I expect any weird side affects on my current rankings/indexation? If so, I can only imagine it being a short-term thing as Google re-aligns it's index of our site? I treat canonical tags with plenty of caution. 😉 Any insights appreciated. Cheers, P.
Technical SEO | | RocketZando0 -
How long should you keep 301 redirects?
Hi, Back in 2009 I decided to update an older site from .htm and .shtml to .php. In order to minimize the impact I would go in every month and do a 301 redirect on the .shtml page to the new .php page. So I have many that range from 2009 through 2010. I had left the old 301's because I felt they would only be used if needed but I would think I should clean up my .htaccess by removing the old 301 redirects if they are not needed. How long should you keep this type of 301 redirect? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Force70 -
301 Redirecting weird URLs with % in them
I've been working on redirecting links reported as 404 in Google webmaster tools. I've stumbled upon 41 URLs that Google is reporting as 404 that include a '%' in the URL, but I don't know how to redirect. Here is an example: URL: bond_information.htm%20Surety%20Bond%20Information,%20with%20FAQ Attempted redirect: redirect 301 /bond_information.htm%20Surety%20Bond%20Information,%20with%20FAQ http://www.mysite.com/ Unfortunately, after implementing the redirect, http://www.mysite.com/bond_information.htm%20Surety%20Bond%20Information,%20with%20FAQ still resolves a 404 error. Anyone successfully fix these errors using Apache .htaccess?
Technical SEO | | TheDude0 -
Is this a safe 301 redirect?
We are moving our site from one platform to another. Currently on our site we have two homepages. "www.homepage.com" and "www.homepage.com/Index" Both pages have some high quality links pointing in on them. The problem: We are going to be doing a 301 redirect from "www.homepage.com/Index" page to "www.homepage.com" as we are moving platforms at this time we weren't going to create a "www.homepage.com/Index" page all. This leaves this page as an empty URL. With this webpage disappearing all together will we lose traction as we are redirecting an empty URL? Or is it better to recreate this "www.homepage.com/Index" on our new platform redirect it and wait for google to deIndex this page for us? As well is there a tutorial for how to implement 301 redirects or is this something worth looking for a developer and pay someone to do?
Technical SEO | | HCGDiet0 -
Double 301 redirect
Hi together, due to some technical reasons I have redirect (301) an existing link two times. Example: www.mydomain.com/root/site.html > 301 > www.mydomain.com/site.html > 301 www.mydomain.com/site_new.html Is there anybody how has got some experience like doing a double redirect? What about link juice? Best regards Steffen
Technical SEO | | steffen_0