With or without the "www." ?
-
Is there any benefit whatsoever to having the www. in the URL?
My domain is quite long therefore I've not been using the www. however a few people have mentioned it's good practice to include it.
The www. forwards to the main URL (non www.) and I've set my preferred domain name in webmaster tools to the non www. so I'm thinking that should all be ok.
Just hoping I could get some of the experts views to make sure this is all ok. The site is a year old and I'm just starting to really get going on the link building so it's not too late to change if I'm wrong.
If others link to my site and include the www. will the link juice be passed, as I suspect many will include it without any thought?
-
Deviating slightly on the top here but I would say that link inclusion on social sites you should use services like bit.ly and not paste in the URL.
My reasoning for this is what with a bit.ly url if you add a + at the end you can see statistics for that particular link (how many clicks its had etc), which is nice and simple and saves crawling through Google Analytics to answer some simple fundamental questions.
In email signatures, leaflets and printed promotional material (where your typically short on space to use) then I agree it does make things shorter and look nicer, and who know maybe it will catch on and more and more people will start removing www. from their domains and it will then become more of a standard, for which Google and other search engines will probably use as a possible ranking factor.
I must admit this has been a great discussion on this topic.
-
small but good point
-
One other way of looking at this, especaly if you have a short domain is that a shorter url uses up less of character limits on social sites, forum sigs, or any other senario where you might otherwise have to use a url shortener to post the link.
It's a slight benifit, but it may mean the diffrence between sharing yourname.com or goog.gl/code, the former of which is usualy prefurable for brand reconition at least.
-
i think more would leave the www off when typing, but thats just my opinion. but more to the point i think more will leave it off as time goes on.
to make myself clearer, i think every day more and moe people realize it is un-necessary
of cause in your example i would leave it on.
in fact if a site had 11 links to www and 10 links to non www, i would leave it on, but if it had 10 each way, they i would leave it off as my preference. links is much more important
-
Recently we were faced with the same issue on behalf of a client. I made the decision to retain the www. My reasoning was based that this client had been live with their website since 1998 and had amassed literally thousands of backlinks all pointing to the www of his website. In my mind keeping his URL structure was more important than shortening a URL. His backlinks spoke volumes for his past success.
I am also of the opinion that a majority of end users will still type into a search www as prefix before the domain name. With that in mind it makes feel that they would also automatically type ‘www’ as a prefix when linking back to a site.
So, strictly from an SEO point of view I woudl use WWW.
-
agreed
-
Yeah that's fair enough but like I said it's not a deal breaker and there are more important things to spend time changing to benefit your site for search engines. I live by the rule, "If its not broke, don't fix it", until search engines decide that non-www is "better" or they decide to put more weighting on non-www domains then there is no point worrying about it.
-
I think if you go back a few years, people did expect to see a www, i think that is less so today, and even less so in the future.
but it is a small point really, the main thing is once you have made your decision, make sure you get your redirects and internal linking correct.
-
I agree it is not a big thing, but i cant agree on doing so because a majority of sites do it.
The resson i dont use www, is that it is un-necessary, i cant see any argument for it.
-
The article does not mention redirects, 301 redirects leak link juice, both google and bing have confirmed that, .
The article is how GWMT counts internal links, even if google search algorithm saw www and non www as internal, it would still see them as 2 different pages, and it would still not pass all link juice on a redirect, as it does not matter if the link is external or internal, all 301 redirects leak link juice.
-
If I remember there /was/ a good reason one way or the other for using cookieless domains and such to optimise image delivery e.t.c., it can only be done with your website on one and images on the other, but I can not remember which was around it was, and what senerio brings it about at the moment.
I prefur the www. version mostly due to all our competitors using it, so we look 'odd' when next to them. People expect to see the www.
-
Thanks for all of the replies, much appreciated. I think I shall leave it as it is as there doesn't appear to be any merit to moving across to the www. apart from the very small loss of link juice when people link to the www. and it gets 301'd.
-
In the grand scheme of things I don't see it being a big issue as Google's recent updates to the algorithm are targeted at over optimisation of content and weeding out poor quality pages from the SERP.
My point being that from an SEO perspective there are more important things to concern yourself with to ensure your website is ranking highly in Google for your chosen set of keywords.
-
I think many people have misinterpreted this article. They say that they have changed the way they categorise links in Webmaster Tools, it does not mention any change in the algorithm. Many comments on the article asked for clarification on this and here is the response:
"Re: all the search algorithm- and ranking-related questions: This update only changes how links are displayed in Webmaster Tools. It doesn't affect how links are valued in relation to the search algorithm or ranking. It has nothing to do with Panda, nothing to do with keywords, nothing to do with PageRank."
So you should still leak a bit of link juice from a 301.
-
Personally I think the non-www vs www seems a bit pointless, people very rarely type in the domain name into the address bar and even if they do type it without www. there will be a redirect in place to add that in for them.
In terms of search engines and the SERP page then yes it may look cleaner, but the end visitor isn't going to sit there and think, "oh this site isn't using www, i'll go to that site instead".
Its all down to personal preference but I would suggest leaving it is www.domain.com as this is what the majority of site seem to do (even SEOMoz!)
-
Google has changed their approach on this and now see www and non-www as the same (they do not even count it as a redirect anymore) googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/08/reorganizing-internal-vs-external.html
-
I would not say not at all, they will lose a little as 301's leak link juice, they do not apss it all.
But either way you can have that problem.
-
I always use non-www, as it makes my domain name shorter. So long as you choose what your preference is in webmaster tools and 301 redirect the www to the non-www (like you did) then you will have no problems from Google.
The links to your website containing www. will not affect your link juice at all.
-
There is no reason to have a www, i dont have one on any of my domains, and recomend against it for my clients.
Imagine if people were call me www.alan, it would be stupid, so why call your web site www.domain.com
I believe this is a leftover from old unix servers, it is not needed today.
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
-
Unsolved 301 Redirect chain http>https>https:/www
Dear community, I have the same issue with redirecting chain from http - https and then to https:// www.____
On-Page Optimization | | Damian_Ed 0
In one of the previous opened discussions the solution given was: you'd update the server level rule to point directly to the end URL form.
Re: 301 Redirect chain Are there any tutorials or resources available to help me properly implement this solution and resolve this issue? Tags: 301 Redirects, HTTPS, WWW, Server Level Rule, Redirect Chain Any tutorials how to do it properly to resolve this issue ?0 -
How to replace the keywords of our Google Site https://www.opcfitness.com/ 's TITLE
How to replace the keywords of our Google Site https://www.opcfitness.com/ 's TITLE Our new google site https://www.opcfitness.com/ page https://www.opcfitness.com/commercial-fitness title: Gym Equipment for Sale - Buy Commercial Fitness The site name is Gym Equipment for Sale. But we need the title like this Buy Commercial Fitness - Gym Equipment for Sale How to fix it?
On-Page Optimization | | ahislop5740 -
I have a duplicate URL from example.html to example without .html
I've recently changed my links from example.html to just example, however, moz shows that its been duplicated. Is this effects my ranking? if yes, how i can fix it please?
On-Page Optimization | | aptustelecom0 -
301 Redirects From a URL without Keyphrases to one With Keyphrases
I have a client that sells services. Each service offered currently has a URL structure like this: www.companyname.com/product/asp$view-id-page3022-item-24 These pages are pretty old, and I would love to have a more user-friendly URL like this: www.companyname.com/product/purple-swatch-watch If I rename the URL and do a 301 redirect, what impact will that have on search? Ideally, this page will be optimized for "purple swatch watch", but the current URL structure is so... well, you know. My apologies if this has been answered before. I tried looking through archived of 301 issues, but lost hope after my first 10 or so attempts at answered didn't help this specific issue.
On-Page Optimization | | ericav0 -
Can't rank for a target key word "penalized?"
I've been trying to rank for the key word "kayak fishing" for my site www.yakangler.com. Last year when I started working on the SEO for my site I was on page 30 for Google search results so like the 300th result. After tweaking things on my site I managed to get to the second page but have since fallen all the way back to page 25-26 in the search results. I'm wondering if I'm penalized for this key word. I can't figure out why my site is ranking soooo badly for "kayak fishing" Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | mr_w0 -
Can somebody help me with a "Grade F" report
My Seomoz account tells me i've got a Grade F for my on-page optimalisation. The report said there's no single "on page keyword" usage at the whole page. Can somebody tell me what went wrong? If you take a look at my website: www.oceandrivers.nl, you'll see that i've used the keyword "prive chauffeur huren" everywere. In the URL, the H1 etc. (See image)
On-Page Optimization | | OceanDrivers
So i don't get it?! Thanks in advance! [](<a href=)" target="_blank">a> visWA visWA0 -
What does this mean on first step up setting up a campaign? "Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here."
I am BRAND new to this, and setting up my first campaign. I choose subdomain, and entered www.pdsaz.com. This is the message I receive: We have detected that the domain www.pdsaz.com and the domain pdsaz.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here.
On-Page Optimization | | cschwartzel0 -
Www1 and www domain
hi, I have a client who has an e-commerce business. My client does not want to fill the pages with too much content and has set up a www1 version with the same domain-name as the www. The plan is to create a lot of content and push www1 in ranking and then sending users (via links) to the www for ordering. Although there will be no duplicate content published on www and www1 this seems like an odd strategy, especially since the www already has a good page rank, and I'm not sure about how engines view a www.domain.com and www1domain.com situation even with unique content in each. Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | vibelingo0