Root domain or sub domain? WWW. or NOT WWW......

[craigyboy]

I am a little confused! I use vidahost  whom I have to say I find very helpful. I currently have the domains www.fentonit.co.uk and www.fentonit.com, now the websites was set up using the www.fentonit.com and I have www.fentonit.co.uk as a parked domain pointed to the www.fentonit.com.

Confused yet?

Now because I wanted the website to show www.fentonit.co.uk I added some code I was given by the guys to the .hta access file and viola up it comes as the .co.uk which is what I wanted.

So if your still here and havent A: Killed yourself yet or B: Went to the Pub

Then my questions are:

1. Is there going to be an issue from an SEO point of view having my site set up this way and if so how do I resolve it?

2. Would I be better using the root domain fentonit.co.uk (I think this is the root domain, although it iscurrently parked and pointed) as opposed to the sub www domain?.......and finally.......?

3. If it is set up as I stated what exactly would be my root domain, would it be the .co.uk or the .com?

Sorry and I completely understand if your not interested in answering it but if you do.....Thanks in advance and I'll take you to the pub...lol

Craig

www.fentonit.co.uk ( i think)

[craigyboy]

Yeah, i learned a lot today but it was a long day...lol. Big thanks to both you and Marcus.

The final thing I have to do is add the canonical link rel's and its of to the next problem.....

regards,

Craig

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Craig,

I have think you have got it set correctly I checked http://www.fentonit.co.uk/and both http://www.fentonit.com as well as each domain with or without the www. point to http://www.fentonit.co.uk/ outstanding job and your full website. I wish you luck with your company and let me know if I can be of assistance to you in the future.

Sincerely,

Thomas Zickell

Blueprint Marketing

[craigyboy]

I'm back:

Ok I promise this is the end of it:

Would I be correct in saying that I need to set up a 301 redirect for: http://www.fentonit.com, http://fentonit.com & http://fentonit.co.uk to be perfectly correct and will it be suffice to do this a page level or do I need to do this on every page on every url if I am letting Google know my preferred Domain?

and as the famous Inspector Columbus said....oh just one more thing .............Do I need to do this for an index page also.....?

I may have cracked it, when I run a checker this is what I received back for all the URL's:

`Results of the GSiteCrawler Server-Test
Tested at 6/26/2012 4:25:32 PM / from 217.43.237.128:

URL=http://fentonit.co.uk
Result code: 301 (MovedPermanently / Moved Permanently)
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:25:31 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: http://www.fentonit.co.uk/
Content-Length: 234
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
New location: http://www.fentonit.co.uk/

URL=http://www.fentonit.co.uk/
Result code: 200 (OK / OK)
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:25:31 GMT
Server: Apache
P3P: CP="NOI ADM DEV PSAi COM NAV OUR OTRo STP IND DEM"
Cache-Control: no-cache
Pragma: no-cache
Set-Cookie: 98defe8f962c0d1d3296da4a786cbd86=14a6986d7361cee18eca06c3dda7101d; path=/
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8`

What do you think!?

My Eternal Gratitude,

Craig

www.fentonit.co.uk

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Craig,

I would use only one site to be honest. I realize there may be a small benefit but you would essentially have to juggle the duplicate content issue I understand if you want a blank page or if somebody goes to that URL to redirect their traffic to your main site. I have found personally using DYN to be very effective and a fantastic company you can use their webhop service for very little money take a look this would do it. http://dyn.com/dns/webhop/  or if you're current DNS registrar allows for it which it should. Maybe set up the Cname I would do something similar to what shown here

http://www.active-domain.com/help/help-web-forwarding.htm

I know there are a lot of forwarding services out there that will not interfere with the current 301 redirect you have on your main site. here is how Webhop would work with your current registrar http://dyn.com/support/webhops-and-redirections/#secondary

Hope this helps man,

Thomas

[craigyboy]

Hi Thomas,

Just when I thought I was out of the woods.....lol. It would appear that when I try to redirect www.fentonit.com to www.fentonit.co.uk it gives me this error:

"You cannot redirect to http://www.fentonit.co.uk. It would cause a redirection loop because /home/fentonit/public_html/ is at the same place as /home/fentonit/public_html/."

The reason I want to use the .co.uk as the main as I heat that there is a small benefit in using .co.uk for UK based sites.

What do you think?

Kind Regards,

Craig

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Craig,

I would definitely use a 301 redirect from the name you least like. So if you're root server is going to be www.fentonit.com  I would set up www.fentonit.co.uk to redirect to www.fentonit.com  along with having the home page canonical read

this will be different for every page so if it is "about us" you will put in the entire URL is seen in this

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

my honest opinion the easiest thing you can do to save yourself a lot of hassle stick with one domain. I know it seems hard but over the long run optimizing 2 domains is a nightmare in comparison to just having one. I would use just the .com I hope this answers your question and is of help man. We have all been there at one time. Nice site by the way.

Sincerely,

Thomas von Zickell

[craigyboy]

Thats brill Marcus,

Thanks a lot for your help, it took me a little to grasp this one. I can it seem use the Cpanel to set redirects without having to implement the code and then as a fail safe I'll Specify preferred domain directly with Google to Keep em Happy!!

Hopefull no more questions for a couple of hours, ....lol

Cheers for your support.!!

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey, yeah, that is exactly the case, you just have the same website running on four URL's so it is technically a duplicate.

You need to implement the 301 redirects ideally but you can also specify a preferred domain in Webmaster Tools.

Details here:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=44231

Do that for now and then set the 301 for users when your guy can get online.

Shout if I can help.

Marcus

[craigyboy]

Hi Marcus & Thanks for the response! Now Im almost getting it but one problem is that I am not responsible for all the techy coding my developer is and he's in Spain - lucky him...........but you probably  back from the pub by now and heres where I am at! (Full 12" Ext Remix Version)

It would appear that my domain in use is www.fentonit.co.uk which points to www.fentonit.com as a permament redirect with or without (www) which is fine,

however when I use a tool to check these 4 Url's:

http://www.fentonit.co.uk/
http://www.fentonit.com/
http://fentonit.co.uk
http://fentonit.com

, it would appear to inform me that they are all identical as per below:

Which is as I thought and as they should be!!

| http://www.fentonit.co.uk/ | Home |
| http://www.fentonit.com/ | Home |
| http://fentonit.co.uk | Home |
| http://fentonit.com | Home |

Meta Description Tag
http://www.fentonit.co.uk/	Fenton IT Website. Created by Craig Robertson and Martin Dick
http://www.fentonit.com/	Fenton IT Website. Created by Craig Robertson and Martin Dick
http://fentonit.co.uk	Fenton IT Website. Created by Craig Robertson and Martin Dick
http://fentonit.com	Fenton IT Website. Created by Craig Robertson and Martin Dick

So I then also checked to see what server response codes I was receiving and this is what was fed back:

I used all four URL's and they all came back with a 200 Server Response Code:

for www.fentonit.co.uk, this is what I recieved so I am thinking that I should have this is my primary domain and 301 redirects for the other 3?? Or do i just need to do it for the www.fentonit.com/ ?

| Server Response Code: 200 |
| Additional Headers: |
| Date | Tue, 26 Jun 2012 13:16:43 GMT |
| Server | Apache |
| P3P | CP="NOI ADM DEV PSAi COM NAV OUR OTRo STP IND DEM" |
| Cache-Control | no-cache |
| Pragma | no-cache |
| Set-Cookie | 98defe8f962c0d1d3296da4a786cbd86=41f8de16b817ff27fedd2f45964f5f42; path=/ |
| Transfer-Encoding | chunked |
| Content-Type | text/html; charset=utf-8 |

Does this make it any clearer? - sorry and thanks again.

Kind Regards,

Craig

www.fentonit.co.uk

[craigyboy]

Hi Thomas and many thanks for taking the time in responding. Yes duplicate content was one of my concerns, as would be canonical issues; Now it would appear that my domain in use is www.fentonit.co.uk which points to www.fentonit.com as a permament redirect with or without (www) which is fine,

however when I use the tool above with these 4 Url's:

http://www.fentonit.co.uk/
http://www.fentonit.com/
http://fentonit.co.uk
http://fentonit.com

, it would appear to inform me that they are all identical as per below:

| http://www.fentonit.co.uk/ | Home |
| http://www.fentonit.com/ | Home |
| http://fentonit.co.uk | Home |
| http://fentonit.com | Home |

Meta Description Tag
http://www.fentonit.co.uk/	Fenton IT Website. Created by Craig Robertson and Martin Dick
http://www.fentonit.com/	Fenton IT Website. Created by Craig Robertson and Martin Dick
http://fentonit.co.uk	Fenton IT Website. Created by Craig Robertson and Martin Dick
http://fentonit.com	Fenton IT Website. Created by Craig Robertson and Martin Dick

So I then also checked to see what server response codes I was receiving and this is what was fed back:

I used all four URL's and they all came back with a 200 Server Response Code:

for www.fentonit.co.uk, this is what I recieved so I am thinking that I should have this is my primary domain and 301 redirects for the other 3?? Or do i just need to do it for the www.fentonit.com/ ?

| Server Response Code: 200 |
| Additional Headers: |
| Date | Tue, 26 Jun 2012 13:16:43 GMT |
| Server | Apache |
| P3P | CP="NOI ADM DEV PSAi COM NAV OUR OTRo STP IND DEM" |
| Cache-Control | no-cache |
| Pragma | no-cache |
| Set-Cookie | 98defe8f962c0d1d3296da4a786cbd86=41f8de16b817ff27fedd2f45964f5f42; path=/ |
| Transfer-Encoding | chunked |
| Content-Type | text/html; charset=utf-8 |

Does this make it any clearer? - sorry and thanks again.

Kind Regards,

Craig

www.fentonit.co.uk

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Craig,

It looks to me like you may be producing duplicate content in Google eyes put both of your URLs into this tool http://tools.seobook.com/general/website-comparison/

you'll get duplicate content. The thing I'm worried about the most are interested and I should say is where are you pointing your if you have a favorite http://www.fentonit.com/ or http://www.fentonit.co.uk

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

I would take the one you prefer make it your canonical URL then redirect without a cloak with your other domain to your site. If it were me to be completely honest ( trust me I do understand the .com is a great domain to have however been in the UK you want the .co.uk) if it were me I would stick with the .com easier make it my canonical then you won't have any trouble ranking as you have a nice site that I would not risk staying in Google sandbox any longer than needed.

I would personally include the WWW. in my final domain I know it does not matter to Google however when people are linking to you they're more likely to type in WWW. so I personally would stick with it that way and the 301 redirect you can have someone type in whatever they want WWW. or Not it all goes to the same place.  I hope I was of some help to you.

Respectfully,

Thomas Von Zickell

Blueprint Marketing

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Craig

You have four possible URLs here:

fentonit.co.uk
www.fentonit.co.uk
fentonit.com
www.fentonit.com

You want to sort this out like how you have suggested and then check the http response codes to ensure that you are getting all variations redirected to www.fentonit.co.uk. If you are using htaccess something like this should do the job (server setups vary sometimes)

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^fentonit.co.uk [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.fentonit.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^fentonit.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.fentonit.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.fentonit.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.fentonit.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]

You may also have an index page that you need to take care of

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.php\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.fentonit.co.uk/ [R=301,L]

Also, it makes sense that all your internal links point to the www.fentonit.co.uk root and if you are a real perfectionist that any external links use the same root as well.

I'm off to the pub

Marcus