I need help with setting the preferred domain; www. or not??
-
Hi!
I'm kinda new to the SEO game and struggling with this site I'm working on:
I set the preferred domain to www. in GWT but I'm not seeing it reroute to that?
I can't seem to get any of my internal pages to rank, and I was thinking it's possiblly b/c of a duplicate content issue cause by this problem.
Any help or guidance on the right way to set preferred domain for this site and whiy I can't get my internal pages to rank?
THANKS!
KristyO
-
Thank you! yes, I have read the articles that you suggested. Makes me think it's not the problem to be honest, but I can't be sure.
The industry is pet clothing HAHA! http://www.moondoggieinc.com
we already are pluggin away on social media - FB, Twitter, & Tumblr (who doesn't share picutre of their pets in clothes lol!)
My homepage is getting better, but pages off of it like /dog-harness-php and /dog-clothing.php are what I'm having trouble with.
On-page grades I get A's for both... hmm
It's kinda like i wish I had a guide to help in the process of learning seo... seems trial by error right now. I can make most things look pretty, but getting them to search right is hard!
-
Hello Kristy, every industry is different. Some are easier than others. I would focus first on making sure your on site seo is optimized first with great content and code that makes it easy for the search bots. Then I would focus on a social media campaign to reach out to your online sphere of influence. This can also help out with getting links. In time you will rank better. Check out the links I posted earlier on 301 redirects and canonical.
-
Is this why I can't rank any of my internal pages? I'm not getting duplicate content errors on all the pages.
I'm kinda worried I'm reading too many different things and not getting a clear idea of what's going on. I really enjoy working on SEO, but I'm very new to it (a few months). My start is as a designer.
Any other suggestions on why it's happening?
-
Save your old .htaccess file just in case. You will see what works and what doesn't and at least you will have something to go back on.
-
I totally understand your hessitancy of messing with HTACCESS.
Here are some great links for PHP 301 redirects and canonical.
http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php/
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
This will make life easier for you.
There is nothing to fear but fear itself.
I hope this helps and good luck
-
I'm a little scared to mess with the htaccess file. I will, if this will really help me, could it hurt?
KristyO
-
GWT only utilizes the crawl bot and search results. It doesn't control your site's operation on the backend.
Use this in your ".htaccess" file to redirect all .example.com to www.example.com
<code class="htaccess" title="in your .htaccess file">RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]</code>
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
-
Teaser Content Help!!
I'm in the process of a redesign and upgrade to Drupal 8 and have used Drupal's taxonomy feature to add a fairly large database of Points of Interest, Services etc. initially this was just for a Map/Filter for site users. The developer also wants to use teasers from these content types (such as a scenic vista description) as a way to display the content on relevant pages (such as the scenic vistas page, as well as other relevant pages). Along with the content it shows GPS coordinates and icons related to the description. In short, it looks cool, can be used in multiple relevant locations and creates a great UX. However, many of these teasers would basically be pieces of content from pages with a lot of SEO value, like descriptive paragraphs about scenic viewpoints from the scenic viewpoints page. Below is an example of how the descriptions of the scenic viewpoints would be displayed on the scenic viewpoints pages, as well as other potential relevant pages. HOW WILL THIS AFFECT THE SEO VALUE OF THE CONTENT?? Thanks in advance for any help, I can't find an answer anywhere. About 250 words worth of content about a scenic vista. There’s about 8 scenic vista descriptions like this from the scenic vistas page, so a good chunk of valuable content. There are numerous long form content pages like this that have descriptions and information about sites and points of interest that don't warrant having their own page. For more specific content with a dedicated page, I can just the the intro paragraph as a teaser and link to that specific page of content. Not sure what to do here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | talltrees0 -
Age of a re-directed domain same as age of a static domain?
I know domain age plays a role in SEO--but, I am wondering if a domain is set up to 301 re-direct to another domain if it builds the same amount of authority over time as the static domain--just looking at age as a ranking factor, not links accumulated over time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Is it worth buying a Dropped domain?
I've got a domain which was registered in July 2010 and had a website on it. I believe the domain expired and it was dropped for a couple of months. I snapped it up after discovering it in November 2012. Subsequently, the whois records show the domain was created in Nov 2012. What exactly is the "real" age of this domain from Google's perspective? Or at least, as far as SEO is concerned? Cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | syed002
Syed P.S - domain age does indeed warrant some merit in ranking factors!0 -
Does using a sub-domain lessen the effectiveness of your main domain?
For example a website without a blog and is a simple html site with no blogging capabilities. We go out to Blogger or Wordpress and set up the blog portion of the website using something like blog.yourdomain.com. Does this make a difference SEO wise? Is is more effective to be sure that you are using the main domain and not a sub-domain? I have heard both sides before but can't seem to find the concrete answer. Thanks for any advise out there.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | d25kart0 -
Help! My Domain Authority keeps dropping! What do I do?
Hey! I just noticed my Domain Authority keeps dropping? What's happening? What do I do to get it better. I'm scared and dont know the next move to make to get this site better. Help please! Thanks! http://www.moondoggieinc.com Kristy O
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KristyO1 -
Approximate linking root domains we need based on these metrics
Our top 4 competitors for a single term we're targeting has the following metrics: PA 45, DA 89, 6 linking root domains to page, 40,000 linking root domains to domain PA 53, DA 100, 3 linking root domains to page, 1.6 million to domain PA 32 DA 37, 4 linking root domains to page, 200 to domain PA 55 DA 66, 6 linking root domains to page, 3300 to domain All other optimization is about the same, except in (2) they have half of the keyword phrase in the domain and the whole keyword phrase in the URL. Also everybody else has title and meta description with the plural form, and the singular is what I typed in. We have the whole keyword phrase in the domain. The above 4 sites were internal pages, ours is a home page rank. Our metrics: PA 33, DA 22, 30 linking root domains to page, 43 linking root domains to site How tough will it be for us to compete? How many strong linking root domains will it take?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Help choosing titles
Good evening guys, I changed my titles last month, in preparation for the over optimisation penalty and the result was an instant and quite dramatic loss in traffic. I believe the reason is, the change resulted in a lot of duplicate titles. My website is similar to deviant art, but for mobile phones. So the titles include the brand of mobile phone for example. The titles were: Upload name + Brand + Content type - 3 tags - FILEID So an example would be Black Nokia wallpaper - black, abstract, grey - 12345 I changed them to Black Nokia wallpaper by artist name on domain name. But this resulted in thousands of duplicate titles and a dramatic loss in traffic. For example a user could upload 20 black wallpapers. With this in mind, I need to change my titles and fast. But I don't want to make another mistake. The one I am quite keen to try is: Black Nokia Wallpaper - Tag1, tag2 wallpapers - on domain name. So the main variable would be the name of the upload and then the 2 tags, to mix things up a little. Another option would be to throw the file ID in there somewhere? As that will always be unique. Perhaps the file ID could be in the place of the "wallpapers" after the two tags? I'd like to keep the domain name, for branding reasons. Any other suggestions are warmly welcomed. Thanks a lot.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo-wanna-bs0 -
Purchased a high ranking domain and want to transfer my site to the new domain
I recently purchased a highly ranked domain. The link profile is very good and I don't want to lose to many links however I want to transfer my site to that domain. What is the best way of doing this without losing the current rank on search engines? Also how much does the transfer of registrar information impact my SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ydop0