The best way to redirect to www

[bruki]

What is the best way to redirect non www to www. I saw a lot of the solution. is this one ok?

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.seomoz.org [NC]

RewriteRule (.*) http://www.seomoz.org/$1 [L,R=301]

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Glad you got it. The code I like to use:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Of course, replacing "domain" with your own domain.

Let us know if you need any more help.

[irvingw]

yes, a lot of people don't know that you should verify both the www and non www version of your site in Google Webmaster Tools!

[bruki]

This works:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

and to select preferred domain name first I need to add non www version of the website and that's why I received an error.

You help me a lot!

[JustinTaylor88]

What is the server error you are getting with the .htaccess file?
You do indeed need to verify ownership of you site, it's real easy to do, it involves adding a small piece of code to your site. See http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35179

[bruki]

I got server error with .htaccess file and in webmaster tool message "Part of the process of setting a preferred domain is to verify that you own http://

[JustinTaylor88]

That solution works just fine.

It looks like the one from the SEOmoz "Redirection SEO Best Practices"

I've never had any problems with it.

Also to keep things tidy, be sure to tell Google Webmaster Tools that your preferred domain is **www.**domain.com

GWMT -> configuration -> settings -> display URL's as www.domain.com