Does Prefix of my URL make any difference?
-
Hello,
I have a website which is initially appeared in search engine as without www. Last week I made changes in preferred domain name that it appeared with www.
In search engine it still shows as without www. I notified to google through webmaster tools that now my domain name is with www but it still shows without www.
I want to know that does it affect in SEO and rankings.
In Google webmaster tools I added my url with and without www however I kept preferred domain as with www.
Do I need to make any extra changes in order to avoid confusion for search engines.
Please guide.
Thanks
-
Hi,
In google webmaster tools my sitemap was not added before now I added sitemap to www.mydomain.com.
I have also add mydomain.com (without wwww) to google webmaster tools so do I require to add sitemap to mydomain.com also?
When I added www.mydomain.com and mydomain.com to google webmaster tools so does google see it as one site or two however I kept preferred domain as www.mydomain.com
Thanks
-
Hi,
Yes, I still would. What I have suggested will only take 2 minutes and is considered best practice.
For non-www to www use;
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Dan
-
Hi,
Thanks for your reply.
To avoid confusion I already set preferred domain as www.
Even I performed site verification process by Google webmaster tools.
After doing all above do I require to perform as you suggested.
Thanks
Bhadresh
-
Hi Bhadresh,
Potentially yes... Subdomain are considered as separate sites and although most sites will render in both www and non-www versions by default, loosely the www version is still a subdomain.
On top of this dilemma is that when you are link building (or better still link earning) people will link to a variety of www and non-www URL's, this will affect how your site performs. By redirecting one to another for any given page you will ensure only one page exists.
Here is the example given by SitePoint for redirecting www to non-www, feel free to review the original post for other .htaccess rules...
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Hope this helps!
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
-
Changing URL to a subdomain?
Hi there, I had a website www.footballshirtcollective.com that has been live since July. It contains both content and eCommerce. I am now separating out the content so that; 1. The master domain is www.footballshirtcollective.com (content) pointing to a new site 2. Subdomain is store.footballshirtcollective.com (ecommerce) - pointing to the existing site. What do you advise I can do to minimise the impact on my search? Many thanks Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mjmaxwell0 -
Sitemap generator which only includes canonical urls
Does anyone know of a 3rd party sitemap generator that will only include the canonical url's? Creating a sitemap with geo and sorting based parameters isn't the most ideal way to generate sitemaps. Please let me know if anyone has any ideas. Mind you we have hundreds of thousands of indexed url's and this can't be done with a simple text editor.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | recbrands0 -
URL Parameters Duplicate Page Title
Thanks in advance, I'm getting duplicate page titles because seomoz keeps crawling through my url parameters. I added forcefiltersupdate to the URL parameters in webmaster tools but it has not seemed to have an effect. Below is an example of the duplicate content issue that I am having. http://qlineshop.com/OC/index.php?route=product/category&path=59_62&forcefiltersupdate=true&checkedfilters[]=a.13.13.387baf0199e7c9cc944fae94e96448fa Any thoughts? Thanks again. -Patrick
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bamron0 -
Multilingual and Multiregional SEO URL Structure
Hello 2 questions: I have a client that has country specific TLDs and has pages for each city and wants to target languages. What's the best practice? or does the order not matter? www.domain.ca/fr-ca/toronto www.domain.ca/toronto/fr-ca 2. This client currently has the following URL structure, is this not SEO friendly? does it matter to have Canada repeated? www.domain.ca/canada/fr-ca/toronto Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nrv0 -
Is slugs in the URL now a good thing?
Hi, Until now I've adviced a lot of web shops to avoid having long URL structures for their categories and products (aka. remove the useless slugs). Recently I discovered that Google started rolling out more and more results that looks like these screenshots: http://filer.crenia.no/McDn & http://filer.crenia.no/McYO (look at the URL in the SERP) I'm assuming the slugs are a vital part of creating these SERP results. Personally, I also think they look better and favor them compared to the old SERPs. Does anyone have any experience with these, what impact they have or any reason not to add slugs to URLs again?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo0 -
Overly-Dynamic URLs & Changing URL Structure w Web Redesign
I have a client that has multiple apartment complexes in different states and metro areas. They get good traffic and pretty good conversions but the site needs a lot of updating, including the architecture, to implement SEO standards. Right now they rank for " <brand_name>apartments" on every place but not " <city_name>apartments".</city_name></brand_name> There current architecture displays their URLs like: http://www.<client_apartments>.com/index.php?mainLevelCurrent=communities&communityID=28&secLevelCurrent=overview</client_apartments> http://www.<client_apartments>.com/index.php?mainLevelCurrent=communities&communityID=28&secLevelCurrent=floorplans&floorPlanID=121</client_apartments> I know it is said to never change the URL structure but what about this site? I see this URL structure being bad for SEO, bad for users, and basically forces us to keep the current architecture. They don't have many links built to their community pages so will creating a new URL structure and doing 301 redirects to the new URLs drastically drop rankings? Is this something that we should bite the bullet on now for future rankings, traffic, and a better architecture?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JaredDetroit0 -
.com and .edu difference
Hello, Can anyone tell me how big is the difference between a PR5 .com and a PR5 .edu Double, triple? How big? Cornel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cornel_Ilea0 -
Is My Competitor Beating Me With A Better URL Structure?
A competitor is consistently beating my website on non-competitive, long tail keywords. His DA is 32 compared to my 46. His average PA is 23 to my 28. His average On Page Optimization Grade is a C compared to my A. His page speed score using YSlow is a 71 compared to my 78. The only thing I can think of at this point is that he has a better URL structure. We both have the keyword in the URL, but his structure goes like this (keyword: apw wyott parts): www.competitor.com/apw-wyott/parts While mine goes like this (I had nothing to do with this site's architecture; this is what I'm stuck with for the time being): http://www.etundra.com/APW_Wyott_Parts-C347.html It should be noted that the last word in these keywords is always the same - "parts." These keywords are for parts by different manufacturers so they follow a consistent pattern: [manufacturer-name] followed by "parts." Also, the "C347" on the end of my URL is the category number given to this particular category of products in our database. Are his URLs beating me or should I continue to look for other factors? If so, what other factors should I consider?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eTundra0