Switch to www from non www preference negatively hit # pages indexed

[BrigitteMN]

I have a client whose site did not use the www preference but rather the non www form of the url. We were having trouble seeing some high quality inlinks and I wondered if the redirect to the non www site from the links was making it hard for us to track.

After some reading, it seemed we should be using the www version for better SEO anyway so I made a change on Monday but had a major hit to the number of pages being indexed by Thursday. Freaking me out mildly.

What are people's thoughts? I think I should roll back the www change asap - or am I jumping the gun?

[BlueprintMarketing]

I agree 100% with Dan

You should essentially use all three big tools you can most likely find out using just two what the majority of the links point to.

Here is a great reason as to why you should care

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/7430/What-is-a-301-Redirect-and-Why-Should-You-Care.aspx

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/

with one or both ( if it were my site I would want to see all the links pointing to it and how powerful they are so I would purchase one month of services from each or only only one the two below in addition to Moz open site Explorer simply because none of them have the entire link index)

https://ahrefs.com/

http://www.majesticseo.com/

If they point to the www.version of your domain then 301 redirect and remember to add the www.example.com and  non-www- http://example.com

Using  a 301 redirect discussed thoroughly in this link

http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

&

this great guide

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/63260-SEO-How-to-Create-a-301-Redirect-Map-for-Site-Redesigns

Then tell google you choice in Web Master tools

when you have  found out which one has the most powerful relevant links pointing to it add both www. & no-www to Google webmaster tools and you can then select which one Google will index.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/44231

If its  to close to call use marketing.grader.com  to find out which one has more likes tweets and especially plus ones from Google because 301 redirects do not pass on social sharing you can use this as a tiebreaker.

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/22166/SEO-301-Redirects-Don-t-Pass-Existing-Social-Shares.aspx

Sincerely

Thomas

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Brigitte

To echo some of the other answer here, simply having www vs. non-www does not affect rankings at all directly. What matters is choosing one and keeping it consistent. This would mean consistent across;

• Internal links
• Always redirect from the non-preferred to the preferred
• Don't switch if you don't have to
• Try to get back links pointing at the preferred version

By the way, you need to register a separate google webmaster tools account for non-www (it is treated as a different website in terms of some of the data).

I would choose the version with the most backlinks pointing at it, honestly, and then keep it that way forever.

-Dan

[BlueprintMarketing]

First off if you are doing this just to assume that you will get more links because people type www.by default into a lot of things I would really not change it for that reason. It only reason I would change it is if you are going to introduce some sort of software like google page speed which needs a subdomain. Regardless first make sure that you have actually done at 301 redirect use this tool put in your URL

http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/

I would do return the site to how it was Unless you have good reason to believe that you actually acquire more links this way. Or you have more www. links pointing at your site.

I do not believe that it is the end of the world by any means, but I do not think that if you are having problems receiving links you are going to solve anything by adding at www.

You need to work on various white hat methods of gaining links.

Not changing around yours website architecture.

If you decide that you do want to add the www. Then by all means let Google know that your making a change by telling them that you are changing domains Inside of Google Webmaster tools.

I know you are not changing the domain however you want to treat it just like you Are That Way, Google will come back and index your site quite frequently a lot more than it would otherwise.

When you change your link structure treat it like a domain change.

http://moz.com/blog/domain-migration-lessons

http://moz.com/blog/seo-guide-how-to-properly-move-domains

https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/changes-of-domain/

It is going to take over 10% of your link juice away from anything going to the non-www. and add the same amount if you have a lot of powerful links going to www. it might be worth it.

But I still think you are looking in the wrong place for links.

Make sure your site is being indexed if you change it or if you do not.

https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/indexation-problems-diagnosis-using-google-webmaster-tools/

Try  press releases or other white hat methods.

all the best,

Thomas

[DennisSeymour]

There shouldnt be any problem with incoming links because of that.

As William said though, you will see some changes, but you will recover. Sometimes, it will take a long time to fully get Google to index the correct urls so don't jump the gun. Decide and stick with one.

[WilliamKammer]

You are basically 301 redirecting an entire site to a new URL (the "www" subdomain). So treat this like any other 301, you will dip, but it should recover for the most part.

In the future, I wouldn't recommend changing the www status after a suite is established, even if the preference changes.