Should I use www. or not in my main URL?
-
I have backlinks coming into my homepage, which has both a www. URL and one that's merely http://mysite.com. Which is the preferred URL for best optimization for search engines and how do I find this out?
-
For character sake I would opt to not use the www and have it redirected. But once you have decided make sure you are consistent. You can advertise with either, it's more the actual linking that makes the difference.
-
I started out as a Windows guy using IIS at which point you want to setup the primary domain account then setup the dns alias to point to the primary domain. This way there is no marketing involved because they point to the same location. When setting up a webmaster account I use the www but it really doesn't matter because it still points to the original domain.
-
As has been stated it doesn't matter which one you choose, but since you do have links to both, I would pick the one with the better link profile. The one with the most or better quality links would be my choice.
-
Thanks! I threw a redirect from the http:// to the http://www. address.
-
Theo's on the money here... it makes no difference to the engines.
If you need help deciding, check out which homepage (with or without www) has the higher rank and roll with that one!
-
Both are equally good and neither are preferred more or less by the search engines. Just choose which one you like more (for whatever reasons) and redirect the one you don't choose to the one you do.
My personal choice is www as it looks more 'classic', but various reasons could be given for the non-www as well (such as the fact that it creates shorter URLs for example when Tweeting one)
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
-
Is 301 redirect the only way when using Vanity URLs?
We have been using vanity urls for some of our pages. Mostly the pages that have a vanity URL have a long URL length. But now the problem is, the vanity URL is getting displayed on the search engine when the particular keyword related to the page is entered. I checked the google search console, the vanity URL is indexed and the original URL remains unindexed. What should I do? Is adding 301 redirect to the vanity URLs are solution? Since some of vanity URLs are not redirecting to the original. Some of the original pages are not getting traffic. Also, can using canonical tag help?
Technical SEO | | tejasbansode0 -
Using 410 To Remove URLs Starting With Same Word
We had a spam injection a few months ago. We successfully cleaned up the site and resubmitted to google. I recently received a notification showing a spike in 404 errors. All of the URLS have a common word at the beginning injected via the spam: sitename.com/mono
Technical SEO | | vikasnwu
sitename.com/mono.php?buy-good-essays
sitename.com/mono.php?professional-paper-writer There's about 100 total URLS with the same syntax with the word "mono" in them. Based on my research, it seems that it would be best to serve a 410. I wanted to know what the line of HTACCESS code would be to do that in bulk for any URL that has the word "mono" after the sitename.com/0 -
WP URL issue - Concatenated URLs (LOTS of them)
WP is doing this somehow, and creating URLs for hundreds of pages that don't exist. HOW is this happening, and how do I stop It? I have many, many URLS like this: https://www.atouchofrust.com/terms-of-use/atouchofrust.com/vendor-news. Of note, atouchofrust.com/terms-of-use, and atouchofrust.com/vendor-news are both legit pages on the site. Why they are being concatenated is beyond my limited understanding of WP. Please, somebody, help. Cori
Technical SEO | | FlyingC0 -
Redirect_to in URLs?
I've never seen this before. I'm assuming that it's not SEO friendly and that these should be 301s or 302s instead? http://ksa-beta.motory.com/ar/login/?redirect_to=http://ksa-beta.motory.com/ar/cars-for-sale-search/results/central/riyadh/ford/explorer/2010/ford-explorer-2010-1038353 http://ksa-beta.motory.com/ar/login/?redirect_to=http://ksa-beta.motory.com/ar/account/my-saved-searches/
Technical SEO | | KatherineWatierOng0 -
URL structure
Hello Guys, Quick Question regarding URL strucutre One of our client is an hotel chain, thye have a group site www.example.com and each property is located in a subfolder: www.example.com/example-boston.html , www.example.com/example-ny.html etc. My quesion is : where is better to place the language extension at a subfolder level?
Technical SEO | | travelclickseo
Should i go for www.example.com/en/example-ny.html or it is preferable to specify the language after the property name www.example.com/example-ny/en/accommodation.html? Thanks and Regards, Alessio0 -
Url rewrite subfolder
Hi, How can i rewrite example.com/example1/example2/example3 to example.com/example3 And is there tools or software that can generate url rewrite... (not a plugin) Thanks !
Technical SEO | | bigrat950 -
Should I use these Meta Tags or Remove it?
Hi, I have a lot of older pages that I am cleaning up older pages, and I see that I have <title>Actual Title</title> (I understand the importance of this tag.) (I have some text in this meta tag on a lot of pages, sometimes matching my title tag exactly but in some cases I treated it like a mini description. Should I remove the on my pages, or keep it and make sure it is the exact as the main Title Tag. -------- Question about meta tag #2. I have heard rumors that the keywords tag should be removed. example: Thanks in advance! Force7
Technical SEO | | Force70 -
Regarding Canonical Url
We have a e-commerce website. Our own homegrown:-) We recently visited Google Webmaster tools and could see that Google mention we have double Meta tags for some main and subcategories. Each Product Category on our site have a subcategory/ Sub url - "Bestseller", "On Sale", "just arrived". The sub url is not a really a real category and we can therefore not make totally unique description and title for does urls. domain.com/category domain.com/category/bestseller
Technical SEO | | areygie
domain.com/category/on-sale
domain.com/category/just-arrived We are thinking about 2 solutions. 1. Canonical Url on subcategory pointing to main category.
2. Or add a word bestseller, on sale or just arrived in front of the meta title/description. We can do this from code. I personally opt for option 1. But I am little unsure what is the best way to go. Thanks in advance for your advice0