Understanding Canocalization, domain structure, redirects

[DavidPPeters]

Hey guys,

My background is more in marketing aspect of SEO and I'm afraid my technical knowledge is not where it should be. I'm confused about how to find out whether a site is splitting link juice by having to many domains(?) that are not redirected properly.  Am I asking that right?  How do you figure that out?  And, once you know, do you just go to the ones that are not redirecting and add a 301?  Where is the best place to add a 301?

I know there's a difference in the eyes of the search engines between, say, example.com and www.example.com and probably other forms, correct?

I'm not a programmer or IT specialist, I'm a marketing consultant, but I feel like I'm really missing it when it comes to understanding all this stuff (looking at HTTP headers, using GWT, reading source code, etc) and am not sure the best way to learn it effectively so I can be sure I'm not missing something when consulting with clients.

Help? Please?

Thanks,

David

[seanmccauley]

I have found Danny Dovers SEO Secrets very useful as a beginners as its not just secrets. I believe the Art of SEO is another worthy reference.

[DavidPPeters]

John,

You rock, thank you!  I will take your advice and do just that.  I'm also going to spend a lot more time in the Q & A forum and learn all I can regarding the technical aspects of SEO.

Really appreciate you taking the time, thanks again,

David

[john4math]

To find out if your site is splitting domains, try going to different pages and seeing if they're served.  For example, go to http://example.com, http://www.example.com, http://example.com/, http://www.example.com/.  These should all end up with the same URL at the top when the page loads.  If it doesn't, that means your server needs to be configured to do these canonical redirects.  Depending on what software you use, this can vary, but the Q&A forum has had a lot of answers related to configuring redirects, so look there, or try Googling it.

I'm not sure it'll make a huge different if you decide to use example.com or www.example.com, but whichever you do choose, be consistent throughout your site.

If you really want to learn to get into the nitty-gritty of web pages, the main tool I use to view web requests, http headers, source, etc is Firebug, a Firefox Add-on. Chrome has something similar, which I think came pre-installed (if you can right click something, and choose "Inspect element", you have it).  To learn it, play around with it a bit.  The HTML tab in Firebug (Elements tab in Chrome) will show you the source of where you're selecting in the page.  The other tab it sounds like you'll be interested in is the Net tab (Network tab in Chrome).  Here you can see all the different files the page is loading, and you can view their statuses, headers, and responses.

Another tool I use frequently in Firefox & Chrome is the Web Developer Toolbar.  It lets you enable/disable a lot of different things (caching, images, CSS, JavaScript), and clear your cache with a few clicks.

[Goldladder]

I'd have a little explore round the SEOmoz "learn seo" section - really invaluable information.