I need help with htaccess redirect

[imrubbish]

Hi guys,

we have the domain cheats.co.uk, it has always displayed as cheats.co.uk without the www.

However it is now showing 2 version of the site, both the www. and the non www. version.

I know how to add to the htaccess folder to get the non www. version going to the www. version but i am worried about doing this because the non www. version has always been the one indexed in Google and has a page rank of 3.

Should i in fact be redirecting the www.version to the non www. version to keep page rank etc? or will page rank be passed over etc if i redirect to the www. version

I hope thats clear

Thanks guys

Jon

[RyanKent]

Any redirect causes an estimated 1 - 10% loss of link juice. If all your links use the non www version, then from a pure SEO link value perspective you should redirect the www version to the non www version of your URL.

If you are on good terms with the sites who are providing those links, you could also ask them to update their links to your new structure. It's a decision you will need to make.

Your htaccess code seems ok. Once again, that is not my area of expertise. I created the code I used with the Redirect app in cPanel and have copied it.

[imrubbish]

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for your answer. I believe that it was the non www version which has been used since existence and this has a page rank 3, i do think it looks better in the serps with the www.version though. From your experience the page rank and most of the link juice that is on the non www. version should transfer over to the www. version in time?

The redirect i was going to put on was

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

[RyanKent]

You can use the "www" or non-www form of your URLs. The important thing is to make a choice then stay consistent with your choice.

PageRank and links will be fine with either choice. Whenever you use a redirect you lose a small amount of link juice. All things being equal, determine which form of URL is most commonly used in your backlinks, then use that URL.

The method for a redirect depends on your hardware and software. The most common configuration for web servers is currently Apache servers with cPanel access. If you have this setup, you can use the Redirect application or ask your host to set the redirect up for you. I would not recommend making the change manually. One character out of place and your server will be instantly inaccessible.

With the above noted, below is code which can be added to your htaccess file to redirect non-www traffic to the www equivalent. I am not a htaccess expert and the code below you can use at your own risk. It works for me.

`RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]`