Need Help with www and non-www redirect

[opstart]

Hi everyone,

I've been looking around the forum and found some similar topics but none of them have solved my problem.

Anyway, I'm new to SEO and found that when I use Open Site Explorer for the www version of my site I see the links directed to my page, but none of my twitter stats show up. When I do the same for my non-www version. I see my twitter stats, but no links. Facebook seems unchanged. Also, the Page Authority is much higher for the www (I assume because of the links)

It is my understanding that it doesn't matter which version of the domain is used, I just need to pick one and stick with it (on Google Webmaster Tools, etc.). And that I also need to do a 301 redirect for the version that I'm not using.

The issue now is that I have a 301 redirect, and when I type in my url in any version (http, https, www, non-www) it all redirects in the browser without issue. So i know users are getting to the right page, but the Open Site Explorer still sees them as 2 different sites. My concern is that if Open Site Explorer sees it this way then Google may see it this way as well and I could be missing out on potential rankings.

I'm currently doing the redirect in the .htaccess file. The redirect looks like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Any Ideas on what I need to do to properly 301 redirect the site so that my preferred version can get credited with the links,twitter, and Page Authority stats?

Also, I'm using wordpress and it has the URL set to the non-www version of the site. However, I think I would like to change this to the www version because most of the links are directing to www, and I also think people are more familiar with that format.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[opstart]

Thanks everyone this was very helpful. I think I have it straightened out now. I've set my preferred domain in Google Search Console, and have changed many of the links to match this domain as well. Thanks again.

[RuthBurrReedy]

To Peter's point, I wouldn't worry too much about Twitter share counts since those are going away anyway. You mention what OSE says about links to the two versions of your sites, but what does Google Search Console say? Is it recognizing inbound links to your site?

If your URLs are redirecting to their correct versions, you're likely not losing too much link juice, and if you've made all the necessary changes in Search Console to set your preferred domain, Google should understand and count those links as all pointing to the same domain. OSE will continue to report on links to the www- and non-www versions separately because of how it reports on subdomains, but Google should get the picture loud and clear.

The biggest thing you can do to show Google "this is the real version of my site" is to start building new, high-quality inbound links. Over time, the volume of inbound inks to the preferred version will overtake the volume of links to the old version, which will reinforce for Google what the correct version is.

[Mike.Bean]

Try to get as many links changed to the page you've redirected to. Not all juice is passed threw a 301 redirect. I'm not certain on the social metric issues. I haven't seen them to be 100% accurate for any page.

[Mobilio]

Today Twitter make changes and implementing new button so shared will be lost.

OSE count non-www and www as different because bot need to crawl all pages to catch 301 redirect. This isn't real-time or quick so you need little patience. Please check canonical on your WordPress and change all of them to new host (www.example.com). You need to change host in WP -> Settings -> General and in Google SearchConsole preferred domain.

For social buttons - there are few ways how they get URL for sharing. Long story short - with site move you will lost all of your sharing statistics except G+ pluses. There is no way to recover them except if you use data-url for them. But you will share different URL then.

IF you wish to keep number of social shares then you need to 301 www to non-www. Within time OSE will catch this 301 and links will push DA higher there.

Anyway - look messy answer but i know this situation. When you make site one of first job is to check www and non-www also http and https. This make 4 checks (and few more with strange domains as ftp.example.com; mail.example.com) totally just to be sure that site can be seen only in one host. Because later 301 can broke something. And delaying this 301 make things more and more complicated.