Is there any SEO impact to using "www" vs. non-"www" preferred domain name?
-
My client has been using "www" with his domain and before I took over, has used it in marketing etc. I typically don't use "www" in my wordpress setup, and set non-www as the preferred domain in google analytics and google search console. Does it make any difference? Especially when www resolves to non-www?
I appreciate some guidance with this.
-
Thanks Tymen, but the question was specifically regarding www vs. non-www. Thanks anyway!
-
Hi Cindy, Going over to https://yourdomain.com DOES have a positive effect on SEO. Maybe it is wise to do that since you are changing anyway.
Regards, Tymen
-
Thanks, that's what I thought!
-
No, it does not matter what you choose so long as you choose one. In my opinion (I am one of the last baby boomers), my generation is more apt to use www than millenials. But, I have used non www since I knew it was irrelevant a long time ago.
So if you type in drumBEATMarketing.com in the search navigation you will see our site resolve as www.drumBEATMarketing.com. If we had originally set the preferred domain as non www, and you type in www.drumBEATMarketing.com, it would have resolved without the www. Just choose one in search console - (GWMT) and all will be well with the world.
No better UI/UX either way.
Best
-
That's what I thought. My contact seems to believe that the CEO is convinced that it DOES make a difference. I would think that Google would give preference over making the UX better - typing in www doesn't seem to do that. Just to be sure - non-www is better than www?
-
It doesn't matter which you use. When you set up the preferred domain in the search console (GWMT), if you set as www, it will resolve as www. If you set as non www it will resolve as that.
Either way, when you type in www if it is non www as preferred, you will land on the preferred domain.
Best
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
-
How to find trustful seo specialist?
How to find trustful seo specialist if you don't know about SEO a lot?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DigiVital1 -
Disavow or not? Negative SEO
Since last November we have been receiving a lot of low quality backlinks from over 700 websites. It looks like one of our pages from our website has been copied with the links being kept as they are. I have left a link to an example of this here: https://goo.gl/eWQODJ Please note, all examples seem to be copied in the same way. We have also started seeing a decrease in the amount of organic traffic (Analytics Picture), As you can see the decrease is not yet so drastically high, but it is still a decrease and this is the third consecutive month we have seen this decrease. Do you think it is worth it to use Disavow tool for all of these bad link or not? uuuLt
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm1 -
More pages is good for SEO? Is this true?
Hi Guys I have a question, I was told the more pages I have the better for SEO, Is this true?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Do I need to use meta noindex for my new website before migration?
I just want to know your thoughts if it is necessary to add meta noindex nofollow tag in each page of my new website before migrating the old pages to new pages under a new domain? Would it be better if I'll just add a blockage in my robots.txt then remove it once we launch the new website? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esiow20130 -
Changes to SEO with disavow?
Has the game changed a lot with the disavow tool I can see people still saying check out what our competitors are doing but with just going through a disavow myself how do you actually know what the correct link diversity is as 0 - 100% of the links could be disavowed. Also could a competitor not just buy a load of spammy links and disavow them to mask there real links. (I know in my backlinks on 150 are good and the rest is disavowed crap)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Would having a + plus sign between keywords in meta title have an effect on SEO?
I have seen one of my clients' competitors do this in their meta title and it got me a little intrigued... I understand that google uses the + sign as an operator in adwords, and to a certain extent, as a search tool, but would it help or make any difference to the SEO in the meta title/data (eg. 'SEO+Marketing+Services')? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | LexisClick10 -
Knowledge Graph SEO Factors
I notice when I search for my clients brand name it pulls up the Google local info and Google+ stuff, knowledge graph etc, as well as a section at the bottom, 'People Also Search For' and lists a number of the clients competitors. However when I search one of the competitors no Google local or knowledge graph stuff comes up. Client obviously wants to limit promotion of the competitors. Does anyone have any experience with this? I know Google Author rank seems to play a factor in knowledge graph results? Are the competitors doing anything on their end SEO wise? What can be done to limit this? Thanks for any help! jkn0BMT.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | EmarketedTeam0