Best Practice for www and non www
-
How is the best way to handle all the different variations of a website in terms of www | non www | http | https?
In Google Search Console, I have all 4 versions and I have selected a preference.
In Open Site Explorer I can see that the www and non www versions are treated differently with one group of links pointing to each version of the same page. This gives a different PA score.
eg.
- http://mydomain.com DA 25 PA 35
- http://www.mydomain.com DA 19 PA 21
Each version of the home page having it's only set of links and scores.
Should I try and "consolidate" all the scores into one page?
Should I set up redirects to my preferred version of the website?
Thanks in advance
-
thanks for your answer
that was helpful
-
Thanks for taking the time to put together such a wonderfully detailed answer.
-
Hi Samantha,
What you have is what are called "canonical issues." By allowing multiple versions of your domain open and crawlable to search engines you "split" your ranking authority and result in the issues you are seeing right now.
The best practice is to choose one version of your domain as the "true canonical" and then 301 redirect the others at the server level by means of mod_rewrite code. Doing so will consolidate your content, incoming links and PageRank and greatly increase the root domain authority of your site.
To search engines, if your site hasn't instituted 301 redirect commands at the server level, all of these versions of your site home page would be treated as "separate pages" and each would accumulate authority individually:
http://yoursite.com/
http://www.yoursite.com/
http://yoursite.com/index.php
http://www.yoursite.com/index.php
https://yoursite.com
https://www.yoursite.comYou get the idea.
Most websites are run on one of three different types of servers...
- Unix-based servers running Apache.
- Unix-based servers running Nginx.
- Microsoft Windows-based servers running IIS or similar.
If you're unsure of what kind of server runs your site, ask your hosting company. Most sites are run on Unix-based servers with Apache. In that case, the server's behavior is configured using something called the .htaccess file.
If your site's root domain already contains a
.htaccess
file, you can simply scroll to the end of whatever code is already there and append your 301 redirect code at the bottom of the file, starting on a new line. While this may sound complicated, it's actually very, very simple to do. If you can upload files to and from your Web server, then chances are you'll have no trouble managing (i.e. altering or creating and uploading) your.htaccess
file(s).But yes, bottom line, you ALWAYS want to consolidate URLs and present one uniform "preferred" URL format to search engines and users. In your case, that would appear to the be the non-www domain which has the higher Domain Authority.
You can learn all about redirection best practices at the Moz resource here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection
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
-
Best way to absorb discontinued brand/domain?
Our parent company is looking to absorb the domain of a brand we are discontinuing. The domain we want to absorb has a thousands of blog posts from 2010 onward. Much of the content is old but still high-converting. We would like to keep as much of the potential traffic as possible, but we don't want the parent website to become too large or lose credibility with too many 301 redirects. Any advice on the best way to do this?
Technical SEO | | NichGunn1 -
I broke Google! (random snippet appearing in non-personalized search)
Hello all, so either I broke Google or Google doesn't know how to index my page properly (onradpad.com/paymyrent). If you search "pay rent with credit card", whether you're logged in to Google or not, you'll see a snippet from our signup process (which is js) right under the ad slot in the serps (Awesome! You're signed up!) and it will repeat where my meta data should be. It's been like this for well over a month now and I cannot figure out how to get rid of it. Additionally, if you search for the branded title of the page "pay with radpad", it pulls language that's not on that page (perhaps from somewhere in the js signup form). Though if you search for "pay rent with radpad" you'll see what my meta description is supposed to look like in the serps. Any ideas as to what the heck is going on?
Technical SEO | | RadMatt0 -
Last Part Breadcrumb Trail Active or Non-Active
Breadcrumbs have been debated quite a bit in the past. Some claim that the last part of the breadcrumb trail should be non-active to inform users they have reached the end. In other words, Do not link the current page to itself. On the other hand, that portion of the breadcrumb would won't be displayed in the SERPS and if it was may lead to a higher CTR. Foe example: www.website.com/fans/panasonic-modelnumber panasonic-modelnumber would not be active as part of the breadcrumb. What is your take?
Technical SEO | | CallMeNicholi0 -
Merging two sites into a new one: best way?
Hi, I have one small blog on a specific niche and let's call it firstsite.com (.com extension) and it's hosted on my server. I am going to takeover a second blog on same niche but with lots more links, posts, authority and traffic. But it his on a .info domain and let's call it secondsite.info and for now it's on a different server. I have a third domain .com where I would like join both blogs. Domain is better and reflects niche better and let's call it thirdsite.com How should I proceed to have the best result? I was thinking of creating a new account at my server with domain thirdsite.com After that upload all content from secondsite.info and go to google webmaster to let they know that site now sits on a new domain. Also do a full 301 redirect. Should it be page by page or just one 301 redirect? And finally insert posts (they are not many) from firstsite.com on thirdsite.com and do specific redirects. Is this a good option? Or should I first move secondsite.info to my server and keep updating it and only a few weeks later make transition to thirdsite.com? I am worried that it could be too much changes at once.
Technical SEO | | delta440 -
Domain recommendations for non indexed sites
For complicated internal reasons (which I swear have validity) we are starting websites that will then disallow from Google for ~1 year. Is there any value in purchasing "premium" domains with SEO juice or will we lose the value in the time we are hiding the website from Google?
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Why is our page not visible in Google-ranking? www.loseweight.com.
using Wordpress as platform. Using the URL gets into the site,- but seems to be non-existent for public... No comments at all, seems to be "invisible"?
Technical SEO | | gewi0 -
What is the best practice to handle duplicate content?
I have several large sections that SEOMOZ is indicating has duplicate content, even though the content is not identical. For example: Leather Passport Section - Leather Passports - Black - Leather Passposts - Blue - Leather Passports - Tan - Etc. Each of the items has good content, but it is identical, since they are the same products. What is the best practice here: 1. Have only one product with a drop down (fear is that this is not best for the customer) 2. Make up content to have them sound different? 3. Put a do-no-follow on the passport section? 4. Use a rel canonical even though the sections are technically not identical? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Best cross linking strategy for micro sites?
Hi Guys. I created a micro site (A design showcase gallery) away from the main website to attract a lot of links in my space from competitors. It works so well it has become a valuable resource in my industry and I believe I will keep it running and adding content to it. Is the best SEO strategy for the main site simply to link from each page to the main site? Or should I be looking at something else? Thanks, Alan
Technical SEO | | spoiltchild0