Help with steps to take when fixing cannonical url structure?

[PEnterprises]

I would like to 301 redirect all the variations of my site to a single url but would like some clarification on some issues. I have always been confused about how to handle cannonicalization and hopefully this can clear it up for me and others.

This particular site is about 1 year old and gets approximately 15k uniques a month in a great niche. I want to make sure I do this correctly as to not hurt my existing rankings which are quite good. Here is is what I am unsure about.

1. Basically I should pick the best url structure to redirect all the others to correct? What determines what url is best to redirect all the rest to? is it www.domain.com, http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com?
2. Is the best one to redirect to always standard and something I should set up at the beginning of my site? Or is picking the best url to redirect to based on what url starts to rank in google and you then use that one?
3. Should I be going through each of my rankings and seeing what url is ranking in google for each page? On this particular site ALL of my urls in google  have no www. or http but instead show up in the SE as domain.com or domain.com/inner-page/html. In that case what do I do?
4. I know the slow way to do redirects. I use my hostgator account and do it in cpanel and do it one by one. Is there a faster way where I can go and make lots of changes at once? Maybe I can choose all the variations and put in the one I want them all to redirect to?
5. After I figure the above out is fixing all of this as simple as redirecting ALL variations to the one I will use moving forward for each page on my site? Then I am done?

Thanks again for the help!

Jake

[RyanKent]

is there a simple code I put somewhere in there?

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

replace "mysite" with the name of your site

do you see on there that he says its important to leave trailing / on folders

Generally speaking a URL that ends in a slash represents a folder. A URL that ends without a slash represents a page or file.

With respect to www or non-www, there is absolutely no preference from a pure SEO perspective. Either way you chose I would use the http:// prefix as it represents the complete URL.

[PEnterprises]

Awesome Ryan! Thank you. This kind of stuff is the part I am SO lost about. I bet I would increase my rankings 500% if I could figure out the technical stuff!

Ok just quick clarification.

So there is no "better" version between http:// and http://www.? That is what I thought but on this guide it says that http://www. is best? http://static.seomoz.org/user_files/SEO_Web_Developer_Cheat_Sheet.pdf
I guess to be safe I could do that but I wonder if it really matters?

Also do you see on there that he says its important to leave trailing / on folders.

I do know how to access my htaccess file is there a simple code I put somewhere in there? I am going to go with http://

Thanks for the awesome help!

Jake

[RyanKent]

What determines what url is best to redirect all the rest to? is it www.domain.com, http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com?

The "http://" portion is required for a complete URL. "http://www.domain.com" is the same as "www.domain.com". If you omit the "http://" prefix, all major browsers understand your request and will prepend the URL appropriately.

You can choose either the "www" or "non-www" form of the URL to represent your site. It doesn't matter to search engines. What does matter is that you make a choice and remain consistent.

For an existing site, examine the links you have to both URL forms. As a guide, I would recommend choosing the URL format which has the most authorative linking domains.

Is the best one to redirect to always standard and something I should set up at the beginning of my site?

Yes. You should choose before the site begins attracting traffic.

Should I be going through each of my rankings and seeing what url is ranking in google for each page?

You should make one choice for your entire site. It would be a really bad idea to have some pages use the "www" subdomain while others do not. You would be dividing your traffic into two separate domains which you do not want to do.

Use OpenSiteExplorer.org and Google WMT to determine which domain has the most linking authority.

Is there a faster way where I can go and make lots of changes at once?

You can redirect your entire site with a single statement in htaccess. Since you are using cPanel there is probably a "Redirect" application you can use to make this change. I would recommend contacting hostgator and informing them of your wishes. It is very quick and easy for a managed host to make the change for you. If you are not familiar with the process, it is far better to allow them to make the change for you.

Summary: review your backlinks, make your choice, inform hostgator and request them to make the change. After, test the change. If you choose to keep the "www" prefix, try accessing a few pages without the prefix. You should reach the page and see the "www" portion added to the URL. If the process is set up correctly you are 100% done.

Some SEOs may advise you to use canonicals or update your choice in Google/Bing Webmaster Tools. You can do both but once you set the redirect correctly the results will take care of themselves. Expect it can take up to a month for all of your URLs to appear correctly in SERPs. If you update the change in WMT, it will appear faster in SERPs.