Should you use www?

[mag777]

The age old question. Should I use "www." for a brand new content site assuming my goal (and most goals starting out) is to get to millions of visits per month? Does the community agree with, http://www.yes-www.org/why-use-www/?

The only reason I question it honestly, since most high traffic companies in my search use www., is because moz doesn't.

Thanks for your help. Seems it would be quite a pain to go back once you have a lot of traffic.

[WhiteboardCreations]

Hey mag777! Happy New Year! Great question and one I'm asked a lot from my business advisory groups, clients and referral partners. It's one that undoubtedly always comes up in conversation when talking about either acquiring new domains or revamping a website... "Should we use the WWW or NON-WWW domain?"

In my 12+ years of web consulting and SEO, it has boiled down to a preference ideology. As mentioned by seoman10 in this thread, it could be seen as a shorter, easier to remember URL. When marketing the domain, you'd always want to confirm the WWW is redirected to the NON-WWW if this is the path you choose to take. And visa versa NON-WWW --> WWW.

As Gaston mentions too, check out your competitors URL structure. It's a quick glimpse up to the address bar while you are already doing your competitive research. Do some searches in Google as well for your website and competitors to see how much of the URL does or could display. Moz.com doesn't use WWW. They could get away with it because it's so short. I on the other hand almost need to with https://whiteboardcreations.com since it's a much longer domain. Keep this in mind for those domains you're working on, too.

From an SEO school of thought and how I now operate, I choose the NON-WWW simply because we can get just a little more of the URL to show in Google SERPs, if we're targeting inner pages to provide a hint more of visual for the searcher. The URL string matches more closely to the Title and Description. That is the way I look at this strategy.

Here is a quick video from Matt Cutts a few years back... should ease your concerns over redirects  
https://youtu.be/Filv4pP-1nw 

Either way, the websites you work on for yourself or your clients will be fine as long as you are consistent for the entire site and redirects are tested and confirmed functional.

Cheers to a successful 2018 for you and everyone else reading!

• Patrick @ Whiteboard Creations (Apex, NC)

[GastonRiera]

Hello mag777,

TL;DR;
In a SEO perspective, there is no difference.

In my experience for the companies I've worked (and those im working) there is no difference in SEO for having www or non-www site.
How do we decide?

1. (as stated in the article you share) using the one that complies all the technical need of the website.
2. Understanding all online competitors and trying to see which version they use and why
3. For some companies its a commercial and branding thing. Just love to use one version.
   In my opnion this is the case of the really big brands, they follow the wave that in the begginings(arround 2000's) every website used www so as the general public understad that was an internet direction.

That last point is backed by me asking them why they use that version and them saying: "because Coca-cola, Ebay and every big company uses www. So we want to imitate them"

Hope it helps.
Best Luck.
GR.

[seoman10]

Going by the book, technically a short domain will give you a slight benefit, but I wouldn't consider it's anything worth bothering with.

Not using www will make it slightly quicker to type and easier to remember, However when advertising your domain name off-line it is more explanatory to have a www. prefix (Without having to type website or HTTP(s):// every time).

I would say there is very little SEO benefit, I would assess it from a user angle.