Should you use www?
-
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.
-
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-1nwEither 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)
-
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?- (as stated in the article you share) using the one that complies all the technical need of the website.
- Understanding all online competitors and trying to see which version they use and why
- 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. -
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.
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
-
We are redirecting http and non www versions of our website. Should all versions http (non www version and www version) and https (non www version) should just have 1 redirect to the https www version?
We are redirecting http and non www versions of our website. Should all versions http (non www version and www version) and https (non www version) should just have 1 redirect to the https www version? Thant way all forms of the website are pointing to one version?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Recovery from a HTTP to HTTPs migration using 302s ?
If a website did an HTTP to HTTPS migration using 302 re-directs, that were corrected to 301s about 4 months later, what is the expected impact? Will the website see a full recovery or has the damage been done? Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater0 -
Using the same picture, but 2 differents pages and Alt descriptions
Hi Moz experts, I have a quick technical question for you. If we would like to use the same picture on the website, but using differ Alt description and also, be sure to customize it to make sure, it will not look like the other. This strategy is for saving cost on new picture. Do you think google will see this as iidentical content ? Thank you for your hands up on this question.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | johncurlee0 -
Switching site from non-www to www
Howdy folks, I've got a website that is roughly 3 months old. I created it as a naked URL as I often prefer the look but I've noticed that a lot of my competition has www and also some of my clients seem to prefer it as well. I feel like switching it to www will be of long-term benefit for my site. The problem is that I currently have several pages with first page rankings and a backlinks. I am wondering what the negative effects of switching it to www would be, and how I can minimize any issues. I am guessing I should do a redirect, and I have access to some of the backlinks so I can change those as well, but is there anything else? Thoughts? I appreciate the feedback!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jameswesleyhunt1 -
Can I use the old website content on the new website, after deleting it from the server?
My website nowwhatstudio.com hit by google pure spam and google applied manual spam action to the website. I create new website (nowwhatmoments.com) with the same content from the old spam action website (nowwhatstudio.com). As google removed my old website content from search indexed. Can I use the same content for a new website? If I delete my old website from the server, after that Can I use the old website content for a new website? Or Can make edits the old website content and make it 80% original for a new website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
Using Meta Header vs Robots.txt
Hey Mozzers, I am working on a site that has search-friendly parameters for their faceted navigation, however this makes it difficult to identify the parameters in a robots.txt file. I know that using the robots.txt file is highly recommended and powerful, but I am not sure how to do this when facets are using common words such as sizes. For example, a filtered url may look like www.website.com/category/brand/small.html Brand and size are both facets. Brand is a great filter, and size is very relevant for shoppers, but many products include "small" in the url, so it is tough to isolate that filter in the robots.txt. (I hope that makes sense). I am able to identify problematic pages and edit the Meta Head so I can add on any page that is causing these duplicate issues. My question is, is this a good idea? I want bots to crawl the facets, but indexing all of the facets causes duplicate issues. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | evan890 -
Is Video Sharing sites is still useful for SERP ?
Well I am not talking about the audience views, i am asking whether it is good for submitting videos to multiple video sites for backlinks and any sharp movements for the keywords. I seen most of the sites are nofollow which is not useful but for the link diversification is that something good ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chandubaba0 -
Which search engines still use Meta Keywords?
I know Google doesn't use meta keywords in meta tags, but i was wondering if there are other smaller search engines that still do? Id it worth it to add meta keywords for them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jhinchcliffe0