"WWW" versus non "WWW" on domain
-
We plan on migrating our site to a new shorter domain name. I like the idea of removing "www" to gain an additional 3 letters in the URL display.
Is there any disadvantage of doing so from a technical or SEO perspective?
Thanks,
Alan -
Hi Alan, I don't think the extra 3 spaces would affect your SEO / rankings tremendously. Bots would still crawl and recognise the keywords in the URL. If you're after visibility on SERPs, you can optimise your meta title and description in a way that your brand & keywords are visible and clickable. As the meta title font is heaps bigger than the URL and description, that would be the first thing searchers see. Also, I doubt your URL will get truncated in SERPs with the extra 3 characters. Hope this helps!
-
Hi Nikki:
By not using "www" my objective would be to save 3 spaces (valuable real estate) to improve visibility of longer URL. Any significant upside to this? I don't see this as common so I am not certain if there is.
Any thoughts? Thank! Alan
-
Hello there, according to this guide there is no SEO benefit with choosing one over the other - it all depends on preference. Whatever you choose, let Google know your preference through Google Search Console. With regards to technical differences, adding www acts as a hostname that helps with DNS flexibility, restricting cookies etc. non-www doesn't have the same technical advantage according to the guide.
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
-
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 -
Risk Using "Nofollow" tag
I have a lot of categories (like e-commerce sites) and many have page 1 - 50 for each category (view all not possible). Lots of the content on these pages are present across the web on other websites (duplicate stuff). I have added quality unique content to page 1 and added "noindex, follow" to page 2-50 and rel=next prev tags to the pages. Questions: By including the "follow" part, Google will read content and links on pages 2-50 and they may think "we have seen this stuff across the web….low quality content and though we see a noindex tag, we will consider even page 1 thin content, because we are able to read pages 2-50 and see the thin content." So even though I have "noindex, follow" the 'follow' part causes the issue (in that Google feels it is a lot of low quality content) - is this possible and if I had added "nofollow" instead that may solve the issue and page 1 would increase chance of looking more unique? Why don't I add "noindex, nofollow" to page 2 - 50? In this way I ensure Google does not read the content on page 2 - 50 and my site may come across as more unique than if it had the "follow" tag. I do understand that in such case (with nofollow tag on page 2-50) there is no link juice flowing from pages 2 - 50 to the main pages (assuming there are breadcrumbs or other links to the indexed pages), but I consider this minimal value from an SEO perspective. I have heard using "follow" is generally lower risk than "nofollow" - does this mean a website with a lot of "noindex, nofollow" tags may hurt the indexed pages because it comes across as a site Google can't trust since 95% of pages have such "noindex, nofollow" tag? I would like to understand what "risk" factors there may be. thank you very much
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
HELP! How does one prevent regional pages as being counted as "duplicate content," "duplicate meta descriptions," et cetera...?
The organization I am working with has multiple versions of its website geared towards the different regions. US - http://www.orionhealth.com/ CA - http://www.orionhealth.com/ca/ DE - http://www.orionhealth.com/de/ UK - http://www.orionhealth.com/uk/ AU - http://www.orionhealth.com/au/ NZ - http://www.orionhealth.com/nz/ Some of these sites have very similar pages which are registering as duplicate content, meta descriptions and titles. Two examples are: http://www.orionhealth.com/terms-and-conditions http://www.orionhealth.com/uk/terms-and-conditions Now even though the content is the same, the navigation is different since each region has different product options / services, so a redirect won't work since the navigation on the main US site is different from the navigation for the UK site. A rel=canonical seems like a viable option, but (correct me if I'm wrong) it tells search engines to only index the main page, in this case, it would be the US version, but I still want the UK site to appear to search engines. So what is the proper way of treating similar pages accross different regional directories? Any insight would be GREATLY appreciated! Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
Do I need to set Preferred domain when the non-www redirects to www version?
Hi mozzers, Not sure if I should setup preferred domain when the non www version redirects to the www version? if yes why? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Renaming your domain from an existing live domain and SEO implications - Please Help *shudder*
Please see the details below. Site A: http://south-african-holiday.mobi is an existing site that is our best site. It is Joomla 3.1 and runs all our ecommerce. Site B: http//www.southerncircle.com/ is our original and has the best DA but is out of date and pretty clunky. joomla 1.5 and all bookings (tour site) are redirected to Site A for processing. Instead of redesigning the Site A I'd like to change the domain name of http://south-african-holiday.mobi -> http://southerncircle.com So far my reading and research (Thanks MOZ for awesome forum!) has provided me with: 1. Do the SEO groundwork. i.e. remove dead links from both sites. Delete useless content and generally tidy up both sites. 2. Map all pages from site a: http://southerncircle.com -> http://south-africa-holiday/ so that the existing pages that have good ranking will have a home on the new site. 3. When ready do a small sample 301 redirect from: http://southerncircle.com to http://south-africa-holiday.mobi. 4. arghhhh now I'm stuck ..... If I redirect to this site then I lose my http://southerncircle.com domain which is what I want to keep....I just want the .mobi site to move to the southerncircle.com site.... I don't consider myself totally thick but this is really confuseing the *$%# out of me PLEASE could you give me some insight here. I'm sure it has been done before without completely losing the sites seo ranking and sending my site into SEO oblivion. If there are any JOOMLA gurus that have done this I'd love to hear from you as well. Many thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SoutherlySwell0 -
Is it safe to 301 redirect old domain to new domain after a manual unnatural links penalty?
I have recently taken on a client that has been manually penalised for spammy link building by two previous SEOs. Having just read this excellent discussion, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience I am weighing up the odds of whether it's better to cut losses and recommend moving domains. I had thought under these circumstances it was important not to 301 the old domain to the new domain but the author (Lewis Sellers) comments on 3/4/13 that he is aware of forwards having been implemented without transferring the penalty to the new domain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience#jtc216689 Is it safe to 301? What's the latest thinking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy0 -
Prowling report says "duplicate titles" for wp-login.php
Hi there, How are you guys doing? I have a quick question. The last prowling report we received said we have three pages with "duplicate titles". Those three pages are: /wp-login.php wp-login.php?action=lostpassword /wp-login.php?action=register I'm a little confused because those pages don't even have a title. Do you think it's a big deal? Also do you have any idea of why the prowling report says those pages have duplicate titles? Apparently, wp-login.php is part of the Wordpress core. It's a built-in page that
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ericc22
handles login and registration. Not something we can edit. Thanks a lot and have a nice day!0
