Root domain registered in search engines, inbound links to www sub-domain. A problem?
-
I just discovered that our site is registered with the major search engines without the "www" sub domain. Both domains resolve directly to our site, which I need to get corrected. I had planned to have the root (honestabe.com) forwarded to the sub (www.honestabe.com). However, I then found that the sub-domain is not listed with the search engines.
Of course, naturally almost all of our inbound links include www. Does Google differentiate between links with and without the sub-domain? In other words, if I forward the www address to the root, will I still get the SEO benefit of those inbound links using www?
I'm trying to figure out how to approach this. I'm hoping someone is going to make me feel really stupid for asking this and say it's no big deal. However, I have a feeling this could be a mess.
-
I just recently realized Google was indexing both www and non-www. I changed the settings in Google WM Tools and put in the 301 redirect to www. That was a couple weeks ago. Google is still showing non-www even though www has a higher PR. About how long will it take for Google to switch over to www, or is there something else I may need to correct?
Best,
Christopher -
Thank you for taking the time to write this up Blenny. I think this will also help with my duplicate page content issue. Most appreciated sir.
-
Great feedback. Thank you Gianluca!
-
Hey Josh,
Goog does differentiate the two in terms of applying link juice, but unless for some reason they deliver different content, it's not a major problem. My website has had this issue for awhile due to issues with our CMS system. There is an easy fix though. Try incorporating the rel canonical tag into your pages. Lots of great write-ups on SEOMoz and elsewhere on the usefulness of this tag - essentially tells Google which version of the url to credit the link juice and to keep in its index.
Then, as you said, I would change the internal link structure to reflect the "www" or "non-www" dependent on which one has the most links (Keep the one most people have linked to determined by a OpenSiteExplorer report from SEOMoz) so as to maintain consistency from that point forward. Ideally, you'd be able to 301 the less-linked version to the other since you lose a fraction of link juice with a 301.
Done correctly, you may actually gain engine authority since both non-www and www versions would "funnel" all of their link juice together.
Good luck!
-
no its not, you do lose a little from 301 redirect but very little
-
Doing a search with www.honestbabe.com Google revolves with this serps: http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=www.honestabe.com&pws=0&pbx=1&oq=www.honestabe.com&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1345l1345l0l1954l1l1l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=9441c9e3bb40875d&biw=1920&bih=955
As you can see from the sitelinks, Google has picked up some urls with www. and some without. This is surely caused by the fact that both versions are crawlable.
The best thing to do is to redirect 301 the root domain name to the subdomain www.honestbabe.com, if this is the version of the site that owns the highest % of backlinks
That way Google (and users) will be redirected always to the www. version and index just that one. Don't worry about the backlinks eventually existing and linking to the not www. site, because the link juice from those links will pass almost entirely to the www. linked page version.
Previously today I answered to a similar question: http://www.seomoz.org/q/duplicate-content-joomla
I suggest you to check it, also because there's the code you have to add to your .htacces file (if you are running on a apache linux enviroment).
-
Thanks for the quick reply Alan. The redirect to the root is what would work best in my situation, but I was concerned that I would loose the influence of inbound links to the www being redirected. I'm hoping this shouldn't be a concern?
-
I prefer the non www, as www is not nesasary, but that aside.
Yes they do differentiate
just 301 redirect one to the other, and you will be ok.
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
-
Link building - unique root domains
Hi there, I was wondering when asking for a link, does where on this page it is? For example will someone's high traffic website (e.g. example.com ) provide more page authority than another link on this site ( e.g. example.com/blog ). If this is the case, is it best to get links from multiple pages if possible or will this not effect SEO? Thanks
Link Building | | charliedavi0 -
Domain Authority and nofollow links?
Hello, I'm wondering, are 'nofollow' links from websites with high domain authority beneficial? Would they boost our own DA? In essence, I'm wondering if there is added value (other than visitors clicking the link) to being linked to by a 'nofollow' link. Thanks!
Link Building | | yacpro130 -
Looking at Page Authority of a link to our website... what Page Authority number should we use in deciding the link is junk?
What are the Page Authority ranges? 1. Excellent link 2. Moderate 3. Total junk link Of course you look at the anchor text you can use, how many links are on the site, how often it is cached. Thoughts?
Link Building | | RezStream80 -
Inbound links vs. internal links
Which scenario does more to help SEO - A) An inbound link from a low traffic/low page rank site to my site B) An internal link where one page of my site links to another page on my site
Link Building | | DVanSchepen0 -
Link building and directory links to a new site
I have three new sites all hosted on the same server in the same public html folder and each site is in a different folder inside the public html folder. These sites are a listing of live music venues in different cities in Texas. Should I link these sites together to increase page rank to each other and also put key search phrases in the anchor text and place these links in the text in the center of each page of each site to make the links more effective? Also, because the sites are about a year old they don't have many inlinks yet. If i submit them to about 50 directories will Google not like this because there are way more directory links than natural links? I've been told that it is trouble to have more than about 50% directory links compared to natural links. Thanks in advance for your answers! Take care,
Link Building | | Ron10
Ron0 -
Same IP for sites & linkbuilding - negative signal for search engines?
Let's say you have 40 websites which share the same IP and you place links to them on a bunch of sites (directories, blogs), albeit on different pages on these sites. Will search engines (google) see that they use the same IP and start having the links not-pass link juice based on that same IP?
Link Building | | qlkasdjfw0 -
Domain position on site:domain.com search
Hi, After the last week Google algotithm update, my web site index appears on 4th position when I search for site:www.domain.com If I make a simple search for domain or domain.com it ranks on first position. Is this a sign of a penalty ? What would be the cause ? Thanks
Link Building | | tranquilito0