Setting preferred domain as www or none www
-
Way back before panda I used to rank for certain keywords pretty well. Of course like many others after panda I lost some of those rankings. I have been getting better since then so its not that bad. I was poking around in Google Webmaster Tools and I noticed something which I need some clarification in.
History my site freescrabbledictionary.com used to be indexed as a none www. Then some time ago I can't remember when I set it to www. Tonight I was looking through my webmaster tools and I noticed something that did not make sense to me.
In my content keywords section for the none www my list is as follows
Content Keywords
<form action="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/keywords-list?hl=en&siteUrl=http://freescrabbledictionary.com/" method="GET">
Keyword Significance 1. scrabble 2. words (2 variants) 3. dictionary 4. cheat 5. finder 6. friends 7. maker (2 variants) 8. noun 9. letter (2 variants) 10. hasbro 11. mattel 12. spear 13. found (2 variants) 14. sowpods 15. freescrabbledictionary 16. builder 17. affiliated 18. search 19. solver 20. lists </form>
Then I looked at my www lists and its
Content Keywords
<form action="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/keywords-list?hl=en&siteUrl=http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/" method="GET">
Keyword Significance 1. words (3 variants) 2. scrabble (2 variants) 3. letter (4 variants) 4. points 5. cheat (3 variants) 6. friends (2 variants) 7. finder (2 variants) 8. anagram (2 variants) 9. dictionary 10. tool (2 variants) 11. hasbro 12. mattel 13. spear 14. game (4 variants) 15. mobile 16. affiliated (3 variants) 17. berkshire 18. canada 19. calculations (5 variants) 20. coming (4 variants) </form>
My none www version has the order (especially the first 5 keywords) that I want, my www version is no were near it. If I change back to the none www version could I possible see an change in rank? or can it effect it if I change it?
I am starting to think I shot myself in the foot when I switched...
-
Hi again,
Cesar I think your problem is not different order of keywords but duplicated content. If you have two websites with the same content it can be a problem and it was probably the reason of Panda influence on your website.
let me understand, do you have: http://www.example.com and http://example.com with the same content?
more: http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=duplicated+content
http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=www+or+non+www
In my opinion you should choose better site (www or non-www) by checking a value in OSE and finally do a 301 redirection of lower ranked to higher ranked and do the same in GWT ...that means choose higher ranked as your primary.
Marek
-
Hi Cesar,
There is no need to be so worried. You certainly haven't shot yourself in the foot here.
I don't think you quite understand what the 'Content Keywords' section of GWT actually means. It is not a reflection of your rankings for each of these keywords. It is a representation of the most common keywords found across your pages that the Google crawler has found. The significance ranking is just an indication of how often the Google crawler has found each keyword. If your content changes over time then of course the list will also reflect this as the crawler visits your pages.
If you feel there are keywords missing then this could be because Google could not crawl all of your pages and therefore you should check the crawl errors section of your GWT. IT could also be because Google has excluded words that it determines to be boilerplate text or common words.
You can find out more information in the Webmaster Tools help center:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35255
Hope this helps,
Adam.
-
Hello Cesar,
Firs of all what are your server and site settings? There are many tools to check it. If you have www and non-www you have duplicate content and probably thats why you lost on rankings.
For all my sites I used without www address and redirect everything *.example.com (all subdomains) to example.com (respectively http://www.example.com or http://example.com).
Why ... theory is internet behavior.
1. It's obvious that in present times more people search directly writing a words to search engine address field rather than write in google search-box field. So if you have a good brand it is more likely that they write your branded name than your branded name with the www in front of branded name.
2. www is a subdomain of a main domain - there's no point to guide people to subdomain.
3. In server configuration *.example.com with everything in subdomain will direct traffic to example.com
4. It is simple and short, now everything going to shortage and simplicity, why not site names?
5. Like in point 1 but bit different - it's mostly young users behavior to shortage addresses so treat 5 as a reaffirmation of 1 dedicated to the future
It is my theory. Maybe someone will add something ...
Marek
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
-
Set Canonical for Paginated Content
Hi Guys, This is a follow up on this thread: http://moz.com/community/q/dynamic-url-parameters-woocommerce-create-404-errors# I would like to know how I can set a canonical link in Wordpress/Woocommerce which points to "View All" on category pages on our webshop.
Technical SEO | | jeeyer
The categories on my website can be viewed as 24/48 or All products but because the quanity constantly changes viewing 24 or 48 products isn't always possible. To point Google in the right direction I want to let them know that "View All" is the best way to go.
I've read that Google's crawler tries to do this automatically but not sure if this is the case on on my website. Here is some more info on the issue: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en
Thanks for the help! Joost0 -
Will Links to one Sub-Domain on a Site hurt a different Sub-Domain on the same site by affecting the Quality of the Root Domain?
Hi, I work for a SaaS company which uses two different subdomains on our site. A public for our main site (which we want to rank in SERPs for), and a secure subdomain, which is the portal for our customers to access our services (which we don't want to rank for) . Recently I realized that by using our product, our customers are creating large amounts of low quality links to our secure subdomain and I'm concerned that this might affect our public subdomain by bringing down the overall Authority of our root domain. Is this a legitimate concern? Has anyone ever worked through a similar situation? any help is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | ifbyphone0 -
Help! www and non-www urls are driving me mad!
Sorry folks, I'm a very recently joined member, and after a five year gap in creating websites, I've decided to get back into the saddle and start again. Boy how things have changed! I'm soaking up all sorts of information from everywhere I can to get up to date with these changes, but I've come across this www v non-www problem in a big way. I realise there are already posts in here about this, but each time I read them, my mind seems to slip into some sort of loop that does not get anywhere. Basically, I think Google has indexed most of my pages as non-www, and only a hadful as www's. I have opened two accounts in Google Webmaster Tools for both www and non-www, and declared my preference for both accordingly. That was two days ago. As unprofessional as it may sound, I use Serif Web Plus X6, simply beacause it did the job six years ago, and it's all I know until I find and teach myself something better. My question is this - I can only create one page on X6, and yet there are two versions indexed in Google (although not all of them). I can only amend the one page that exists in X6, so how do I canonicalize two pages when there's the only version I have access to amending? Or am I miissing the point??? I hope that made sense?! I wouldn't mind, but I specified that I didn't want the site to be indexed yet with 'no follow', as it's nowhere near finished, but for some reason (probably due to placing Adsense ads on there) Google went ahead and indexed it anyway! The site is either http://www.cushioncutengagementringsstore.com or http://cushioncutengagementringsstore.com, depending on how you look at it! Any light you can shed on this would be gratefuly received! Thanks. Cem.
Technical SEO | | ConwyWebDesign0 -
Transfer a Main Domain to a Sub-Domain
My IT department tells me they want to transfer my main site domain, which has been in existence since 1999 as an e-commerce site (maindomain.com) to a sub-domain (www2.maindomain.com) or a completely new domain (newdomain.net). This is because we are launching a new website and B2C e-commerce engine, but we still have to maintain the legacy B2B e-commerce engine which contains hard-coded URLs, and both systems can't use the same domain. I've been researching the issue across SEOmoz, but I haven't come across this exact type of scenario (mostly I've seen a sub-domain to new domain). I see major problems with their proposal, including negative SEO impact, loss of domain authority/ranking and issues with branding. Does anyone know the exact type of impact I can expect to see in this scenario and specific steps I should go about to minimize the impact? Btw, I will be using Danny Dover's guide on properly moving domains where appropriate. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | AscendLearning0 -
How to set Home page for the best effect
My head is spinning with all the confusing possibilities. Does anybody have an easy answer for setting up the home page and its canonical-ishness ie Which gives the best SEO Mojo ? \ \default.aspx \keyword\ \keyword\default.aspx Thanking you in advance for reducing the number of business migranes around the globe.
Technical SEO | | blinkybill0 -
How do I redirect non www pages to www on a windows server?
As the .htaccess file cannot be worked on, I added this php code 301 redirect if the URL does not contain a www on all the pages (small website - 10 pages) : header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" ); header( "Location: $location" ); I want to know if this is ok for SEO? Has anyone done this on a windows server? Or if you have any better methods, it would be great if you can share. Please help. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ArjunRajkumar0 -
Subdomain Setting in MozBar
I'm using the MozBar on FF6 and have a question about the selector next to "Root Domain" When I set it to "Subdomain", I notice that DmR and DmT are different from the root domain. Am I looking at DmR and DmT for all subdomains (www included)?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
How do i deal with duplicate content on the same domain?
I'm trying to find out if there's a way we can combat similar content on different pages on the same site, without having to re write the whole lot? Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | indurain0