Need Help with www and non-www redirect
-
Hi everyone,
I've been looking around the forum and found some similar topics but none of them have solved my problem.
Anyway, I'm new to SEO and found that when I use Open Site Explorer for the www version of my site I see the links directed to my page, but none of my twitter stats show up. When I do the same for my non-www version. I see my twitter stats, but no links. Facebook seems unchanged. Also, the Page Authority is much higher for the www (I assume because of the links)
It is my understanding that it doesn't matter which version of the domain is used, I just need to pick one and stick with it (on Google Webmaster Tools, etc.). And that I also need to do a 301 redirect for the version that I'm not using.
The issue now is that I have a 301 redirect, and when I type in my url in any version (http, https, www, non-www) it all redirects in the browser without issue. So i know users are getting to the right page, but the Open Site Explorer still sees them as 2 different sites. My concern is that if Open Site Explorer sees it this way then Google may see it this way as well and I could be missing out on potential rankings.
I'm currently doing the redirect in the .htaccess file. The redirect looks like this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]Any Ideas on what I need to do to properly 301 redirect the site so that my preferred version can get credited with the links,twitter, and Page Authority stats?
Also, I'm using wordpress and it has the URL set to the non-www version of the site. However, I think I would like to change this to the www version because most of the links are directing to www, and I also think people are more familiar with that format.
Anyway, sorry for the long post. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
-
Thanks everyone this was very helpful. I think I have it straightened out now. I've set my preferred domain in Google Search Console, and have changed many of the links to match this domain as well. Thanks again.
-
To Peter's point, I wouldn't worry too much about Twitter share counts since those are going away anyway. You mention what OSE says about links to the two versions of your sites, but what does Google Search Console say? Is it recognizing inbound links to your site?
If your URLs are redirecting to their correct versions, you're likely not losing too much link juice, and if you've made all the necessary changes in Search Console to set your preferred domain, Google should understand and count those links as all pointing to the same domain. OSE will continue to report on links to the www- and non-www versions separately because of how it reports on subdomains, but Google should get the picture loud and clear.
The biggest thing you can do to show Google "this is the real version of my site" is to start building new, high-quality inbound links. Over time, the volume of inbound inks to the preferred version will overtake the volume of links to the old version, which will reinforce for Google what the correct version is.
-
Try to get as many links changed to the page you've redirected to. Not all juice is passed threw a 301 redirect. I'm not certain on the social metric issues. I haven't seen them to be 100% accurate for any page.
-
Today Twitter make changes and implementing new button so shared will be lost.
OSE count non-www and www as different because bot need to crawl all pages to catch 301 redirect. This isn't real-time or quick so you need little patience. Please check canonical on your WordPress and change all of them to new host (www.example.com). You need to change host in WP -> Settings -> General and in Google SearchConsole preferred domain.
For social buttons - there are few ways how they get URL for sharing. Long story short - with site move you will lost all of your sharing statistics except G+ pluses. There is no way to recover them except if you use data-url for them. But you will share different URL then.
IF you wish to keep number of social shares then you need to 301 www to non-www. Within time OSE will catch this 301 and links will push DA higher there.
Anyway - look messy answer but i know this situation. When you make site one of first job is to check www and non-www also http and https. This make 4 checks (and few more with strange domains as ftp.example.com; mail.example.com) totally just to be sure that site can be seen only in one host. Because later 301 can broke something. And delaying this 301 make things more and more complicated.
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
-
[Moz Help] Re: Trying to add a valid URL into MOZ account
See below and pls let us know what we have to do solve this : | | Joel Day (Moz Help) Mar 07 05:03 PM Hey Tracy, It looks like there's a redirect loop on your site. greatwesternflooring.com redirects to www.greatwesternflooring.com/ which in turn 302 redirects back into itself. You'll likely need to fix the redirect before you can continue configuring the campaign. 🙂 Thanks!
Moz Pro | | Britewave
Joel. Moz
t: @HelpWizard | | | Tracy Mar 07 03:14 PM I sent an email, and this is the response I got. The help forum sent me here, so here I am 🙂 An answer was posted to this question:
Question I have a valid URL greatwesternflooring.com, but when I try to add this campaign I get an "opps" message telling me it's not a valid URL. Can you help me? Answer
This looks like a bug. Please reach out to us via support so that we can forward this along to our Developers for review. Thanks!(https://moz.com/help/contact)
See where this question was originally asked. |0 -
New to Moz and wanted a bit of help with my report
Hi, I have used the MOZ report to analyse one of my friends sites and I wanted to query a few warnings it highlighted and I just wanted people's thought on how important they thought these were: The first is dupliate descriptions/titles. This is mainly down the e-commerce pages. Fist duplicate content:
Moz Pro | | dannylancs
On some pages the description is identical and all that is different is the title and picture, is this an issue? Duplicate pages:
Due to the way the website folder structure/catergories has been created some pages are identical but because the product comes under 2 cetergories there is 2 seperate pages, should we use the canonical on one of the pages? Also regarding the canonical tag, they have put link rel="canonical" on every page and got it to point at itself, so not really being used in the way it is meant to be. Could something like this cause any harm? The final thing is internal linking back to the homepage. If for example the homepage is http://www.test.com, when linking back is it best to put the full URL over "index.html" even though they are the same page? Any help really appreciated Dan0 -
OSE stats for 2 site: searoundus.org and www.seaaroundus.org.
Why are the numbers so different for the two site, one with and one without the www.? Which one is most accurate for external linking domains, for instance?
Moz Pro | | GaryDC0 -
CPA bidding advice needed please?
Morning all! I need help with my adwords budget (not a loan :-)), when I use the Google recommended CPA bid it eats my money whatever budget, (I spent £135 yesterday which is far too much.. I can keep topping it up as long as the sales keep coming in, but when i take my eyes off Google uses my budget fast. My adwords account has been tweeked by a pro since Feb 12 with 722 conversions at 10.22%. I have now taken over and personalised the campaigns (I've read many books and have 5+ years adwords experience) Anyhow here's the question; Today Google suggests a MAX CPA of £9.75 and a target of £6.72. what prices do you suggest ? I've set daily ammount at £60.00 And which option should I choose in Ad rotation; Clicks,Conversions or rotate evenly? My best ad has had 134 conversions. I'm selling Tigi Bed Head & Redken hair care products. www.thehairroom.co.uk Thank you
Moz Pro | | smoki6660 -
Way too many 301 redirects
Hi Guys Posting here again in regard to 301 redirects, SEOMOZ has just finished my second crawl, and its showing me nearly 4k 301 redirects, i am only tracking my new site which by the way changed domain name , however all im doing is tracking the new domain and there are no 301 implemented on that side (Except Canonical), so was wondering how SEOMoz is finding 4k of redirects. do you think it could be chaining somewhere ? as all the tests look good or could there be a problem with the reporting
Moz Pro | | kellymandingo0 -
Bad code on Learn Seo Redirection info Page
Is it just me, or is the Redirection resource page missing the exclamation point (!) in this code. If so, this could really mess someone's site up if they copy and paste. http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection http://screencast.com/t/n7lknZ32G9xF Redirecting Canonical Hostnames: The original developers at SEOmoz needed to redirect any requests that do not start with www.seomoz.org to make sure they included the www. They did this not only because it looks better, but to avoid common canonicalization errors. Redirect: http://seomoz.org/To: http://www.seomoz.org/ Redirect: http://mail.seomoz.org/To: http://www.seomoz.org Redirect: http://seomoz.org/somefile.phpTo: http://www.seomoz.org/somefile.php Solution: Add the following directive: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^seomoz.org [NC]RewriteRule (.*) http://www.seomoz.org/$1 [L,R=301] Explanation: This directive tells apache to examine the host the visitor is accessing (in this case: seomoz.org), and if it does not equal www.seomoz.org redirect to www.seomoz.org. The exclamation point (!) in front of www.seomoz.org negates the comparison, saying “if the host IS NOT www.seomoz.org, then perform RewriteRule.” In our case RewriteRule redirects them to www.seomoz.org while preserving the exact file they were accessing in a back-reference. *emphasis added by me
Moz Pro | | squareplug0 -
Old Incoming Links Redirected to new pages are not Being Factored on the Open Site Explorer
Hi, My website has been online since 1994. We have old links pointing to pages that no longer exist so what we have done is to create redirects to the specific page where the content is being displayed now. However, when we use the Open Site Explorer, the linking root domains do not show those sites that contain old links pointing to our domain. One good example of this one is: dmoz.org. Am I improperly handling the redirects? Or, what do I have to do so that old links that are being redirected to the new pages where the information is are accounted when calculating domain authority and trust? Thanks, Alex
Moz Pro | | costarica.com0 -
Help with On-page Optimization in Campaign Manager
Hi, I don’t know if I am incredibly stupid or am just missing something with the on-page optimization report page. I have 11 key phrases set up covering five or pages. When I grade each key phrase against the page I have optimized for it using the on-page keyword optimization (Term Target) they score A/B’s. The issue I have is the campaign manager on-page optimization report only appears to check all the key phrases against the home page, as it shows several F reports. How do I set it up so it grades each key phase against the correct site page. Thanks Fraser
Moz Pro | | fraserhannah1