Www, non www, 301 redirects, Google webmaster tools & SeomozPro
-
arg! Any help on this topic would be greatly appreciated! This is in regards to sheffieldfurniture .com In October of 2011 I had our host set up a redirect for our site so all non www requests would be redirected to the www version and it works great (so it seems at least)
Recently I signed up for SEOMOZPRO and when I started trying to track my organic results for various keywords I realized that Google has my site indexed in the non www format.
Is this a problem? I’ve read you can tell google what your preferred domain is in Google Webmaster Tools, is that what I should be doing? Are there any negatives to doing that? I’m just confused as to why Google hasn’t noticed or acknowledged the redirect in 4 months. It makes me wonder if something isn’t working properly?
I have since added a second SEOMOZPRO campaign with the non www version but I’m worried about having historical tracking issues if I then tell google to use the www version…
-
Hi Nicholas,
Have you been able to straighten this out, or would you like some more assistance regarding Google Webmaster Tools?
-
GWT = Google Webmaster Tools. There is an option to view what pages from your site is indexed. Check there to see if you've got duplicates indexed.
Backlinks don't pass 100% of their SEO juice through a 301, just most of it (like 90%). That 10% loss can be a lot if you've got tremendous amounts of backlinks pointing to the non-preferred domain.
-
hmm Thats really odd, I also found out from someone that my redirect was not setup correctly...it's a 302 not a 301.
sorry whats GWT indexed pages?
And what do the backlinks matter? If I have a redirect setup shouldn't that take care of everything?
-
Hmm. I'm seeing the homepage indexed as non-www, however every internal page I just checked out is indexed as the www version.
I'd check your GWT indexed pages, and see if both the non-www and www home pages are indexed there, tell google to prefer the www, and go from there.
Also check your backlinks. If they're going to non-www, well...then it becomes difficult.
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
-
Good tool to track external links from the website
I am in search of a tool that provides me links generating from my site to another site. Is there a software or tool that can scan the whole site and provide me what are the links of other sites in my site.
Moz Pro | | csfarnsworth0 -
Losing Rankings & Need Help
Hi Guys, I am not sure if anyone else is suffering from the July 4, 2013 update. I know many of us are awaiting to see what happens once the dust settles. I have a couple of issues/questions/statements below. This is the first time any Google update has every affected me negatively and I'd love some ideas or input. 1. I have ranked quite well for nearly 10 years for all my top keywords. Now, after this update, I am disappearing for my top keywords in the SERPS - definitely getting pushed to page two, etc. Can anyone help me discover the reasons? I have a great SEO expert helping me and I know quite a bit, but this has me baffled. My website is Journey Beyond Travel.com I have read MOZ's ranking factors for 2013 and also the recently published report from SearchMetrics. In the last few days, I've added more quality text to the homepage and shortened my page title on the homepage (although Google has been changing my homepage browser title to put my brand name first in the title - and they haven't for my competitors). Over the past few months, I've really cleaned up my link profile to the best of my ability. I've never really taken part in any negative or black-hat practices. I am trying to get more links that use my 'brand' name rather than exact anchor text. I believe I have a natural profile - any thoughts? 2. One thing I notice is the higher ranking of larger brands now (at least in my field). Just because a domain with higher authority creates one page of content, how can that outrank me? I mean, I've got ten years and 600+ darn good articles of content on my website. How can one domain that is very 'general' (for example, well known in the world of travel and not specialized or niche like mine) outrank me? How can it be that Google allows larger brands to outrank smaller ones just because they have more backlinks and domain authority, but no real content to support these pages? Is content truly king? I am thinking about an article: "Google, Brands, and the Death of Small Business Online." Anyone wish to collaborate here? I am not being hatelful or resentful, but I foresee the day when an 'alternative' search engine emerges, doesn't allow crap ads, allows users more flexibility, and brings search to the next level. Not all of us want the big brands and are searching for alternatives that stand out. I ignore them when I am searching mostly. Any thoughts or elaborations? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | journeybeyondtravel1 -
Keyword Difficulty Tool not working?
I just started using SEOMoz and I was running some searches with the Keyword Difficult Tool. It was going swell until about 10 hours ago when I begun getting this message: "Uh oh... there was a temporary problem gathering Analysis data for your request. Sorry about that! We're actively looking into resolving these intermittent issues, but in the meantime, try submitting your request again in 20 minutes. Thank you!" I gave it time to no avail. It has been about 10 hours since then and I can't KDT at all. Am I doing something wrong or is it on the SEOMoz side? Everything else works just fine.
Moz Pro | | Peke2 -
What tools can I use to crawl a site which uses #! hasbhang?
I have a site which was created in a way that it uses hasbang #!. I am using 3 different SEO tools and they can't seem to crawl the website. Or what suggestion can you give me in dealing with hasbang. Any ideas please. Thanks a lot for your help. Allan
Moz Pro | | AllanDuncan0 -
SEOMoz rocks, but is it breaking Google's webmaster guidelines when it comes to check rankings?
Hi all, The Google's webmaster guideline in question reads... "Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google." So, when WebPosition Gold is not recommended then how come SEOMoz is acceptable to check ranks for websites belonging to SEOMoz PRO? Do Google neglects breaking of few guidelines by good boys? Thanks in advance.
Moz Pro | | vinodchaudhary0 -
Duplicate content & canonicals
Hi, Working on a website for a company that works in different european countries. The setup is like this: www.website.eu/nl
Moz Pro | | nvs.nim
www.website.eu/be
www.website.eu/fr
... You see that every country has it's own subdir, but NL & BE share the same language, dutch... The copywriter wrote some unique content for NL and for BE, but it isn't possible to write unique for every product detail page because it's pretty technical stuff that goes into those pages. Now we want to add canonical tags to those identical product pages. Do we point the canonical on the /be products to /nl products or visa versa? Other question regarding SEOmoz: If we add canonical tags to x-pages, do they still appear in the Crawl Errors "duplicate page content", or do we have to do our own math and just do "duplicate page content" minus "Rel canonical" ?0 -
Impact of 301-redirected domains on OSE Metrics
When looking at the OSE metrics (DA, PA, Number Linking RDs etc.) is it purely based on OSEs evaluation of the specific domain or will it take into account links that have been 301-redirected to the domain?
Moz Pro | | bjalc20110 -
Recommended Q&A Software
So I just read an SEOMoz post about the great SEO benefits of Question and Answer sites (or sections of sites) - much like the Q&A section I'm in right now. 🙂 I did some googling and haven't really found a good software for implementing (installing, skinning, integrating, etc.) a Q&A section on my website. There are a few out there, but they are pretty basic, nothing like this site or Yahoo Answers. Anyone know of good software (i'm on a PHP server) to implement Q&A on my site? Something that has the look and feel of this site or answers.yahoo.com, etc.? Thanks for the help!
Moz Pro | | mynewco0