I need help with setting the preferred domain; www. or not??
-
Hi!
I'm kinda new to the SEO game and struggling with this site I'm working on:
I set the preferred domain to www. in GWT but I'm not seeing it reroute to that?
I can't seem to get any of my internal pages to rank, and I was thinking it's possiblly b/c of a duplicate content issue cause by this problem.
Any help or guidance on the right way to set preferred domain for this site and whiy I can't get my internal pages to rank?
THANKS!
KristyO
-
Thank you! yes, I have read the articles that you suggested. Makes me think it's not the problem to be honest, but I can't be sure.
The industry is pet clothing
HAHA! http://www.moondoggieinc.com
we already are pluggin away on social media - FB, Twitter, & Tumblr (who doesn't share picutre of their pets in clothes lol!)
My homepage is getting better, but pages off of it like /dog-harness-php and /dog-clothing.php are what I'm having trouble with.
On-page grades I get A's for both... hmm
It's kinda like i wish I had a guide to help in the process of learning seo... seems trial by error right now. I can make most things look pretty, but getting them to search right is hard!
-
Hello Kristy, every industry is different. Some are easier than others. I would focus first on making sure your on site seo is optimized first with great content and code that makes it easy for the search bots. Then I would focus on a social media campaign to reach out to your online sphere of influence. This can also help out with getting links. In time you will rank better. Check out the links I posted earlier on 301 redirects and canonical.
-
Is this why I can't rank any of my internal pages? I'm not getting duplicate content errors on all the pages.
I'm kinda worried I'm reading too many different things and not getting a clear idea of what's going on. I really enjoy working on SEO, but I'm very new to it (a few months). My start is as a designer.
Any other suggestions on why it's happening?
-
Save your old .htaccess file just in case. You will see what works and what doesn't and at least you will have something to go back on.
-
I totally understand your hessitancy of messing with HTACCESS.
Here are some great links for PHP 301 redirects and canonical.
http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php/
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
This will make life easier for you.
There is nothing to fear but fear itself.
I hope this helps and good luck
-
I'm a little scared to mess with the htaccess file. I will, if this will really help me, could it hurt?
KristyO
-
GWT only utilizes the crawl bot and search results. It doesn't control your site's operation on the backend.
Use this in your ".htaccess" file to redirect all .example.com to www.example.com
<code class="htaccess" title="in your .htaccess file">RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]</code>
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
-
Temporary Domain Changes
Hi All, Our development team needs to do a temporary site name change from www.sitename.com to new.sitename.com and then wants to return to www.sitename.com. They need to do this for the whole site due to how it's built with single sign on (SSO) and how certain post login pages utilize pre login pages and need to keep people logged in. This process is changing with a CMS upgrade and website and post login pages will be independent of the pre login pages moving forward. My question is what is the best way to manage this transition? Right now it seems like the best solution I've been able to work out with development is to reduce the domain shift down to one week and use 302 Redirects, don't index the new.sitename.com site, and for that week and take my lumps as they come from search. Looking for any other suggestion that may help marketing work with dev without casting blame on any teams for drops in organic traffic.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dapacifi0 -
All of my blog titles have disappeared. In need of Wordpress help.
Not sure if this is the right place to ask this question but here it goes. All of the titles on my real estate website have disappeared. I have spent hours looking through different forums trying to figure out how to make them show up. Also whenever I hover the cursor over links they turn to white and disappear as well. This is the website: http://www.acolerealty.com/blog/ If this helps here is the custom CSS in worpress is the following: /* GREEN */ body {background: #eff3ec !important;} .header-membership {
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | artscube.biz
background: #fff !important;
box-shadow: none !important;
border-bottom: 2px solid #e5e9e3 !important;
} .header-membership a {
color: #909090 !important;
text-shadow: none !important
} h1#site-title a {
color: #397249 !important;
} header nav#main-nav {
background: #7aad79 !important; /* Old browsers /
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%, #397249 100%) !important; / FF3.6+ /
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#7aad79), color-stop(100%,#397249)) !important; / Chrome,Safari4+ /
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%); / Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ /
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / Opera 11.10+ /
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / IE10+ /
background: linear-gradient(to bottom, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / W3C /
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#7aad79', endColorstr='#397249',GradientType=0 ) !important; / IE6-9 */
} #t-header-container .home-search-container #header-top-search::before {
background: #7aad79 !important; /* Old browsers /
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%, #397249 100%) !important; / FF3.6+ /
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#7aad79), color-stop(100%,#397249)) !important; / Chrome,Safari4+ /
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%); / Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ /
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / Opera 11.10+ /
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / IE10+ /
background: linear-gradient(to bottom, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / W3C /
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#7aad79', endColorstr='#397249',GradientType=0 ) !important; / IE6-9 */
} input.button-primary {
background: #7aad79 !important; /* Old browsers /
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%, #397249 100%) !important; / FF3.6+ /
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#7aad79), color-stop(100%,#397249)) !important; / Chrome,Safari4+ /
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%); / Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ /
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / Opera 11.10+ /
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / IE10+ /
background: linear-gradient(to bottom, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / W3C /
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#7aad79', endColorstr='#397249',GradientType=0 ) !important; / IE6-9 */ border:1px solid #23472d !important;
} input.button-primary:hover {
background: #628b61 !important;
} footer {
background: #e4e8e1 !important;
}0 -
How to switch brand domain and address previous use of domain
We recently acquired a new domain to replace existing as it better fits our brand. We have little/no organic value on existing domain so switching is not an issue. However the newly acquired domain was previously used in a different industry and has inbound links with significant spam scores. How can we let Google know that these links are not valid for our business and start rebuilding reputation of the domain? Disavow tool?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marlette0 -
Big 301 Redirect Help!
Hey guys I need a little help with setting up a big 301. Background: It's a bit of a mess as the old site is a total mess after being online for 10 years plus. It has html and php pages, and a mod rewrite to redirect old html links to the newer php version of those pages. It's now moving to a new site and as the domain name and URL structure has changed we can't use any fancy regex and have to do a page to page redirect. There are 1500 pages to redirect. However, the old site has thousands of linking root domains, and some of these are to the old html pages (which currently redirect to the php pages) and some to the newer php pages. Question: My initial plan was to leave the mod rewrite and only redirect the php pages. That means 1500 individual redirects instead of 3000 if I individually redirect both the php and html pages. I'm not sure what's best to be honest. We don't really want multiple hops in the redirect (html>php>new site), but surely 1500 redirects is better than 3000! Does anyone have any advice on which option may be best, or even a better option? Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HarveyP0 -
Domain name match and SEO
I was asked a question today and would like a second opinion on it : Knowing that Alex wants to rank for personnal training the question is, from a SEO standpoint, which domain name would you recommend me using and why : personnaltraining.com ( IS not available) Personnaltrainingalex.com alexpersonnaltraining.com alextraining.com trainingalex.com I have my idea on this, but I'd like to have your so we can share and discuss on that. Thanks !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Catalyste0 -
End of March we migrated our site over to HubSpot. We went from page 3 on Google to non existent. Still found on page 2 of Yahoo and Bing. Beyond frustrated...HELP PLEASE "www.vortexpartswashers.com"
End of March we migrated our site over to HubSpot. We went from page 3 on Google to non existent. Still found on page 2 of Yahoo and Bing under same keywords " parts washers" Beyond frustrated...HELP PLEASE "www.vortexpartswashers.com"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mhart0 -
Google +one button - help needed
I have installed Google plus button on my homepage. My GA report is being displayed like this - 7 total events were recorded Total Events Unique Events 7 2 Event action Total Events on 4 off 3 My questions are - 1 ) Is someone clicking on Google plus button considered an Event ? 2 ) What is meant by 2 Unique Events 3 ) Why does GA report shows on 4 and off 3
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Changing domain extension to detoxify a domain
Hi there, A linkbuilding company that has been building links for us has not gained any sustained results. They have advised that our domain may be toxic, and that we should consider permanent redirecting from .co.uk to another domain extension in order to remedy this. Is this a recommendation worth considering?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Maximise0