Url canonicalization: www. to http://
-
Hey there. Sorry for the simple question but I recently redesigned a site and published with WordPress, in the process the domain structure changed from being www. to http:// .
My question is does this change affect the value we get from links pointing to the old www. domain structure? The reason I ask is that the old site had a domain authority of 36 with OSE and a couple of hundred links but the new site address shows as having zero domain authority and zero links. Is there some best practise I should be following to retain link value?
-
Yep it is different! If you prefer the new version of the URL that is non-www then i would highly recommend using 301 Redirection from www to non-www pages. And your issues will be resolved in days...
On my personal website i did the same as i prefer the www version for my site!
-
Great analogy useful advice:) thanks.
-
Supposedly over time Google will give you credit for the old site URLs to the new ones, but that is a process that I have seen take around 6 months. It is a long process.
If you already setup 301s from the www to the non www you are now like some politicians and flip flopping on where your site is located
This is your call. If your old URLs had been around for a long time and had a ton of link equity, then I would lean towards reverting back. It will still take a while for Google to sort it all out, but it should work. Short term loss, long term gain.
You have to consider links from other sites that use the old urls etc etc, things beyond Google. Sorry not to have a simple answer.
-
Thanks for the input cleverPhd.. I set up 301 redirects for the old site pages around 2 months ago - let's say I left things as they are, may I ask what the downside is - I mean is Google still likely to give me full credit for all those old links?
If I did get the www back on presumably it's just a few clicks in Google webmaster tools?
Thanks again.
-
www is seen as a separate subdomain than non-www. Same thing with http: vs https: - this is why you see the drop in the domain authority.
Here are your options
-
Get your www back on. Setup 301 redirects from the non www to the www
-
Setup 301 redirects from the www to the non www and keep the new structure
Option 1 is the better way to go with this if you can.
-
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
-
Https & http
I have my website (HTTP://thespacecollective.com) marked on Google Webmaster Tools as being the primary domain, as opposed to https. But should all of my on page links be http? For instance, if I click the Home button on my home page it will take the user to http, but if you type in the domain name in the address bar it will take you to https. Could this be causing me problems for SEO?
Technical SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Using http: shorthand inside canonical tag ("//" instead of "http:") can cause harm?
HI, I am planning to launch a new site, and shortly after to move to HTTPS. to save the need to change over 5,000 canonical tags in pages the webmaster suggested we implement inside the rel canonical "//" instead of the absolute path, would that do any damage or be a problem? oranges-south-dakota" />
Technical SEO | | Kung_fu_Panda0 -
URL gets cut off in Google
Hi everybody, I got a question concerning my website URLs. It's a large WordPress website and we've got a lot of categorised pages ('parent' / 'child'). Now when I search for a specific page I only get to see the 'parent' name in the URL. The page which I am looking for isn't visible. Only a small arrow which shows me 2 options (in cache and compare). The URLs are not too long. Does anybody know why this happens, and how I can solve it? I added a image for reference. (Where /partners/ is the parent page and /partners/aruba/ isn't visible) Thank you very much. LSsT1Ua
Technical SEO | | SecureLink0 -
301 for a Very Long URL
Hey gang, Thanks ahead of time for the help. I have a url somehow that is very very long: http://www.colbysphotography.com/wedding-caterers-knoxville-east-tennessee/Here is an extensive list of wedding venues in the Knoxville and East Tennessee region. If you find that any of these links are not working, that the venues are no longer in business, or have a suggestion for an additional venue (at no charge), please contact Colby. Colby's Photography works hard on keeping this list helpful. I have tried Yoast Premium on a wordpress site to redirect the url but it doesn't seem to keep. I've tried a few other redirect plugins with not help either. I would love some suggestions on this one! Colby
Technical SEO | | littlecolby0 -
How to find original URLS after Hosting Company added canonical URLs, URL rewrites and duplicate content.
We recently changed hosting companies for our ecommerce website. The hosting company added some functionality such that duplicate content and/or mirrored pages appear in the search engines. To fix this problem, the hosting company created both canonical URLs and URL rewrites. Now, we have page A (which is the original page with all the link juice) and page B (which is the new page with no link juice or SEO value). Both pages have the same content, with different URLs. I understand that a canonical URL is the way to tell the search engines which page is the preferred page in cases of duplicate content and mirrored pages. I also understand that canonical URLs tell the search engine that page B is a copy of page A, but page A is the preferred page to index. The problem we now face is that the hosting company made page A a copy of page B, rather than the other way around. But page A is the original page with the seo value and link juice, while page B is the new page with no value. As a result, the search engines are now prioritizing the newly created page over the original one. I believe the solution is to reverse this and make it so that page B (the new page) is a copy of page A (the original page). Now, I would simply need to put the original URL as the canonical URL for the duplicate pages. The problem is, with all the rewrites and changes in functionality, I no longer know which URLs have the backlinks that are creating this SEO value. I figure if I can find the back links to the original page, then I can find out the original web address of the original pages. My question is, how can I search for back links on the web in such a way that I can figure out the URL that all of these back links are pointing to in order to make that URL the canonical URL for all the new, duplicate pages.
Technical SEO | | CABLES0 -
Www v.s non www
The canonical URLs (and all our link building efforts) is on the www version of the site. However, the site is having a massive technical problem and need to redirect some links (some of which are very important) from the www to the non www version of the site (for these pages the canonical link is still the www version). How big of a SEO problem is this? Can you please explain the exact SEO dangers? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Http and Https Update
Guys, I was just wondering what is the current up-to-date resolution for HTTP and HTTPS, One of my client needs SSL for transaction,and they only need single page to be encrypted(SSLed) , So should I Force SSL that page only and direct entire HTTPS pages to HTTP to avoid duplicate page issue, or would it considered cloaking. It is been long time i did something similar, Or current Search Engines algo can handle it by themselves and i should just leave it . Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DigitalJungle0 -
Google Off/On Tags
I came across this article about telling google not to crawl a portion of a webpage, but I never hear anyone in the SEO community talk about them. http://perishablepress.com/press/2009/08/23/tell-google-to-not-index-certain-parts-of-your-page/ Does anyone use these and find them to be effective? If not, how do you suggest noindexing/canonicalizing a portion of a page to avoid duplicate content that shows up on multiple pages?
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan1