Link building to ROOT domain OR to WWW.?
-
Hello,
Here I come with one more 'sensitive' question, hoping that you SEO gurus could give some input on.
My title explains pretty much what I'm wondering about, but let me give you some short data.
I have from .htaccess file set that all traffic goes to WWW.mydomain.com. I know that it is 'better' for search engines not to have duplicate destinations as that can give decreased page rank because of 'double content'. As for search engines http://domain.com and http://www.domain.com is totally different domains.
Now wondering one thing: If I build a several thousands of backlinks at various sources, blogs, directories, web sites etc etc. - shall I link to domain ROOT or shall I include WWW prefix?
When looking at Moz Keyword Analysis for my domains, I can see a block about 'Linking Root Domains' and 'Page Linking Root Domains'.
But no 'www' variable (sub-domain) there.
As I have already set canonical part so everything shows with WWW on my website - what logic shall I use when building backlinks? How will search engine translate the link juice in regards I wrote above?
Thanks in advance, great forum!
-
Thanks
-
Are all of your links directing to the www version? Then this is what would happen. If you've rel=canonical'ed to the www version, and build links to the non www version, you will essentially build all link juice to the non-www and redirect it to the www, in this process you lose some link juice like you do in 301 redirects.
-
When looking in OSE and entering non canonical version of domain, it returns error: 'No Data Available for this URL'.
It is only returning results for WWW version. So I'm kind of confused about the 'best' way to go...
Thanks.
-
Thanks for your answer.
So I will not lose any link gain strength if some links are still pointing to non canonical version of domain (without WWW)?
R.
-
Link to the www domain. Although if you set canonical and all to www, you will be fine either way.
-
You should definitely build it to the www. if that is your primary domain. The Moz Keyword Analysis only shows it without the www because of cosmetic purposes - it doesn't mean that the links were all built from non-www's. You can confirm this by looking at the inbound links tab.
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
-
What's the best way to pass link juice to a page on another domain?
I'm working with a non-profit, and their donation form software forces them to host their donation pages on a different domain. I want to attempt to get their donation page to appear in their sitelinks in Google (under the main website's entry), but it seems like the organization's donation forms are at a disadvantage because they're not actually hosted on that site. I know that no matter what I do, there's no way to "force" a sitelink to appear the way I want it, but... I was trying to think if there's a way I can work around this. Do you think 1) creating a url like orgname.org/donate and having that be a 301 redirect to the donation form, and 2) using the /donate redirect all over the site (instead of linking directly to the form) would help? Are there alternatives other folks recommend?
Technical SEO | | clefevre0 -
Domain vs Sub Domain and Rankings
Hi All Wanting some advice. I have a client which has a number of individual centres that are part of an umbrella organisation. Each individual centre has its own web site and some of these sites have similar (not duplicate content) products and services. Currently the individual centres are sub domains of the umbrella organisation. i.e. Umbrella organisation www.organisation.org.au Individual centres are sub domains i.e. www.centre1.organisation.org.au, www.centre2.organisation.org.au etc. I'm feeling that perhaps this setup might be affecting the rankings of the individual sites because they are sub domains. Would love to hear some thoughts or experience on this and whether its worth going through the process of migrating the individual centre domains. Thanks Ian
Technical SEO | | iragless0 -
Linking to AND canonicalizing to a page?
I am using cross domain rel=canonical to a page that is very similar to mine. I feel the page adds value to my site so I want users to go to it, but I ultimately want them to go to the page I'm canonicalizing to. So I am linking to that page as well. Anyone foresee any issues with doing this? And/or have other suggestions? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ThridHour0 -
Unnatural links to your site--impacts links
Hi, I just recive a "nice" Massage at my WMT- Unnatural links to your site—impacts links _Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole. Learn more._Did someone here came across any massage like this before?if so, any suggestion on what to so next?Whould love for some help! Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
Forwarding kw rich domains to main domain
Hi My client has a clutch of kw rich domains that want to point to main domain, apart from being good for promotional reasons is there any seo benefit for doing so (i know there used to be years ago but under impression hasn't been any benefit for a long while) Most importantly though can any bad come from doing this ? Best Rgds Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Will links to www and none www result in penalty?
Hello all, Normally i redirect my www to none www to avoid the potential of duplicate content and as its typically something that is done in SEO. I don't have access to the site of the company I am working for at the moment as everything related to the sites code goes through the web developer. At the moment the site lives at www and none www and one does not redirect to the other. I have been building links (organically as we engage on a few forums and blogs) to the www as that is how it is linked internally already and how links from the job boards we post on link. We do however have some natural none www links and my concern is that since the site isn't redirected that it is being penalised or could become penalised because of this. I imagine that it isn't a serious penalty if one at all but I would rather know so I can try and get it sorted as fast as possible. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | LukeHutchinson0 -
How can I prevent duplicate content between www.page.com/ and www.page.com
SEOMoz's recent crawl showed me that I had an error for duplicate content and duplicate page titles. This is a problem because it found the same page twice because of a '/' on the end of one url. e.g. www.page.com/ vs. www.page.com My question is do I need to be concerned about this. And is there anything I should put in my htaccess file to prevent this happening. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | onlineexpression
Karl0 -
OSE Link Differential
I have the chrome toolbar installed. In the SERP a site I was looking at had 686 links from 12 domains linking to the root domain. When I checked this site in OSE with filters set to all pages in root domain it shows 65 links from 12 domains. Can anyone explain the difference?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0