Should I use www. or not in my main URL?
-
I have backlinks coming into my homepage, which has both a www. URL and one that's merely http://mysite.com. Which is the preferred URL for best optimization for search engines and how do I find this out?
-
For character sake I would opt to not use the www and have it redirected. But once you have decided make sure you are consistent. You can advertise with either, it's more the actual linking that makes the difference.
-
I started out as a Windows guy using IIS at which point you want to setup the primary domain account then setup the dns alias to point to the primary domain. This way there is no marketing involved because they point to the same location. When setting up a webmaster account I use the www but it really doesn't matter because it still points to the original domain.
-
As has been stated it doesn't matter which one you choose, but since you do have links to both, I would pick the one with the better link profile. The one with the most or better quality links would be my choice.
-
Thanks! I threw a redirect from the http:// to the http://www. address.
-
Theo's on the money here... it makes no difference to the engines.
If you need help deciding, check out which homepage (with or without www) has the higher rank and roll with that one!
-
Both are equally good and neither are preferred more or less by the search engines. Just choose which one you like more (for whatever reasons) and redirect the one you don't choose to the one you do.
My personal choice is www as it looks more 'classic', but various reasons could be given for the non-www as well (such as the fact that it creates shorter URLs for example when Tweeting one)
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
-
Should I use canonical tag in these cases?
Should I use canonical tag in these cases? On the page itself (with the tag pointing to itself) On pages that doesn't have duplicate versions
Technical SEO | | GoMentor0 -
Should you use google url remover if older indexed pages are still being kept?
Hello, A client recently did a redesign a few months ago, resulting in 700 pages being reduced to 60, mostly due to panda penalty and just low interest in products on those pages. Now google is still indexing a good number of them ( around 650 ) when we only have 70 on our sitemap. Thing is google indexes our site on average now for 115 urls when we only have 60 urls that need indexing and only 70 on our sitemap. I would of thought these urls would be crawled and not found, but is taking a very long period of time. Our rankings haven't recovered as much as we'd hope, and we believe that the indexed older pages are causes this. Would you agree and also would you think removing those old urls via the remover tool would be best option? It would mean using the url remover tool for 650 pages. Thank you in advance
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Dynamic Url best approach
Hi We are currently in the process of making changes to our travel site where by if someone does a search this information can be stored and also if the user needs to can take the URL and paste into their browser at find that search again. The url will be dynamic for every search, so in order to stop duplicate content I wanted ask what would be the best approach to create the URLS. ** An example of the URL is: ** package-search/holidays/hotelFilters/?depart=LGW&arrival=BJV&sdate=20150812&edate=20150819&adult=2&child=0&infant=0&fsearch=first&directf=false&nights=7&tsdate=&rooms=1&r1a=2&r1c=0&r1i=0&&dest=3&desid=1&rating=&htype=all&btype=all&filter=no&page=1 I wanted to know if people have previous experience in something like this and what would be the best option for SEO. Will we need to create the URL with a # ( As i read this stops google crawling after the #) Block the folder IN ROBOTS is there any other areas I should be aware of in order stop any duplicate content and 404 pages once the URL/HOLIDAY SEARCH is no longer valid. thanks E
Technical SEO | | Direct_Ram0 -
When should we use Remove URLs feature on Google Webmasters Tool?
Hi there, I run an ecommerce website on Magento. We are no longer using a category. It actually does not appear on the menu: mydomain.com/category.html If this is the case, do you recommend to remove it through the Removal URL feature on GWT? I don't want this to affect the juice of other links of the site such as: mydomain.com/product.html Thanks very much. Regards
Technical SEO | | footd0 -
Issues with trailing slash url
Recently, we have changed our website to www.example.com/super-rentals/ (example) and we have done a 301 redirection to the new urls from the old one. We have noticed in Google webmaster tool that urls without trailing slash as 404 error. www.example.com/super-rentals. Please let us know how to fix this issue as soon as possible. Note: Our previous urls are not the urls without trailing slash. It is a different url (www.example.com/super-rentals.htm) we have rewritten in to www.example.com/super-rentals/ only. I would like to know why GWT pulls out the urls without trailing slash and shows in 404 error. Thanks for your time
Technical SEO | | massimobrogi0 -
Right redirect to transfer juice www, no-www and website movement
Hi here is my problem, I have a website which works both with www. and without www; Now I want to optimize it and transfer it to another new domain along with the link juice of both the old domain with www and without www. I don't want to do it with multiple redirects but with just one clean redirect (I know that search engines don't like that, am I right?). What should I write in the .htaccess of the old domain and in the one of the new domain? To summarize I want something like that: www.oldsite.com/anyfile.html>301>www.newsite.com/anyfile.html oldsite.com/anyfile.html>301>www.newsite.com/anyfile.html newsite.com/anyfile.html>301?>www.newsite.com/anyfile.html Thanks
Technical SEO | | darkanweb0 -
Should I use these Meta Tags or Remove it?
Hi, I have a lot of older pages that I am cleaning up older pages, and I see that I have <title>Actual Title</title> (I understand the importance of this tag.) (I have some text in this meta tag on a lot of pages, sometimes matching my title tag exactly but in some cases I treated it like a mini description. Should I remove the on my pages, or keep it and make sure it is the exact as the main Title Tag. -------- Question about meta tag #2. I have heard rumors that the keywords tag should be removed. example: Thanks in advance! Force7
Technical SEO | | Force70 -
URL paths and keywords
I'm recommending some on-page optimization for a home builder building in several new home communities. The site has been through some changes in the past few months and we're almost starting over. The current URL structure is http://homebuilder.com/oakwood/features where homebuilder = builder name Oakwood Estates= name of community features = one of several sub-paths including site plan, elevations, floor plans, etc. The most attainable keyword phrases include the word 'home' and 'townname' I want to change the URL path to: http://homebuilder.com/oakwood-estates-townname-homes/features Is there any problem with doing this? It just seems to make a lot of sense. Any input would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | mikescotty0