With or without the "www." ?
-
Is there any benefit whatsoever to having the www. in the URL?
-
twitter.com is recognisable enough, but keeping the www. makes a URL more recognisable, especially if you're using a domain extension that people aren't familiar with e.g. one of the new gTLDs:
example.photo
or
www.example.photoSome CMSs and forums automatically linkup text when it has the www. prefix, so you might be slightly more likely to get clickable links if you keep the prefix.
Advantages to not having it - shorter URLs, and programming-wise it's unnecessary.
Often it's down to personal preference - do you prefer the prefix or not? If you'll have subdomains it might look nicer if you keep the www. prefix for your main site.
To avoid duplicate content issues make sure you 301 redirect your non-preferred domain to the preferred, or canonical to your preferred domain if 301s are not possible. You can also set your preferred domain in Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/44231?hl=en
I've just bought a new .uk domain and haven't decided whether to www. or not yet!
-
Hi, there is no added advantage or disadvantage with www in the URL. You can go either way, with or without www but be consistent throughout the website. You also set your preferred version in Google Webmaster Tools account. Make sure only one version, either www or without www returns an HTTP header status code 200 and not both. If suppose, http://www.abc.com is your preferred version, then only http://www.abc.com should return 200 and not both (http://abc.com). In this case, http://abc.com should be redirected to http://www.abc.com via a server-side 301 permanent redirection. This way, you can take care of your URL canonicalization issues.
One more thing, while doing any link building/earning activities, please make sure to use the preferred version for backlinking purposes. Please feel free to post any queries that you may have in this regard.
Good luck.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
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
-
Ranking Page #1 for Keyword without Hypen, Not at all for Keyword with Hyphen
Hi There! So I work in an industry where there are different conventions for referring to, searching on and spelling the industry name. For example, let's pretend there were a variety of different conventions for referring to the SEO industry. So someone could search for S-EO, SEO, sEO, etc. and those would all be accepted and understood means of referring to the industry. If we use the SEO example as a comparison for our industry, the two most common conventions would be S-EO and SEO. Using this example, we rank on the first page for the term "SEO" but do not rank AT ALL for the term "S-EO". We have a high-value piece of content that is targeted in the following way: "S-EO (SEO): The Basics Guide" so it is more targeted at the hyphenated word but does not rank at all for the hyphenated version, whereas it is page one for the non-hyphenated term. As additional pieces of context: -In general, our site is more targeted at the hyphenated term and there are places where we rank in the top spot for both the hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions. For example, we rank in a top 2 position for both S-EO & SEO software but do not rank at all for the broader "S-EO" term. -There are times when we do appear on page one for the term "S-EO" but it's typically only for a matter or hours or days and then we disappear entirely from the SERPs for that term. We consistently appear for "SEO." -I currently do not believe we are dealing with a penalty of any sort - our link profile is clean and our spam score per Moz is 2 / 17. Any thoughts or ideas as to what is going on here and how we can potentially rank for the term "S-EO?"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dpayne10 -
Using "nofollow" internally can help with crawl budget?
Hello everyone. I was reading this article on semrush.com, published the last year, and I'd like to know your thoughts about it: https://www.semrush.com/blog/does-google-crawl-relnofollow-at-all/ Is that really the case? I thought that Google crawls and "follows" nofollowed tagged links even though doesn't pass any PR to the destination link. If instead Google really doesn't crawl internal links tagged as "nofollow", can that really help with crawl budget?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
How do I test images in WP migration without Changing URLs?
I'm redesigning example.com on a subdomain of my own site, so at example.mysite.com. As part of the redesign, I am optimizing the site's images. I used Wordpress Importer to get the content to the development site, but I did not import the images. Instead, I added the images to the development site by copying and moving over the contents of example.com's uploads folder. The posts at example.mysite.com are showing the images, but they are pulling them from the original location. I tried adding the following code to wp-config.php under the (misunderstood?) impression that the image URLs would use the development site's domain: 1 define('WP_HOME', 'http://example.mysite.com');
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn
2 define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://example.mysite.com'); I am not seeing any change and the images are still pulling from the original site. How can I test the images on the current site without actually changing the URLs in the database. (If I understand correctly, I could search and replace, but that is not what I am trying to achieve.) The original domain is not changing with the redesign, so there is no need to actually change the URLs. I just need to test the images, as I will be removing those that are not being used as well as optimizing the remaining images before moving the redesigned site over to the original domain.0 -
My home page is not found by the "Grade a Page" tool
My home page as well as several important pages are not found by the Grade a Page tool. With our full https address I got this http://screencast.com/t/s1gESMlGwpa With just the www address I got this http://screencast.com/t/BMRHy36Ih https://www.joomlashack.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | etabush
https://www.joomlashack.com/joomla-templates We recently lost a lot of positions for our most important keyword: Joomla Templates Please help us figure this out. Whats screwy with our site?0 -
Redirect ruined domain to new domain without passing link juice
A new client has a domain which has been hammered by bad links, updates etc and it's basically on its arse because of previous SEO guys. They have various domains for their business (brand.com, brand.co.uk) and want to use a fresh domain and take it from there. Their current domain is brand.com (the ruined one). They're not bothered about the rankings for brand.com but they want to redirect brand.com to brand.co.uk so that previous clients can find them easily. Would a 302 redirect work for this? I don't want to set up a 301 redirect as I don't want any of the crappy links pointing across. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasonwdexter0 -
Can links indexed by google "link:" be bad? or this is like a good example by google
Can links indexed by google "link:" be bad? Or this is like a good example shown by google. We are cleaning our links from Penguin and dont know what to do with these ones. Some of them does not look quality.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bele0 -
How can I change my website's content on specific pages without affecting ranking for specific keywords?
My client's website (www.nursevillage.com) content has not been touched for 4 years and we are currently ranking #1 for "per diem nursing". They do not want to make any changes to the site in fear that it might decrease our rankings. We want to try to use utilize that keyword ranking on specific pages (www.nursevillage.com/nv/content/careeroptions/perdiem.jsp ) ranking for "per diem nursing" and try redirecting traffic or placing some banners and links on that page to specific pages or other sites related to "per diem nursing" jobs so we can get nurses to apply to our new nursing jobs. Any advice on why "per diem nursing" is ranking so high for us and what we can change on the site without messing up our ranking would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ryanperea1000