undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
  4. Switching site from non-www to www

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Switching site from non-www to www

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
4
7
5.7k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • jameswesleyhunt
    jameswesleyhunt last edited by Mar 28, 2015, 10:14 PM

    Howdy folks,

    I've got a website that is roughly 3 months old. I created it as a naked URL as I often prefer the look but I've noticed that a lot of my competition has www and also some of my clients seem to prefer it as well. I feel like switching it to www will be of long-term benefit for my site. The problem is that I currently have several pages with first page rankings and a backlinks. I am wondering what the negative effects of switching it to www would be, and how I can minimize any issues. I am guessing I should do a redirect, and I have access to some of the backlinks so I can change those as well, but is there anything else? Thoughts? I appreciate the feedback!

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
    • MonicaOConnor
      MonicaOConnor @jameswesleyhunt last edited by Mar 30, 2015, 12:12 PM Mar 30, 2015, 12:12 PM

      In that case, you really don't need the 301 redirects. The canonical tags should have updated correctly when you made the change in your platform. 🙂

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • jameswesleyhunt
        jameswesleyhunt @MonicaOConnor last edited by Mar 30, 2015, 12:11 PM Mar 30, 2015, 12:11 PM

        This is what I ended up doing. I changed the preferred version on the platform and also in Google. We will see what happens! Thank you... 🙂

        MonicaOConnor 1 Reply Last reply Mar 30, 2015, 12:12 PM Reply Quote 0
        • MonicaOConnor
          MonicaOConnor last edited by Mar 30, 2015, 11:22 AM Mar 30, 2015, 11:22 AM

          I think the better way to pass the authority is to set the canonical tags on the page to the www. version of your site. This passes the same amount of link juice and page rank as a 301 redirect. If you were changing the URL completely I would say a 301 redirect would be best practice, but I think the canonical tag is more appropriate here. Do you have the ability to set the preferred version of your URLs in your store settings on your platform?

          jameswesleyhunt 1 Reply Last reply Mar 30, 2015, 12:11 PM Reply Quote 0
          • jameswesleyhunt
            jameswesleyhunt last edited by Mar 29, 2015, 1:16 AM Mar 29, 2015, 1:16 AM

            Hi guys,

            Thanks for the response. I will do that... I have already submitted the non-www as my preferred domain but will go back and switch to the www. Thanks!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Dezzign
              Dezzign last edited by Mar 29, 2015, 1:03 AM Mar 29, 2015, 1:03 AM

              Hi James, As long as you set up your 301 redirects properly everything should be fine, even without changing any of the backlinks. The amount of authority and link juice lost via the 301 should be minimal at best, especially when the redirect is on the same root domain.

              In a situation like this it's good to set your preferred www URL in webmaster tools to make things nice and clear for Google. In webmaster tools get them to fetch the new www URL and submit it for indexing again. Ranking loss is usually minimal even when using a completely different domain name.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Alick300
                Alick300 last edited by Mar 29, 2015, 12:56 AM Mar 29, 2015, 12:56 AM

                Hi James,

                Yes you can do it by using 301 redirect. I am quoting moz on this issue

                "A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of link juice (ranking power) to the redirected page. 301 refers to the HTTP status code for this type of redirect. In most instances, the 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website."

                So it would be best  idea to use 301 redirect in your case,  maximum link juice will pass you don't have to worry about ranking

                Second thing I would like to suggest you choose preferred domain from webmaster tools by following steps

                Log in to Google Webmaster Tools and follow these steps:

                1. Click on your site on the Webmaster Tools home page.
                2. Click on the gear icon and then click Site Settings.
                3. Find the Preferred domain section and select the option you want.

                Thanks

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 1 / 1
                1 out of 7
                • First post
                  1/7
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • Caffeine_Marketing

                  We are redirecting http and non www versions of our website. Should all versions http (non www version and www version) and https (non www version) should just have 1 redirect to the https www version?

                  We are redirecting http and non www versions of our website. Should all versions http (non www version and www version) and https (non www version) should just have 1 redirect to the https www version? Thant way all forms of the website are pointing to one version?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 9, 2019, 6:00 PM | Caffeine_Marketing
                  0
                • HellasSITES

                  Site Migration - Pagination

                  Hi, We are migrating our website and an issue we are facing is how to handle paginated content in our categories. Our new website will have the same structure but with different urls. Should we 301 redirect all the paginated content (if crawled by Google) to the url of the main category? To put this into an example: Old urls: www.example.com/technology/tvs      (main category of TVs & also page 1) ** www.example.com/technology/tvs?v=0&page=2 **    ( page 2 of TVs) New urls: **www.example.com/soundvision/tvs     **(main category of TVs & also page 1) **www.example.com/soundvision/tvs?page=2       **(page 2 of tvs) Should we redirect  all of the old TV urls (also the paginated) to www.example.com/soundvision/tvs ? The is no rel next, prev tag in our site and no canonicals. Also there is a view all products page in each category, BUT it doesn't contain all the products(max. is 100 per page - yes the view all page is also paginated). The same view all products page (paginated) will exist in the new website also. I checked google search console, and Google has decided to treat as canonical page the first page www.example.com/technology/tvs . Also, all the organic traffic of our categories goes to these pages (main category page - 1st page). I would appreciate any thoughts on this.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 22, 2019, 11:24 AM | HellasSITES
                  0
                • timdavis

                  Breaking up a site into multiple sites

                  Hi, I am working on plan to divide up mid-number DA website into multiple sites. So the current site's content will be divided up among these new sites. We can't share anything going forward because each site will be independent. The current homepage will change to just link out to the new sites and have minimal content. I am thinking the websites will take a hit in rankings but I don't know how much and how long the drop will last.  I know if you redirect an entire domain to a new domain the impact is negligible but in this case I'm only redirecting parts of a site to a new domain. Say we rank #1 for "blue widget" on the current site. That page is going to be redirected to new site and new domain. How much of a drop can we expect? How hard will it be to rank for other new keywords say "purple widget" that we don't have now? How much link juice can i expect to pass from current website to new websites? Thank you in advance.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 31, 2018, 7:21 AM | timdavis
                  0
                • NeatIT

                  6 .htaccess Rewrites: Remove index.html, Remove .html, Force non-www, Force Trailing Slash

                  i've to give some information about my website Environment 1. i have static webpage in the root. 2. Wordpress installed in sub-dictionary www.domain.com/blog/ 3. I have two .htaccess , one in the root and one in the wordpress
                  folder. i want to www to non on all URLs Remove index.html from url Remove all .html extension / Re-direct 301 to url
                  without .html extension Add trailing slash to the static webpages / Re-direct 301 from non-trailing slash Force trailing slash to the Wordpress Webpages / Re-direct 301 from non-trailing slash Some examples domain.tld/index.html >> domain.tld/ domain.tld/file.html >> domain.tld/file/ domain.tld/file.html/ >> domain.tld/file/ domain.tld/wordpress/post-name >> domain.tld/wordpress/post-name/ My code in ROOT htaccess is <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews RewriteEngine On
                  RewriteBase / #removing trailing slash
                  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
                  RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ $1 [R=301,L] #www to non
                  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(([a-z0-9_]+.)?domain.com)$ [NC]
                  RewriteRule .? http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] #html
                  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
                  RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L] #index redirect
                  RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/
                  RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://domain.com/ [R=301,L]
                  RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} .html
                  RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ /$1 [R=301,L]</ifmodule> The above code do 1. redirect www to non-www
                  2. Remove trailing slash at the end (if exists)
                  3. Remove index.html
                  4. Remove all .html
                  5. Redirect 301 to filename but doesn't add trailing slash at the end

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 18, 2020, 4:14 AM | NeatIT
                  0
                • McTaggart

                  Dealing with 404s during site migration

                  Hi everyone - What is the best way to deal with 404s on an old site when you're migrating to a new website? Thanks, Luke

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 6, 2015, 3:54 PM | McTaggart
                  0
                • StickyWebz

                  Switching from .co to com?

                  I have a site that does pretty well on a .co domain, but would like to switch to over .com (we own the .com already). If we were to transfer .com and 301 redirect all the .co pages over to their .com version, would we suffer at all? What would you guys recommend?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 22, 2014, 7:22 PM | StickyWebz
                  0
                • Carlos-R

                  Disavow Tool - WWW or Not?

                  Hi All, Just a quick question ... A shady domain linking to my website is indexed in Google for both example.com and www.example.com. If  I wan't to disavow the entire domain, do I need to submit both: domain:www.example.com domain:example.com or just: domain:example.com Cheers!

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 27, 2013, 4:15 PM | Carlos-R
                  0
                • adresanet

                  Backlinks from Chinese Big sites

                  Hello, I wish I know your position regarding backlinks from chinese websites. I am able to get a text link(from homepage) from a very big site in chinese. It has PR8 and over 10M users monthly. My site is in english. Will it help me ? Will I be penalised (my site is 5 years old, PR4) and some decent traffic(6-7k daily) Thanks!

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Sep 11, 2011, 9:46 AM | adresanet
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.