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.
Naked domain redirection info
-
Hi Guys
Been reading one or two posts about 'naked domains' v the 'www' derivative and was wondering...
- What is your opinion on this, is there a definitive benefit to your business in making the switch in terms of ranking?
- Apart from the Google released info, do you have any further recommended reading on this subject matter?
Thanks in advance
Daren
-
The naked domain gives an extra room for your permalink to be more visible on SERPs thus making some extra keywords visible instead of being chopped off. So it has an SEO benefit for people who are habitual with creating long-tailed keywords inside permalinks.
If you think shorter is better, then the non-WWW approach will make you feel better. There are apparently no “technical” benefits to using the non-WWW approach, only that it reduces redundancy and is no longer needed. To be practical, it makes no drastic change whether to use a naked domain or domain with www as the sub-domain. A domain which is hosted at the root directory like www, is better remembered by people as a brand. People are habitual to recognizing websites with www extension and are observed browsing sites in address bar using the www extension most frequently.
The following advanatages you may get from it-
Ability to restrict cookies when using multiple subdomains.
-
Using the WWW hostname allows for easy segregation in the file tructure of your website.
-
More flexibility with DNS.
However, my preferrence is always to use WWW
You can ready further guide on this page: http://www.hyperarts.com/blog/www-vs-non-www-for-your-canonical-domain-url-which-is-best-and-why/
-
-
This is hugely dependent upon what you want to do. There is certainly no outright SEO benefit to doing this.
Personally, I don't like naked domains and much prefer the www. version.
Have a read of this to see if you can gain any additional information.
-Andy
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 redirect or add content, to 47 Pages?
We have an insurance agency website with 47 pages that have duplicate/low content warnings. What's the best way to handle this? I'm I right in thinking I have 2 options? Either add new content or redirect the page? Thanks in advance 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | laurentjb1 -
SERP Hijacking/Content Theft/ 302 Redirect?
Sorry for the second post, thought this should have it's own. Here is the problem I am facing amongst many others. Let's take the search term "Air Jordan Release Dates 2017" and place it into Google Search. Here is a link:
On-Page Optimization | | SneakerFiles
https://www.google.com/#q=air+jordan+release+dates+2017 Towards the bottom of the page, you will see a website that has SneakerFiles (my website) in the title. The exact title is: Air Jordan Release Dates 2016, 2017 | SneakerFiles - Osce Now, this is my content, but not my website. For some reason, Google thinks this is my site. If you click on the link in search, it automatically redirects you to another page (maybe 302 redirect), but in the cache you can see it's mine:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qrVEUDE1t48J:www.osce.gob.pe/take_p_firm.asp%3F+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us I have blocked the websites IP, disallowed my style.css to be used so it just shows a links without the style, still nothing. I have submitted multiple google spam reports as well as feedback from search. At times, my page will return to the search but it gets replaced by this website. I even filed a DMCA with Google, they declined it. I reached out to their Host and Domain register multiple times, never got a response. The sad part about this, it's happening for other keywords, for example if you search "KD 9 Colorways", the first result is for my website but on another domain name (my website does rank 3rd for a different Tag page). The page I worked hard on keeping up to date. I did notice this bit of javascript from the cloaked/hacked/serp hijacking website: I disabled iFrames...(think this helps) so not sure how they are doing this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Note: I am using Wordpress if that means anything.0 -
Snippet showing as domain name with apostrophe, instead of page title when searching for the domain name.
Hi, We have an issue with one of our websites, with the snippet dispaying differently in Google serps when searching for the domain or the website name rather than a search term. When searching for a search term, the page title shows as expected, but when searching for the site by the domain name either with or without the tld, it shows the snippet as the domain name with an apostrophe at the end. Domain is subli.co.uk Thanks in advance for any advice!
On-Page Optimization | | K3v1n0 -
How long should I leave an existing web page up after a 301 redirect?
I've been reading through a few of blog posts here on moz and can't seem to find the answer to these two questions: How long should I leave an existing page up after a 301 redirect? The page old page is no longer needed but has pretty high page authority. If I take the old page down—the one that I'm redirecting from—immediately after I set up the 301 redirect, will link juice still be passed to the new page? My second question is, right now, on my index.html page I have both a 301 redirect and a rel canonical tag in the head. They were both put in place to redirect and pass link equity respectively. I did this a couple years back after someone recommended that I do both just to be safe, but from what I've gathered reading the articles here on moz is that your supposed to pick one or the other depending on whether or not it's permanent. Should I remove the rel conanical tag or would it be better to just leave it be?
On-Page Optimization | | ScottMcPherson0 -
Does 'XXX' in Domain get filtered by Google
I have a friend that has xxx in there domain and they are a religious based sex/porn addiction company but they don't show up for the queries that they are optimized against. They have a 12+ year old domain, all good health signs in quality links and press from trusted companies. Google sends them adult traffic, mostly 'trolls' and not the users they are looking for. Has anyone experienced domain word filtering and have a work around or solution? I posted in the Google Webmaster help forums and that community seems a little 'high on their horses' and are trying to hard to be cool. I am not too religious and don't necessarily support the views of the website but just trying to help a friend of a friend with a topic that I have never encountered. here is the url: xxxchurch.com Thanks, Brian
On-Page Optimization | | Add3.com0 -
Best Domain Name for Life Coaching Site
Hello, I am an NLP health coach. I am starting to work with both life threatening illnesses and minor diagnoses. NLP is a type of personal development. I'm wondering what your opinion of the best domain would be, keeping in mind branding, SEO, and usability/rememberability. The term "NLP" is not well known. I will be doing both phone coaching and in-person coaching. My other website (BobWeikel.com) is not very strong because of the lack of keywords in the domain, but it's easy to remember. Options are: NLPTrained.com BobWeikelHealthCoach.com BoiseHealthCoach.com (I'm in Boise Idaho) RobertWeikel.com or whatever you suggest.
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
How do we handle sitemaps in robots.txt when multiple domains point to same physical location?
we have www.mysite.net, www.mysite.se, www.mysite.fi and so on. all of these domains point to the same physical location on our webserver, and we replace texts given back to client depending on which domain he/she requested. My problem is this: How do i configure sitemaps in robots.txt when robots.txt is used by multiple domains? If I for instance put the rows Sitemap: http://www.mysite.net/sitemapNet.xml
On-Page Optimization | | nordicnetproducts
Sitemap: http://www.mysite.net/sitemapSe.xml in robots.txt, would that result in some cross submission error?0 -
My Domain Name - short vs relevant
I'm creating a website for my new web design company in Vancouver. I'm looking to target such keywords as "Web Design Vancouver", etc. I have another company with a hyphenated domain name which is terrible when I'm on the phone and my client asks me for my domain (hard to say, always spelling it out). Also I wanted to have a good snappy name for my new business so I found a 6 letter .com and matching .ca for my company. My question is: is it best to use a short domain name or is it better have my keywords in the domain name? eg. xyz.com vs xyzvancouverwebdesign.com Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | VebianWebandMobileDevelopment0