Solved Should I consolidate my "www" and "non-www" pages?
-
My page rank for www and non-www is the same. In one keyword instance, my www version performs SO much better.
Wanting to consolidate to one or the other. My question is as to whether all these issues would ultimately resolve to my chosen consolidated domain (i.e. www or non-www) regardless of which one I choose. OR, would it be smart to choose the one where I am already ranking high for this significant keyword phrase?
Thank you in advance for your help.
-
It may be that one version (www or non-www) has more historical links. You say your PageRank for both is the same, but how are you checking that? Google's public PageRank has not been updated in a decade or so.
Either way, I'd generally say that if you pick one version and stick to it (redirect the other, e.g. so every non-www. URL points to its www. equivalent), you should maintain all rankings. There is a theoretical advantage to picking the version with more links, but in my experience in practice this type of migration tends to be smooth.
-
Require the www Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.askapache\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.askapache.com/$1 [R=301,L]
-
Yes. I would recommend picking the version (either www or non-www) that has the historical data showing it performs better than the other version. Check the list of indexed pages for each of the versions to compare. Ideally both the www and non-www version of the website will be indexed in Google so it will help you to decide which version makes the most sense to consolidate to.
Once you identify the preferred version, set 301 redirects from the non-preferred URLs to the preferred version of each URL (the one that has more traffic, links, authority, etc.) of the site. This should be done site-wide so that all URLs are either www or non-www, it shouldn’t be a mix of both. In my experience, I’ve found that between 90-99% of the Site’s SEO Authority is preserved when setting a permanent 301 redirect.
-
@meditationbunny Sorry for the slow reply - but yes, I'd expect Page Authority to increase slightly, if the "other" version had any value to it.
For Page Optimization, yes. For example, for my own site I see:
http://tcapper.co.uk redirects to https://www.tcapper.co.uk/. This on-page analysis is for https://www.tcapper.co.uk/.
-
It may be that one version (www or non-www) has more historical links. You say your PageRank for both is the same, but how are you checking that? Google's public PageRank has not been updated in a decade or so.
Either way, I'd generally say that if you pick one version and stick to it (redirect the other, e.g. so every non-www. URL points to its www. equivalent), you should maintain all rankings. There is a theoretical advantage to picking the version with more links, but in my experience in practice this type of migration tends to be smooth.
-
@tom-capper
Thank you. Yes, I should be more clear. I am calling it page rank, when I am actually referring to Moz's domain authority and Moz's keyword ranking. Still, I believe you answered my question. Under page optimization, I can see what appear to be duplicate listings of my pages along with different SERP ranking. It was confusing until I realized that one was the www and the other was non-www. I have since added code to my .htaccess file that will send everything to www. Can I expect the page optimization section to now only show www versions of the pages? Also, can I expect page authority to increase because it is no longer a mish-mash and is all headed to the same domain and same pages (i.e. www version)? -
It may be that one version ("www" or "non-www") has more historical links. You say your PageRank for both is the same, but how are you checking that? Google's public PageRank has not been updated in a decade or so.
Either way, I'd generally say that if you pick one version and stick to it (redirect the other, e.g. so every non-www. URL points to its www. equivalent), you should maintain all rankings. There is a theoretical advantage to picking the version with more links, but in my experience, in practice, this type of migration tends to be smooth.
-
This post is deleted! -
This post is deleted! -
This post is deleted!
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
-
Duplicate pages with "/" and without "/"
I seem to have duplicate pages like the examples below: https://example.com https://example.com/ This is happening on 3 pages and I'm not sure why or how to fix it. The first (https://example.com) is what I want and is what I have all my canonicals set too, but that doesn't seem to be doing anything. I've also setup 301 redirects for each page with "/" to be redirected to the page without it. Doing this didn't seem to fix anything as when I use the (https://example.com/) URL it doesn't redirect to (https://example.com) like it's supposed to. This issue has been going on for some time, so any help would be much appreciated. I'm using Squarespace as the design/hosting site.
Technical SEO | | granitemountain0 -
"Search Box Optimization"
A client of ours recently received en email from a random SEO "company" claiming they could increase website traffic using a technique known as "search box optimization". Essentially, they are claiming they can insert a company name into the autocomplete results on Google. Clearly, this isn't a legitimate service - however, is it a well known technique? Despite our recommendation to not move forward with it, the client is still very intrigued. Here is a video of a similar service:
Technical SEO | | McFaddenGavender
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW2Fz6dy1_A0 -
After I 301 redirect duplicate pages to my rel=canonical page, do I need to add any tags or code to the non canonical pages?
I have many duplicate pages. Some pages have 2-3 duplicates. Most of which have Uppercase and Lowercase paths (generated by Microsoft IIS). Does this implementation of 301 and rel=canonical suffice? Or is there more I could do to optimize the passing of duplicate page link juice to the canonical. THANK YOU!
Technical SEO | | PFTools0 -
Redirect non-www if using canonical url?
I have setup my website to use canonical urls on each page to point to the page i wish Google to refer to. At the moment, my non-www domain name is not redirected to www domain. Is this required if i have setup the canonical urls? This is the tag i have on my index.php page rel="canonical" href="http://www.mydomain.com.au" /> If i browse to http://mydomain.com.au should the link juice pass to http://www.armourbackups.com.au? Will this solve duplicate content problems? Thanks
Technical SEO | | blakadz0 -
On page audit throws a rel="canonical" curve ball :-(
Good Morning from -3 Degrees C, still no paths gritted wetherby UK 😞 Following an on page audit one recommendation instructs me to ad:
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
http://www.barrettsteel.com/" /> on the home page of barrett steel. I'm confused, i thought i only had to add this to duplications
the home page which to my knowledge dont exist. So my question is please: "Why shoul i ad this snippet of code on the home page of http://www.barrettsteel.com http://www.barrettsteel.com/" /> Any insights welcome 🙂0 -
Page not Accesible for crawler in on-page report
Hi All, We started using SEOMoz this week and ran into an issue regarding the crawler access in the on-page report module. The attached screen shot shows that the HTTP status is 200 but SEOMoz still says that the page is not accessible for crawlers. What could this be? Page in question
Technical SEO | | TiasNimbas
http://www.tiasnimbas.edu/Executive_MBA/pgeId=307 Regards, Coen SEOMoz.png0 -
Www to non www
Hi, Is this the correct code for redirecting www to non www version on Apache server RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] Thanks
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
I have both a ".net" and a ".com" address for the Same Website.....
I have mysite.net and mysite.com......They are both the same age, however, we always had it so that the mysite.com address forwarded to the mysite.net address. The mysite.net address was our main address forever. We recently reversed that and made the mysite.com address the main address and just have mysite.net forward to the mysite.com address. I'm wondering if this change will affect our rankings since a lot of the backlinks we've acquired are actually pointing to mysite.net and not mysite.com (our new main address)???
Technical SEO | | B24Group0