Confused on www vs non-www

[TCUFrogFanReport]

Hey Everyone...

Really new to the SEO world and have learned tons each day.  When I joined SEOmoz I went to my host and set up the 301 direct to have frogfanreport.com go to www.frogfanreport.com.

After a couple of days I noticed that Rogerbot only crawled 1 page on www.frogfanreport.com.  Looked into the community posts to try to find an answer.  So, I went in and took the 301 direct off and setup a new campaign just for frogfanreport.com.  It has now crawled over 300 pages.

Not sure what I need to do or if I just did not set it up the 301 direct correctly.  Looking at the link stats the root domain stats are obviously the same.  The subdomain stats is where there is a big difference:

www: ext f links 1, total ext links 5, total links 5, f root domain 1, total linking root         domain 4

non-www: ext f links 76, total ext links 109, total links 7.962, f root domain 11, total link root domain 19

I am guessing that I should go back in and put the 301 direct from www to non-www?  Is this going to affect RogerBot going in?  Or did I just not set it up correctly?

zach

[RobertFisher]

Zach  (Go Frogs!!!)

The first thing is go into Google web master tools and select a preferred domain. Assumption is you will use frogfanreport.com. Under site configuration and settings you will see select preferred domain.

One of the first things I learned through SEOmoz was that for proper redirect you need to put the 301 redirect from your www.frogfanreport.com to your frogfanreport.com in your .htacess file.

If you also canonicalize to the preferred  you will be rocking.

[TCUFrogFanReport]

Hi Robert....

Thank you so much for responding, you have some good stuff there.  I went to google and selected my preferred domain.  I taught myself how to write the 301 redirect and put that in an .htaccess file and then taught myself how to upload it.  Wasn't too difficult.

I do have one more question in regards to your canonicalize tip.  Where do I place that link,  ?  Do I place that in the .htaccess file as well?

Thanks a million and have a great New Year

zach

[RobertFisher]

Here is a good GWMT link for rel=canon. Frankly, with the 301 and the preferred domain in WMT you should be ok, but this is a good short on rel=canon.

Go Frogs! (Did not go to TCU, but just like the Frogs - lot of friends and now friends kids go there)

[TCUFrogFanReport]

I'm third generation TCU and kind of live and die by the Frogs.