I need help with setting the preferred domain; www. or not??

[KristyO]

Hi!

I'm kinda new to the SEO game and struggling with this site I'm working on:

http://www.moondoggieinc.com

I set the preferred domain to www. in GWT but I'm not seeing it reroute to that?

I can't seem to get any of my internal pages to rank, and I was thinking it's possiblly b/c of a duplicate content issue cause by this problem.

Any help or guidance on the right way to set preferred domain for this site and whiy I can't get my internal pages to rank?

THANKS!

KristyO

[William.Lau]

GWT only utilizes the crawl bot and search results. It doesn't control your site's operation on the backend.

Use this in your ".htaccess" file to redirect all .example.com to www.example.com

<code class="htaccess" title="in your .htaccess file">RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]</code> 

[KristyO]

I'm a little scared to mess with the htaccess file. I will, if this will really help me, could it hurt?

KristyO

[bronxpad]

I totally understand your hessitancy of messing with HTACCESS.

Here are some great links for PHP 301 redirects and canonical.

http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php/

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

This will make life easier for you.

There is nothing to fear but fear itself.

I hope this helps and good luck

[William.Lau]

Save your old .htaccess file just in case. You will see what works and what doesn't and at least you will have something to go back on.

[KristyO]

Is this why I can't rank any of my internal pages? I'm not getting duplicate content errors on all the pages.

I'm kinda worried I'm reading too many different things and not getting a clear idea of what's going on. I really enjoy working on SEO, but I'm very new to it (a few months). My start is as a designer.

Any other suggestions on why it's happening?

[bronxpad]

Hello Kristy, every industry is different. Some are easier than others. I would focus first on making sure your on site seo is optimized first with great content and code that makes it easy for the search bots. Then I would focus on a social media campaign to reach out to your online sphere of influence. This can also help out with getting links. In time you will rank better. Check out the links I posted earlier on 301 redirects and canonical.

[KristyO]

Thank you! yes, I have read the articles that you suggested. Makes me think it's not the problem to be honest, but I can't be sure.

The industry is pet clothing HAHA! http://www.moondoggieinc.com

we already are pluggin away on social media - FB, Twitter, & Tumblr (who doesn't share picutre of their pets in clothes lol!)

My homepage is getting better, but pages off of it like /dog-harness-php and /dog-clothing.php are what I'm having trouble with.

On-page grades I get A's for both... hmm

It's kinda like i wish I had a guide to help in the process of learning seo... seems trial by error right now. I can make most things look pretty, but getting them to search right is hard!