Www or no www

[OnlineMarketingGuy]

OK. Let's get the obvious out of the way. We all know to 301 www to root, or root to www. However, my questions for discussion is, which is better?

Is it better to redirect the root to www or redirect the www to the root?  I ask this from the context of links. Because, even though my client's sites are being redirected in the .htaccess file, I note different PA, DA, and link counts for www vs no www. It appears to me it doesn't seem to matter in the social signal arena.

What I am thinking is that redirecting the root to www is better because humans naturally link with www, so you take advantage this natural aspect.

Agree or disagree? Are there any other considerations to worry about?

Thanks,
Guy

P.S. My opinion is to call BS on link juice through 301s. It may help, but it is never as good as a link with no redirects.

[TakeshiYoung]

It doesn't really matter from an SEO perspective which one you choose, as long as you are consistent about it.

If you are working on an existing site, look to see which version of the URL people are linking to you with. If everybody is linking to the www version of your site, then go with that. As much as possible, make sure that people link to you with the canonical version of the url.

My personal preference is for www.

[danrawk]

had the same issue, we direct to www. syntactically, our content is part of the world wide web, so we figured that www. was the way to go.  it won't really affect SEO one way or the other, but for a consistency standpoint (as Takeshi mentions), choose one or the other via .htaccess.

[OnlineMarketingGuy]

It does matter. A link to www.yourdomain.com is different than a link to yourdomain.com.

If you're 301ing www to yourdomain.com, then the link may not be as valuable (as evidenced by the difference in PA). I know from a content perspective it doesn't matter. But from a link perspective is what I am trying to get opinions on.

[TakeshiYoung]

Again, if you are working on an existing site, see what people are using to link to you already, and go with the one people are using more.

If it's a brand new site, go with whatever you feel is best, just be sure to be consistent and ensure that external sites are using your chose url structure.