Redirecting non-www pages to www ones

[romanbond]

Hello:
I'm trying to consolidate all the link juice and see that some of my pages are linked to by using both www.mysite.com/whatever.html and mysite.com/whatever.html.
Is there a safe re-write rule that not just redirects non-www(s) to www(s), but designates the redirect as 301, so link juice will be transfered as well.

If not RewriteRule, are there any other ways to accoplishe this?

And the last question: can this be solved by simply setting Preffered domain in google webmaster tools to display www URL?

Any help will be appreciated.

[NaescentAdam]

I would set the preferred domain in google webmaster tools to www. and do 301 redirects to www.

Webmaster tools will only effect how the link appears in search results, but not other external sources. Use the 301 redirect for that.

An example of one is

RewriteEngine On

non-WWW to WWW redirect

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

Hope it helps,

Adam

[StreamlineMetrics]

This can be done within .htaccess. The code below should work -

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The link juice will be transferred since it is a 301 redirect. And you can set your preferred domain within GWT but ideally you still want to use 301 redirects as well.

[romanbond]

what's the difference between:
RewriteRule (.) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]  and
RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

any significance in using the root domain URL there instead of just www.%

[NaescentAdam]

The first one defines your url exactly so you can replace example.com with your own. The second one I used takes the http host variable from the header and fills it in for you.

In other words when a request is made to the site apache looks at the domain name and fills it in.

I use the second because it means there are large portions of my .htaccess file I can just copy and paste between multiple sites. As always there is more than one answer!!

Adam

[NaescentAdam]

also I use www. because it looks nicer, but its 6 of one and half a dozen of another....

[romanbond]

thank you, that's what I need too, something I copy across multiple sites without having to change the domain URL every time. Appreciate your help.

[bilalyaqoob]

I also need to redirect my category pages from non-www to www. There is no option in Google web master tools for category pages, can you share with me exactly the code for my category page?????