Domain Forwarding for SEO

[RickyShockley]

Hey guys,

I recently created a new website for a client who was ranking #1 for the term "jupiter obgyn" but they have now dropped down to #4. This happened because their old home page was at www. instead of just jupiterobgyn.com. When you type in the www. version, it does take you to the root domain but it's not carrying the old PA! The www. version of the page had a 22 PA and the new root domain hosted page is a 1. How can I fix it so that "link juice" carries over? Is this something i need to do in 1and1 (their web host) or within Wordpress?

Thanks!!!

[Felip3]

1 - PA is metric created by Moz and is not used by google to rank your site.

2 - You can include a 301 redirect in your .htaccess file. So the version with www of your site and without is the same on google eyes.

3 - This tool might help you with the 301 http://www.rapidtables.com/web/tools/redirect-generator.htm

[FedeEinhorn]

I guess you already did a 301 from the www. to the root, right?

If that's the case, some link juice get lost on the 301 just as much as if it was an extra link you needed to click.

Make sure all the pages are 301'd to their new versions!

[George.Fanucci]

Note that  **http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors  **shows:

URL Starts with 'www'  0.03

Indicates that SEO experts have determined thru testing, search engines may slightly prefer the WWW to be canonical, if I am interpreting that correctly.

So, you may want to make the WWW version the canonical one.

Use a 301 to redirect the non-WWW to the WWW version, for the entire site.

Use Google Webmaster tools to set the WWW as the preferred domain.

Also, your # of Google +1's may need help.  Have you compared your backlink profile with that of your competitors lately?

[George.Fanucci]

Thanks for the vote, but if you have something to say, why not add it? Is my interpretation of the ranking factors wrong?

[George.Fanucci]

Ricky,

One question.. All things being equal (and they never are) are you certain that the ONLY change that Google sees is the WWW change?

There are so many ranking factors that can be involved when creating a new site to replace an old site, such as keywords in the context of each page, keywords in Title tag, Meta description, text-on-page, IMG tags, etc...

Was this a direct port of the old content of each page, Titles, Descriptions, etc?  Page-for-page?

What about the IP address of the web host, and whatever Google thinks about that neighborhood.

There are so many factors to consider that could explain a change in SERP ranking.  Rankings can fluctuate up or down, day-to-day, depending on hundreds of factors, including whatever the competition may be doing...

[RickyShockley]

Hey guys, not sure what was going on but it looks like the page is now registering the link juice passed from the www. version!

I appreciate the help!!

[George.Fanucci]

Here is a correction :: Posting on Google+ is not the same as Google+1's.

Google +1's Amazing Correlation with Higher Search Rankings - Moz

http://moz.com/blog/google-plus-correlations

by Cyrus Shepard - in 11,464 Google+ circles
Aug 20, 2013 - Many publishers have added Google+ authorship information to their websites in order for author photos to appear in Google search results. . . . _(Edit: This should say "posting on Google+" instead of Google +1s. It's clear that Google doesn't use the raw number of +1s directly in its search algorithm, but Google+ posts have SEO benefits unlike other social platforms.) _— August 20th, 2013 - Posted by Cyrus Shepard