Changing Canonical Tags on Indexed Pages that are Ranking Well

[QuickToImpress]

Hi Guys,

I recently rolled out a domain wide canonical tag change.

Previously the website had canonical tags without the www, however the website was setup to redirect to www on page load.

I noticed that the site competitors were all using www and as far as I understand www versus non www, it's based on preference. In order to keep things consistent, I changed the canonical tag to include the www.

Will the site drop in rankings? Especially if the pages are starting to rank quite well. Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks!

[GastonRiera]

Hi Jeffrey,

Let's separate what you've said:

1- Redirect from non-www to www 
2- Canonical tag

Talking about the redirection, there has been some new about it. Cyrus Shepard explained excepcionally here: 
301 Redirects Rules Change: What You Need to Know for SEO - Moz Blog It's possible that your rankings may vary.

About the canonical tag, of you can set the prefered domain in Search Console, then there'll be no need to set the canonical.

Best of luck.
GR.

[QuickToImpress]

1.) The site was already redirecting all non-www traffic to www as a 301.

2.) I had the canonical as a non www. Therefore, I changed the canonical to www and will submit site to reindexed, hoping this will make up for the 15% loss according to the article you just shared.

Thoughts?

[GastonRiera]

If you've configured right in Search Console, setting that the main site is the www version, there should be no much problem.
The 15% loss is after aplplying the 301 redirect. As you said, the redirection was already done. So that loss should no happen.

about the canonical, there should not be any problem. I dont think there will be traffic or ranking loss.

[QuickToImpress]

In the search console, I have Don't set a preferred domain.

Do you recommend to set as www ?

[GastonRiera]

You should set the preferred domain as the one you're using.

In my experience there are no difference using www or non-www. 
IF you are using the www version, then set that up.

[QuickToImpress]

Okay, makes sense. I am changing it to www.

Thanks!