Is my non-www domain working

[JetBookMike]

I believe we may have an issue with out domains and links which is causing our seo to suffer.

As far as I'm aware, our non-www domain is being treated as a different domain name. Open Site explorer returns different information for each one.

However, when I go to the non-www domain in my browser (I have to force it using the http as otherwise the browser auto inserts the www) my browser returns a page cannot be found.

But there may be a chance this is actually an issue with the server we access the internet via at work. I need to establish 100% beyond all doubt that our non-www domain is not working.

This is the www: http://www.jetbookingdirect.com/

This is the non-www: http://jetbookingdirect.com/

If it is definitely not working, is the right thing to do to ask my web host to setup a 301 redirect?

Further, I thought redirects could only point to one address. If we 301 redirect, if someone accesses a specific page via the non-www domain, does it then take them to the correct page?

Also, is it safe to say that our non-www domain not working has affected our SEO, and if we fix it, will it improve things for us?

Thank you so much for clarification on this issue.

[RyanKent]

Hi Andy. I took a look at your site and your concerns are valid.

Presently your site is available in both the "www" and "non-www" form. Both versions of your URL present your site and offer a 200 code as a header response, meaning there is no redirect in place.

This issue is a problem and has impacted your SEO. The "www" version of your home page shows it has links incoming from 50+ domains. The "non-www" version shows links from over 150 domains. Your links are split between the two domains and therefore are not as effective. By selecting one form of your URL your links will be combined which offers a lot of SEO value.

The first step is you need to make a decision as to how you would like your site to appear, with the "www" version or the "non-www" version. It really doesn't matter which choice you make, it is up to you. All things being equal I would choose the "non-www" URL since you have the most links to that form of your URL.

The correct course of action would be to contact your web host and request them to 301 redirect all "www" URLs to their "non-www" equivalent. Once the change is made TEST IT! I have seen issues where the change was not made correctly and either a 302 redirect was put into place, or all pages redirected to the home page.

A proper redirect should redirect your visitors to the correct page. For example, look at this Q&A on the SEOmoz site. You notice SEOmoz uses the "www" form of the URL. Now try going to this URL: http://seomoz.org/q/is-my-non-www-domain-working

Notice how the site automatically added the "www." to the URL? That is exactly how your site should work.

[JetBookMike]

Hi Ryan

Our site runs on Wordpress. I have tried removing the www. from our site URL using Wordpress, however when I do this the site breaks.

So for the sake of a technicality I think we'll go with the www - so long as it doesn't really matter much for SEO.

I will contact my web host as soon as possible and ask him to 301 redirect the non-www. Thank you for the really useful help and advice.

[ReneReinholdt]

technically your host won't be abel to help since your cannot forward the TLD to the subdomian, but you can fix it easily in your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On

301redirect

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

[JetBookMike]

We're running on IIS so we can't use this. I don't have access to our hosting so I don't know how to do it.

[JetBookMike]

Ryan

When I paste "http://jetbookingdirect.com/" into my browser, the address changes and the www gets added the the address. I have checked the headers and it does now seem to be 301 redirecting, as I asked of my host.

Can you just quickly verify for me the non-www domain is correctly redirecting?

Thanks, your help has been invaluable

[RyanKent]

I checked your home page and a couple other pages. Your site is set up perfectly.

[JetBookMike]

Fantastic. Thank you so much.