301-redirect

[danlae]

Hi

My website is fairly new and i wasnt aware of the difference btw 'website.com' and 'www.website.com' when i started up. It doesnt matter which one i use as long as i am consistent right ?

Most of my ingoing links are to mainpage on 'website.com'. I have som ingoing links to 'www.website.com' but also some to 'www.website.com/brandname'. is it enough to 301-redir 'www.website.com' to 'website.com' or does it need to be done on several levels ?

I need to have someone do the redirect for me - how can i check its working when its done ?

Dan Lærum

[ReneReinholdt]

short answer: yes

[RyanKent]

Your host can create one entry to redirect all non-www traffic to it's www equivalent.

It's easy to confirm the change was made properly. Simply go to any page on your site and you should see it in the "www" form. Then, go to your address bar and remove the "www." portion of the URL, hit enter, then the "www." portion should be re-added and you should be on the same page.

Also, use your SEOmoz toolbar Analyze Page > Page Attributes and check the Status Code section at the bottom. When you try to access a "www." page the status code should show as 200. When you try to access a non-www page the status code should show a 301 redirect to the www page.

Lastly, check every internal link of your site to ensure you are using the www version, along with any signatures and company pages you may have on facebook or other locations.

[ReneReinholdt]

Ryan is clearly less lazy then me just a short remark to the internal linking:

use relative paths and you will never have to worry about it.

meaning use: /images/someImg.jpg instead of www.yourdomain.com/images/someImg.jpg

[RyanKent]

excellent point Rene

This works well for links you create but not for any UGC

[ReneReinholdt]

Right back at you Ryan, good point

[seonexgen]

Yes...it should be redirected to www. through .hactess or it can be done through Google webmaster tools.

[danlae]

Does it really matter which direction i redirect ? Is it most common to redir to -->www. ?

[danlae]

Didnt know i could do through google webmaster, thanks.

[ReneReinholdt]

2 things you should keep in mind about with and without www:

• how many pages does google have indexed with and without
• how many links do you have that points towards www vs non-www.. this one is important since not all of your PR will get passed on after a 301. Most but bot all of it

hope it helped

[RyanKent]

To be clear, you would use Google IN ADDITION TO the other changes, not instead of.

Google WMT will alter how your URL appears on their search pages. If you don't address the issue on your site you will still have the same negative effects.

[ReneReinholdt]

There are other SE's out there then google and you don't want to loose that traffic, so as Ryan stated you can't fix it in GWT.

[seonexgen]

On Google WMT, there's an option for preferred domain setting. You can use this. But I do agree with Ryan that it'll solve the issue only for Google not for other search engines.

[KeriMorgret]

Use relative paths, and you lose all link juice when someone scrapes your content and reposts it.