Considering redirecting or canonicalization - Best Practice

[Socialdude]

Hi,

I'm having a techinical problem and I would like advise on the effects this is having on my SEO efforts.

My old site www.oldsiteexample.com (live for about 8 years)

Directs to my new site www.example.com which is fine BUT

When I type me new website into the tool bar both sides are found & do not direct to one domain;

www.example.com & example.com (both the same site)

What is the best practice here? Direct my new non www to my new www site considering my old website directs to the www.

Advise & the SEO affects this is having my website would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

[RiceMedia]

Not 100% sure what you're asking - do you want to a) transfer value from an old domain to a new domain?  Or b) do you want to know whether you should redirect non-www. URLs to the www. equivalent?

If it's a), I'd keep the old site live for a couple of months and set up canonical tags on each page and point them towards the most relevant page on the new site.  Leave that to sink in for a couple of months, then I'd 301 pages on the old site to the new site (to the same pages you'd pointed them at with the canonical tag).  Leave the 301s in place for at least 180 days, after that you can kill the old site altogether.

[RiceMedia]

P.S. for got b) !!  If it's b), I always redirect to the www. page.  You can set that in webmaster tools and also do server side redirects.

[Socialdude]

cheers for the advise. a) I'm looking to transfer the value from my old domain to my new one.

The site has over 600 pages, It wouldn't really be ideal for me to put canonical tags on each of the old pages to the relevant new pages. (can this be done automatically?)

B) Yes I was looking for advise on the new site and which domain should be the main ie: the www (I'll go with the www considering my old site directs to the www)

[RyanKent]

You can use the www or non-www version of your site. The important thing is to choose one version and remain consistent. It sounds like you prefer the "www" version which is a perfectly fine choice.

When given a choice between canonical or 301, the best practice is 301. Both work, but a 301 is preferred.

Two additional best practices:

1. I know it can be a lot of work but you really should redirect each page of the old site to the corresponding page on the new site. If you simply changed domains the 301 can be written with a single regex statement to replace "oldsiteexample.com" with "example.com"

2. Check your existing 301s on the old site and adjust them to directly point to the new site. You want to avoid any instances where a user has to hop through multiple 301s to arrive at a target page.

[RiceMedia]

I agree that a 301 is most certainly the best long term solution; however the canonical also provides an opportunity to send over some of the value to the new page/domain before you do that.  Hence I usually implement the canonical for a month or two, then redirect.  Especially when you're moving to a new domain, it's a good way to faze in the move over rather than going cold turkey, as it were.

If the site has over 600 pages, I'd pick the 50-100 most common landing pages (see Google Analytics) and transfer them.  If 10 of the pages get 10000 visits each and the other 590 get 2 visits each, maybe just do the top ten.  Hope that makes sense!

[RiceMedia]

Also, Ryan is of course correct to say you can use the www. or non www. version - I just have a preference for www. because I think it looks neater!

[CraigAddyman]

A 301 will pass over the link equity also!

[RyanKent]

MJ, the challenge with that suggestion is it sounds like you are maintaining two websites. That solution would not work for any situation with UGC or any data which changes over time.

Even in cases where the pages were purely static content, a canonical tag would notify search engines of the page you wish to be indexed but not users.