Redirecting Powerful Domains

[MichaelWeisbaum]

What do you do if you have a client that never implemented a 301 redirect on their domain?  For example here are the OSE stats for the URLs;

http://url.com

PA: 48 DA: 50 LRD: 65 TL: 1,084 FB: 178 FB: 14 T:5

http://www.url.com

PA: 51 DA: 50 LRD: 165 TL: 2,271 FB: 178 FB: 14 T:5 G+1:3

My first instincts are to redirect the first one to the second one, but is it too late for that?  Will that screw up all of their established stats?  Any input or examples of past experiences with this would be great.

[DanSpeicher]

It would have been better to do it earlier.

But losing that small percentage of link juice (1-10%) is a small price to pay for canonicalizing (with a 301 re-direct)  that website.

You have a lot of links to gain by doing this (1,084) and you prevent duplicate content issues.

[MichaelWeisbaum]

That's what I thought.  Could there be some negative impact that I'm not thinking of? Besides that small percentage of link juice.

[DanSpeicher]

Not that I know of. Maybe someone else can chime in with their experience.

I could possibly see an issue with Analytics  if you're running an AdWords campaign for the old site version. But that would be a simple fix, if it's even an issue.

SEOmoz's section on redirects is comprehensive:

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

[RyanKent]

I agree with Daniel. It is never too late to fix this issue.

My suggestion would be to fix the root cause of this issue. Go into the web server and perform the URL redirect at that level. This way no one will ever be able to see the non-www version of your site. If you try to access http://google.com you will notice the "www." is automatically added. This method should stop any future non-www linking.

Once the redirect is in place, TEST IT. Don't just test the root domain but also just a couple pages as well.

Once the change is made, determine if any of the non-www links are internal. If so, fix them immediately. Next determine if any of the non-www links are under the site's control. Your social network links, signature links, other sites you own, etc. should all be updated to use the "www" link.

[EGOL]

A lot of information outside of SEO should be considered before redirecting a domain.