With or without the "www." ?
-
Is there any benefit whatsoever to having the www. in the URL?
My domain is quite long therefore I've not been using the www. however a few people have mentioned it's good practice to include it.
The www. forwards to the main URL (non www.) and I've set my preferred domain name in webmaster tools to the non www. so I'm thinking that should all be ok.
Just hoping I could get some of the experts views to make sure this is all ok. The site is a year old and I'm just starting to really get going on the link building so it's not too late to change if I'm wrong.
If others link to my site and include the www. will the link juice be passed, as I suspect many will include it without any thought?
-
Deviating slightly on the top here but I would say that link inclusion on social sites you should use services like bit.ly and not paste in the URL.
My reasoning for this is what with a bit.ly url if you add a + at the end you can see statistics for that particular link (how many clicks its had etc), which is nice and simple and saves crawling through Google Analytics to answer some simple fundamental questions.
In email signatures, leaflets and printed promotional material (where your typically short on space to use) then I agree it does make things shorter and look nicer, and who know maybe it will catch on and more and more people will start removing www. from their domains and it will then become more of a standard, for which Google and other search engines will probably use as a possible ranking factor.
I must admit this has been a great discussion on this topic.
-
small but good point
-
One other way of looking at this, especaly if you have a short domain is that a shorter url uses up less of character limits on social sites, forum sigs, or any other senario where you might otherwise have to use a url shortener to post the link.
It's a slight benifit, but it may mean the diffrence between sharing yourname.com or goog.gl/code, the former of which is usualy prefurable for brand reconition at least.
-
i think more would leave the www off when typing, but thats just my opinion. but more to the point i think more will leave it off as time goes on.
to make myself clearer, i think every day more and moe people realize it is un-necessary
of cause in your example i would leave it on.
in fact if a site had 11 links to www and 10 links to non www, i would leave it on, but if it had 10 each way, they i would leave it off as my preference. links is much more important
-
Recently we were faced with the same issue on behalf of a client. I made the decision to retain the www. My reasoning was based that this client had been live with their website since 1998 and had amassed literally thousands of backlinks all pointing to the www of his website. In my mind keeping his URL structure was more important than shortening a URL. His backlinks spoke volumes for his past success.
I am also of the opinion that a majority of end users will still type into a search www as prefix before the domain name. With that in mind it makes feel that they would also automatically type ‘www’ as a prefix when linking back to a site.
So, strictly from an SEO point of view I woudl use WWW.
-
agreed
-
Yeah that's fair enough but like I said it's not a deal breaker and there are more important things to spend time changing to benefit your site for search engines. I live by the rule, "If its not broke, don't fix it", until search engines decide that non-www is "better" or they decide to put more weighting on non-www domains then there is no point worrying about it.
-
I think if you go back a few years, people did expect to see a www, i think that is less so today, and even less so in the future.
but it is a small point really, the main thing is once you have made your decision, make sure you get your redirects and internal linking correct.
-
I agree it is not a big thing, but i cant agree on doing so because a majority of sites do it.
The resson i dont use www, is that it is un-necessary, i cant see any argument for it.
-
The article does not mention redirects, 301 redirects leak link juice, both google and bing have confirmed that, .
The article is how GWMT counts internal links, even if google search algorithm saw www and non www as internal, it would still see them as 2 different pages, and it would still not pass all link juice on a redirect, as it does not matter if the link is external or internal, all 301 redirects leak link juice.
-
If I remember there /was/ a good reason one way or the other for using cookieless domains and such to optimise image delivery e.t.c., it can only be done with your website on one and images on the other, but I can not remember which was around it was, and what senerio brings it about at the moment.
I prefur the www. version mostly due to all our competitors using it, so we look 'odd' when next to them. People expect to see the www.
-
Thanks for all of the replies, much appreciated. I think I shall leave it as it is as there doesn't appear to be any merit to moving across to the www. apart from the very small loss of link juice when people link to the www. and it gets 301'd.
-
In the grand scheme of things I don't see it being a big issue as Google's recent updates to the algorithm are targeted at over optimisation of content and weeding out poor quality pages from the SERP.
My point being that from an SEO perspective there are more important things to concern yourself with to ensure your website is ranking highly in Google for your chosen set of keywords.
-
I think many people have misinterpreted this article. They say that they have changed the way they categorise links in Webmaster Tools, it does not mention any change in the algorithm. Many comments on the article asked for clarification on this and here is the response:
"Re: all the search algorithm- and ranking-related questions: This update only changes how links are displayed in Webmaster Tools. It doesn't affect how links are valued in relation to the search algorithm or ranking. It has nothing to do with Panda, nothing to do with keywords, nothing to do with PageRank."
So you should still leak a bit of link juice from a 301.
-
Personally I think the non-www vs www seems a bit pointless, people very rarely type in the domain name into the address bar and even if they do type it without www. there will be a redirect in place to add that in for them.
In terms of search engines and the SERP page then yes it may look cleaner, but the end visitor isn't going to sit there and think, "oh this site isn't using www, i'll go to that site instead".
Its all down to personal preference but I would suggest leaving it is www.domain.com as this is what the majority of site seem to do (even SEOMoz!)
-
Google has changed their approach on this and now see www and non-www as the same (they do not even count it as a redirect anymore) googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/08/reorganizing-internal-vs-external.html
-
I would not say not at all, they will lose a little as 301's leak link juice, they do not apss it all.
But either way you can have that problem.
-
I always use non-www, as it makes my domain name shorter. So long as you choose what your preference is in webmaster tools and 301 redirect the www to the non-www (like you did) then you will have no problems from Google.
The links to your website containing www. will not affect your link juice at all.
-
There is no reason to have a www, i dont have one on any of my domains, and recomend against it for my clients.
Imagine if people were call me www.alan, it would be stupid, so why call your web site www.domain.com
I believe this is a leftover from old unix servers, it is not needed today.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved 301 Redirect chain http>https>https:/www
Dear community, I have the same issue with redirecting chain from http - https and then to https:// www.____
On-Page Optimization | | Damian_Ed 0
In one of the previous opened discussions the solution given was: you'd update the server level rule to point directly to the end URL form.
Re: 301 Redirect chain Are there any tutorials or resources available to help me properly implement this solution and resolve this issue? Tags: 301 Redirects, HTTPS, WWW, Server Level Rule, Redirect Chain Any tutorials how to do it properly to resolve this issue ?0 -
Sudden Drop in Rankings/Traffic/Organic Impressions Without a Penalty
Hi Moz community! I have a question about a local client in Raleigh, NC - http://paragonbuildinggroup.com This client came to us from another agency who had previously not done such a great job with the design/development of the site, or with the marketing of it, so we are somewhat limited in terms of what we can do on design, user experience, etc. But, the SEO is all still easy to tweak and we've been working on it for some time now. As of July 5th, their keyword rankings have dropped dramatically (we're talking from first page rankings to nothing, according to Authority Labs), and they've fallen completely off the map in the SERPs. Their local listing doesn't appear in search results anymore, and WMT is showing a drastic drop in impressions (from 457 on July 3rd to 92 on July 5th). There have been no manual penalties on the site, no recent major development work done, and from what I can see, no signs of hacking and no bad backlinks. The only thing I can see is that Mozcast showed an 83 degree day with some clouds and rain on July 5th, the day that our rankings dropped off, but I can't find any documentation showing what might have changed. Any insight as to what might be going on? I'm completely stumped!
On-Page Optimization | | TriMarkDigital0 -
Can "window.location" javascript on homepage affect seo?
Hi! I need to add a splashpage to my wordpress site. I use "window.location" javascript on the homepage to redirect on the splashpage (controlled by cookie to redirect only for the first access). Can this technique affect the SEO on homepage? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | StudioCiteroni0 -
Rel="canonical" link should they be to or from an "SEO friendly" url
Thanks for taking the time to review this. So for our example, lets use the following SEO friendly link: http://hiu.calibermediagroup.com/undergraduate-on-campus/academics/colleges/pacific-christian-college-of-ministry-and-biblical-studies/BA-biblical-studies We'll call this link the SEO VERSION The title of the college is" Pacific Christian College of Minstry and Biblical Studies" The title of the program is "BA Biblical Studies" The QUERY version of the link to this page would be something like: http://hiu.calibermediagroup.com/undergraduate-on-campus/academics/colleges/index.php?collegeid=22&programid=34 Keep in mind that the meta title, description, and keyword tags for the page are all administerable The SEO VERSION is automatically created from the title of the college, and the title of the program. Each one of these titles can be overidden with a URL slug individually. For instance, the admin could make the link: http://hiu.calibermediagroup.com/undergraduate-on-campus/academics/colleges/pacific-christian-college-of-ministry/biblical-studies by changing the slug for the college to "pacific-christian-college-of-ministry" and the slug for the program to "biblical-studies". Let's call this version the SLUG VERSION So now we have multiple ways to get to the same content. The question on the table is what is best practice for the rel="canonical" link to keep from getting dinged for duplicate content. Let's say that our SEO VERSION is the canonical link for 1 year. Then the choice was made to optimize the links thru the slugs creating the SLUG VERSION. My assumption is that we would keep the SEO VERSION as the canonical link. But then let's say 6 months later that the title of the program is changed in the admin. Now the SEO VERSION has changed and so has the canonical link. Do we lose the link juice garnered over the last 18 months? It would seem to me, that if we use the QUERY version as the canonical link, then any optimizations or changes affect everything except the canonical link, thus keeping the previous link juice earned. But is having an ugly URL as the canonical link detrimental to SEO? Please advise.
On-Page Optimization | | robertdonnell0 -
"Turning off" content to a site
One site I manage has a lot of low quality content. We are in the process of improving the overall site content but we have "turned off" a large portion of our content by setting 2/3 of the posts to draft. Has anyone done this before or had experience with doing something similar? This quote from Bruce Clay comes to mind: “Where a lot of people don’t understand content factoring to this is having 100 great pages and 100 terrible pages—they average, when the quality being viewed is your website,” he explained. “So, it isn’t enough to have 100 great pages if you still have 100 terrible ones, and if you add another 100 great pages, you still have the 100 terrible ones dragging down your average. In some cases we have found that it’s much better, to improve your ranking, to actually remove or rewrite the terrible ones than add more good ones.” What are your thoughts? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | ThridHour0 -
Is it redundant to include a redirect to my canonical domain (www) in my .htaccess file since I already have the correct rel="canonical" in my header?
I've been reading the benefits of each practice, but not found anyone mentioning whether it's really necessary to do both? Personally I try to stay clear of .htaccess rewrites unless it's absolutely necessary, since because I've read they can slow down a website.
On-Page Optimization | | HOPdigital0 -
Difference between "And" and(!) "-"
I have a brand name "Smith and Jones". I am looking for the current best way to refer to the name in titles and text on my site. The manufactureres website is smithandjones.com . The H1 on their home page uses Smith & Jones. The 2 versions are used throughout their site. In a prior thread (http://www.seomoz.org/q/and-vs) the answer was to use nothing ie "smith jones". I was thinking that a "-" might be better since google says it tends to show a strong relationship between the 2 words. What do you think? Thanks Handcrafter
On-Page Optimization | | stephenfishman0 -
Dropping the www
We are planning on changing our domain next week. Everything has been covered including google change of domain procedure and redirects etc. I plan on dropping the www during this move as it is redundant and dilutes the keyword density of the domain. What do you guys think of this? Is it worth doing? Thanks, Gareth
On-Page Optimization | | SimpsonGareth0