Setting a Preferred Domain
-
Should you set a preferred domain?
or
Does this influence your SEO strategy?
-
Good answer here from Irving. You want to make sure your server is set up correctly, and then also specify your preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools.
-
I prefer www but either way is not a problem as long as you are 301 redirecting the one to the other and your internal linking does it the same way.
Also external links pointing to you should be coded correctly too, since most people use www that would be another good reason to go with www.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Why are there lots of 404s after setting up CDN?
I just setup Cloudfront CDN through W3 Total Cache. Everything looks good but there is one problem that I have encountered: After activating the CDN none of the images are available at the older image URLs and they are throwing a 404 error. Let me give you an example for this: 1. Before I setup the CDN, let's say an image was available at http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/leap-of-faith.jpg 2. After I setup the CDN, the image is available at http://cdn.example.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/leap-of-faith.jpg and the good part is the URLs in the blog posts where this image was attached is updated to reflect the above mentioned URL. But the problem is that when visit the older URL of the image (which is what Google has crawled earlier, I get a 404 error). Can you help me how to avoid this problem? Ravi C
Web Design | | stj0 -
Lots of Listing Pages with Thin Content on Real Estate Web Site-Best to Set them to No-Index?
Greetings Moz Community: As a commercial real estate broker in Manhattan I run a web site with over 600 pages. Basically the pages are organized in the following categories: 1. Neighborhoods (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/neighborhoods/midtown-manhattan) 25 PAGES Low bounce rate 2. Types of Space (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/commercial-space/loft-space)
Web Design | | Kingalan1
15 PAGES Low bounce rate. 3. Blog (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/how-long-does-leasing-process-take
30 PAGES Medium/high bounce rate 4. Services (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/brokerage-services/relocate-to-new-office-space) High bounce rate
3 PAGES 5. About Us (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/about-us/what-we-do
4 PAGES High bounce rate 6. Listings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/305-fifth-avenue-office-suite-1340sf)
300 PAGES High bounce rate (65%), thin content 7. Buildings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/928-broadway
300 PAGES Very high bounce rate (exceeding 75%) Most of the listing pages do not have more than 100 words. My SEO firm is advising me to set them "No-Index, Follow". They believe the thin content could be hurting me. Is this an acceptable strategy? I am concerned that when Google detects 300 pages set to "No-Follow" they could interpret this as the site seeking to hide something and penalize us. Also, the building pages have a low click thru rate. Would it make sense to set them to "No-Follow" as well? Basically, would it increase authority in Google's eyes if we set pages that have thin content and/or low click thru rates to "No-Follow"? Any harm in doing this for about half the pages on the site? I might add that while I don't suffer from any manual penalty volume has gone down substantially in the last month. We upgraded the site in early June and somehow 175 pages were submitted to Google that should not have been indexed. A removal request has been made for those pages. Prior to that we were hit by Panda in April 2012 with search volume dropping from about 7,000 per month to 3,000 per month. Volume had increased back to 4,500 by April this year only to start tanking again. It was down to 3,600 in June. About 30 toxic links were removed in late April and a disavow file was submitted with Google in late April for removal of links from 80 toxic domains. Thanks in advance for your responses!! Alan0 -
Footer link back to developers domain
I have read a lot about where it is suggested to either not put an attribute link in the footer of a clients site or to no follow it. But I have a little bit different take on the question. How does this work on a large scale? Are these manual penalties, or are they automatic? By large scale, I am talking about big cms programs such as Wordpress, Joomla, and the likes of those. They all have links back to their site in the footer of the default templates. Is this bad? Does it not rally matter on the scale of companies such as this?
Web Design | | LesleyPaone0 -
Domain Consolidation & Proper Linking Strategy?
We have a client that operates 5 gyms in 5 different part of Miami, and each gym has its own website. All sites rank well and have a a good pagerank. For the purpose of their marketing and brand they would like 1 website developed which includes all of their gyms which we are launching later today. Each gym will have it's own landing page within the website Should we redirect the URL's of the different websites to the individual landing pages on the new site or how should that work to minimize any penalties on our SEO. For example (these are fake url's): www.gymA.com, www.gymB.com, www.gymC.com, www.gymD.com The new url: www.gym.com New landing pages:
Web Design | | POPCreative
www.gym.com/gymA, www.gym.com/gymB, www.gym.com/gymC, www.gym.com/gymD Should we do a redirect from: www.gymA.com to www.gym.com/gymA www.gymB.com to www.gym.com/gymB www.gymC.com to www.gym.com/gymC www.gymD.com to www.gym.com/gymD Thank you in advanced. If there is a better way to do this, or anything extra I need to know, that would be great. Thanks!0 -
How to redirect special pages to new domain?
Hello. I have 2 websites in diffrent category and i want to move some of my visitor that arrived in specific page of doamin1 (url like this: http://example.com/pages/.........)to root of domain 2.
Web Design | | vahidafshari450 -
New site - same host domain?
Building a new site for my business (different URL) For SEO purposes...Is it ok to host the site on the same account as my existing site (GoDaddy) or should I purchase a seperate hosting account? Thanks
Web Design | | Tustep0 -
Website URL Structures - Which does Google prefer or does it matter?
Which URL structure does google prefer..............OR DOES IT REALLY MATTER? Option A www.example.com/services/service#1 - this is the default that wordpress uses Option B www.example.com/service#1
Web Design | | webestate0 -
Entering different but related industry, keep it on the same domain or new domain?
We rank well across many online furniture keywords within google.ie here in Ireland, this is our core business and it is successful. Now we want to branch out into the related field of "kitchens". So the question is do we setup a new domain (a sister site) or keep it on the same domain with a new sub category. So the main categories off the home page would be: Sofas Bedroom Furniture Dining Furniture Kitchens I know all the benefits of keeping to the one domain (the domain has age, and already has DA of 30 with many landing pages with PA from 30 to 49), so for the short term SEO angle keep it on the same domain. But from a Branding perspective this is not a great approach. Is it better to have a dedicated domain/site for kitchens (and the bonus of having a keyword match in the domain)? We are always thinking longer term so we see this as a 3 year plan outwards rather than a get rich quick. There is an additional overhead of course with managment of the domain, templates SSL, PCI etc etc and we are conscious that a new domain is not a easy route to success. Looking at the top 10 for the main keywords within the "kitchen" keyword cloud most if not all are dedicated kitchen sites, or kitchens are the main business so their homepage is there kitchens landing page. The competition in the google.ie space have 20-30 DA and PAs roughly 30 being the highest DA, we are thinking that this has not a huge challenge to overcome? Thanks for any help, assistance or comments really appreciated. Ware regards, Eunan @ Love Furniture
Web Design | | eunaneunan0