Link building to ROOT domain OR to WWW.?
-
Hello,
Here I come with one more 'sensitive' question, hoping that you SEO gurus could give some input on.
My title explains pretty much what I'm wondering about, but let me give you some short data.
I have from .htaccess file set that all traffic goes to WWW.mydomain.com. I know that it is 'better' for search engines not to have duplicate destinations as that can give decreased page rank because of 'double content'. As for search engines http://domain.com and http://www.domain.com is totally different domains.
Now wondering one thing: If I build a several thousands of backlinks at various sources, blogs, directories, web sites etc etc. - shall I link to domain ROOT or shall I include WWW prefix?
When looking at Moz Keyword Analysis for my domains, I can see a block about 'Linking Root Domains' and 'Page Linking Root Domains'.
But no 'www' variable (sub-domain) there.
As I have already set canonical part so everything shows with WWW on my website - what logic shall I use when building backlinks? How will search engine translate the link juice in regards I wrote above?
Thanks in advance, great forum!
-
Thanks
-
Are all of your links directing to the www version? Then this is what would happen. If you've rel=canonical'ed to the www version, and build links to the non www version, you will essentially build all link juice to the non-www and redirect it to the www, in this process you lose some link juice like you do in 301 redirects.
-
When looking in OSE and entering non canonical version of domain, it returns error: 'No Data Available for this URL'.
It is only returning results for WWW version. So I'm kind of confused about the 'best' way to go...
Thanks.
-
Thanks for your answer.
So I will not lose any link gain strength if some links are still pointing to non canonical version of domain (without WWW)?
R.
-
Link to the www domain. Although if you set canonical and all to www, you will be fine either way.
-
You should definitely build it to the www. if that is your primary domain. The Moz Keyword Analysis only shows it without the www because of cosmetic purposes - it doesn't mean that the links were all built from non-www's. You can confirm this by looking at the inbound links tab.
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 am I getting millions of links from my root domain to my subdomains?
My site's subdomains (us.example.com, de.example.com, etc.) are showing millions of links (in Google Webmaster Tools) from the root domain. This seems very unnatural to me. Any idea what would be cause this or is this? In addition, I just found out that we deliberately stop googlebot crawling GEO-IP redirects, so that when googlebot tries to crawl our UK, DE, FR, etc. sites, it is not redirected to us.example.com. I'm thinking they may be linked? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | CMcC0 -
Links from Instructables.com?
This is a silly newbie question. But will posting on www.instructables.com with some valuable content and url link back to my site help with "linking"? Or do they put a no-follow on all links on their site? Thanks for answering! Ron
Technical SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
Help! www and non-www urls are driving me mad!
Sorry folks, I'm a very recently joined member, and after a five year gap in creating websites, I've decided to get back into the saddle and start again. Boy how things have changed! I'm soaking up all sorts of information from everywhere I can to get up to date with these changes, but I've come across this www v non-www problem in a big way. I realise there are already posts in here about this, but each time I read them, my mind seems to slip into some sort of loop that does not get anywhere. Basically, I think Google has indexed most of my pages as non-www, and only a hadful as www's. I have opened two accounts in Google Webmaster Tools for both www and non-www, and declared my preference for both accordingly. That was two days ago. As unprofessional as it may sound, I use Serif Web Plus X6, simply beacause it did the job six years ago, and it's all I know until I find and teach myself something better. My question is this - I can only create one page on X6, and yet there are two versions indexed in Google (although not all of them). I can only amend the one page that exists in X6, so how do I canonicalize two pages when there's the only version I have access to amending? Or am I miissing the point??? I hope that made sense?! I wouldn't mind, but I specified that I didn't want the site to be indexed yet with 'no follow', as it's nowhere near finished, but for some reason (probably due to placing Adsense ads on there) Google went ahead and indexed it anyway! The site is either http://www.cushioncutengagementringsstore.com or http://cushioncutengagementringsstore.com, depending on how you look at it! Any light you can shed on this would be gratefuly received! Thanks. Cem.
Technical SEO | | ConwyWebDesign0 -
Page for Link Building
Hello guys, My question is about link building and reciprocal links. Since many directories request a reciprocal link, makes me wonder if is not better to create a unique page in the website only for this kind of links. What do you guys recommend? Thanks in advance, PP
Technical SEO | | PedroM0 -
My seo company has a footer link that links to my site by keyword will this effect my rankings
My old SEo company has a footer link by keyword to my site so it acts like a site wide link will this effect my rankings. My site was in the top 5 for many keywords now page 2 and 3 so I am trying to see what has effected it as we havent changed what we do
Technical SEO | | Casefun0 -
Www vs non-www which is better?
Is it better to have all your pages point to the www version or non www version.
Technical SEO | | bronxpad0 -
A client will be translating their entire site into French in addition to English. For SEO purposes, should I host it on the same domain or create its own dedicated domain?
The current site is a long-standing site with good authority and a good number of links. Thanks....
Technical SEO | | JamesBSEO0 -
Duplicate Homepage: www.mysite.com/ and www.mysite.com/default.aspx
Hi, I have a question regarding our client's site, http://www.outsolve-hr.com/ on ASP.net. Google has indexed both www.outsolve-hr.com/ and www.outsolve-hr.com/default.aspx creating a duplicate content issue. We have added
Technical SEO | | flarson
to the default.aspx page. Now, because www.outsolve-hr.com/ and www.outsolve-hr.com/default.aspx are the same page on the actual backend the code is on the http://www.outsolve-hr.com/ when I view the code from the page loaded in a brower. Is this a problem? Will Google penalize the site for having the rel=canonical on the actual homepage...the canonical url. We cannot do a 301 redirect from www.outsolve-hr.com/default.aspx to www.outsolve-hr.com/ because this causes an infinite loop because on the backend they are the same page. So my question is two-fold: Will Google penalize the site for having the rel=canonical on the actual homepage...the canonical url. Is the rel="canonical" the best solution to fix the duplicate homepage issue on ASP. And lastly, if Google has not indexed duplicate pages, such as https://www.outsolve-hr.com/DEFAULT.aspx, is it a problem that they exist? Thanks in advance for your knowledge and assistance. Amy0