Solved Should I consolidate my "www" and "non-www" pages?
-
My page rank for www and non-www is the same. In one keyword instance, my www version performs SO much better.
Wanting to consolidate to one or the other. My question is as to whether all these issues would ultimately resolve to my chosen consolidated domain (i.e. www or non-www) regardless of which one I choose. OR, would it be smart to choose the one where I am already ranking high for this significant keyword phrase?
Thank you in advance for your help.
-
It may be that one version (www or non-www) has more historical links. You say your PageRank for both is the same, but how are you checking that? Google's public PageRank has not been updated in a decade or so.
Either way, I'd generally say that if you pick one version and stick to it (redirect the other, e.g. so every non-www. URL points to its www. equivalent), you should maintain all rankings. There is a theoretical advantage to picking the version with more links, but in my experience in practice this type of migration tends to be smooth.
-
Require the www Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.askapache\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.askapache.com/$1 [R=301,L]
-
Yes. I would recommend picking the version (either www or non-www) that has the historical data showing it performs better than the other version. Check the list of indexed pages for each of the versions to compare. Ideally both the www and non-www version of the website will be indexed in Google so it will help you to decide which version makes the most sense to consolidate to.
Once you identify the preferred version, set 301 redirects from the non-preferred URLs to the preferred version of each URL (the one that has more traffic, links, authority, etc.) of the site. This should be done site-wide so that all URLs are either www or non-www, it shouldn’t be a mix of both. In my experience, I’ve found that between 90-99% of the Site’s SEO Authority is preserved when setting a permanent 301 redirect.
-
@meditationbunny Sorry for the slow reply - but yes, I'd expect Page Authority to increase slightly, if the "other" version had any value to it.
For Page Optimization, yes. For example, for my own site I see:
http://tcapper.co.uk redirects to https://www.tcapper.co.uk/. This on-page analysis is for https://www.tcapper.co.uk/.
-
It may be that one version (www or non-www) has more historical links. You say your PageRank for both is the same, but how are you checking that? Google's public PageRank has not been updated in a decade or so.
Either way, I'd generally say that if you pick one version and stick to it (redirect the other, e.g. so every non-www. URL points to its www. equivalent), you should maintain all rankings. There is a theoretical advantage to picking the version with more links, but in my experience in practice this type of migration tends to be smooth.
-
@tom-capper
Thank you. Yes, I should be more clear. I am calling it page rank, when I am actually referring to Moz's domain authority and Moz's keyword ranking. Still, I believe you answered my question. Under page optimization, I can see what appear to be duplicate listings of my pages along with different SERP ranking. It was confusing until I realized that one was the www and the other was non-www. I have since added code to my .htaccess file that will send everything to www. Can I expect the page optimization section to now only show www versions of the pages? Also, can I expect page authority to increase because it is no longer a mish-mash and is all headed to the same domain and same pages (i.e. www version)? -
It may be that one version ("www" or "non-www") has more historical links. You say your PageRank for both is the same, but how are you checking that? Google's public PageRank has not been updated in a decade or so.
Either way, I'd generally say that if you pick one version and stick to it (redirect the other, e.g. so every non-www. URL points to its www. equivalent), you should maintain all rankings. There is a theoretical advantage to picking the version with more links, but in my experience, in practice, this type of migration tends to be smooth.
-
This post is deleted! -
This post is deleted! -
This post is deleted!
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
-
I want to move some pages of my website to a folder and nav menu in those pages should only show inner page links, will it hurt SEO?
Hi, My website has a few SaaS products, to make my website simple i want to move my website some pages to its specific folder structure , so eg website.com/product1/features
Technical SEO | | webbeemoz
website.com/product1/pricing
website.com/product1/information and same for product2 and so on, the website.com/product1/.. menu will only show the links of product1 and only one link to homepage (possibly in footer). Please share your opinion will it be a good idea, from UI perspective it will be simple , but i am not sure about SEO perspective, please help thanks0 -
Purchased domain with links - redirect page by page or entire domain?
Hi, I purchased an old domain with a lot of links that I'm redirecting to my site. I want all of their links to redirect to the same page on my site so I can approach this two different ways: Entire site
Technical SEO | | ninel_P
1.) RedirectMatch 301 ^(.*)$ http://www.xyz.com or Page by page
2). Redirect 301 /retiredpage.html http://www.xyz.com/newpage.html Is there a better option I should go with in regards to SEO effectiveness? Thanks in advance!0 -
Why is "Article 1 - x of y" showing up in this SERP?
Does anybody have an explanation why this is showing up in the SERP? Ju3VYsW.png
Technical SEO | | jmueller0 -
WWW and Without WWW Backlinks
I have just seen through ahrefs and found without WWW have more backlinks instead of WWW. Is there any way to forward all those without WWW to WWW domain, is there any harm or effect in serp ranking?
Technical SEO | | chandubaba0 -
Non WWW. versus WWW. versions, current best practice ?
Hi Im increasingly seeing sites not using the www., but understand from various sources including seomoz that best practice is to be on the www. with the non www version 301'd to the www version. Since alot of sites are clearly doing this the other way round now is that better practice or the former still best ? I appreciate that non www version gives you 3 more characters for url's but apart from that is there any benefit over the www. version ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Help with pages Google is labeling "Not Followed"
I am seeing a number of pages that I am doing 301 redirects on coming up under the "Not Followed" category of the advanced index status in google webmasters. Google says this might be because the page is still showing active content or the redirect is not correct. I don't know how to tell if the page is still showing active content, and if someone can please tell me how to determine this it would be greatly appreciated. Also if you can provide a solution for how to adjust my page to make sure that the content is not appearing to be active, that would be amazing. Thanks in advance, here is a few links to pages that are experiencing this: www.luxuryhomehunt.com/homes-for-sale/sunnyisles.html www.luxuryhomehunt.com/homes-for-sale/summerield.html
Technical SEO | | Jdubin0 -
Www or not www base url
Here is the situation. Developer custom coded a magento commerce shop for a seo client and is having problems adding www to the URL without breaking the site. They wont be able to get this completed until a couple months down the road. We are starting monthly SEO this June. Most directories and websites link to the www version of a site not the non www. What should I expect since we are ranking for the non-www and linking to the www version. In web master tools i'm telling google to display the URL as www.
Technical SEO | | waqid0 -
Which pages to "noindex"
I have read through the many articles regarding the use of Meta Noindex, but what I haven't been able to find is a clear explanation of when, why or what to use this on. I'm thinking that it would be appropriate to use it on: legal pages such as privacy policy and terms of use
Technical SEO | | mmaes
search results page
blog archive and category pages Thanks for any insight of this.0