Help With Preferred Domain Settings, 301 and Duplicate Content
-
I've seen some good threads developed on this topic in the Q&A archives, but feel this topic deserves a fresh perspective as many of the discussion were almost 4 years old.
My webmaster tools preferred domain setting is currently non www. I didn't set the preferred domain this way, it was like this when I first started using WM tools.
However, I have built the majority of my links with the www, which I've always viewed as part of the web address.
When I put my site into an SEO Moz campaign it recognized the www version as a subdomain which I thought was strange, but now I realize it's due to the www vs. non www preferred domain distinction.
A look at site:mysite.com shows that Google is indexing both the www and non www version of the site. My site appears healthy in terms of traffic, but my sense is that a few technical SEO items are holding me back from a breakthrough.
QUESTION to the SEOmoz community:
What the hell should I do? Change the preferred domain settings? 301 redirect from non www domain to the www domain?
Google suggests this: "Once you've set your preferred domain, you may want to use a 301 redirect to redirect traffic from your non-preferred domain, so that other search engines and visitors know which version you prefer."
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
-
The worst thing you can do is nothing.
Above is 5 examples of URLs which COULD all lead to the same page. There are numerous other possibilities as well. If you don't let Google know which version of the page is correct, then you will suffer the consequences of duplicate content.
What happens is Google doesn't know which page is correct. They will pick one of the non-www versions because that is what your Google WMT is set up to do. Meanwhile other versions of the pages are being used.
You are sending your link juice to a page, but it is a complete waste as it is not being considered by Google for SERP. You MUST resolve this issue if you care about SEO at all.
-
Thanks Ryan. So, if most of the links (including all internal links) are built with the www format then it is wise to change preferred domain settings to www and redirect the non www to the www domain?
Am I likely to damage rankings/traffic by doing this? What happens if I just leave it as is?
-
You are welcome to do so. Go to Google WMT, change your current option to the www, then adjust your .htaccess file as Steven suggested.
Also, canonicalize your pages to help ensure this issue can't happen again. Your .htaccess changes will work as long as the file is there, but things happen so it's better to be covered.
-
Guys,
Thanks for the input. I just want to do what is best for traffic and the site. I don't want to do anything that is going to tank my rankings and visitors.
I don't get alot of type in traffic.
www is the main way the links have been built, why not just redirect those to the non www version?
-
As Ryan said, make a decision. The easiest way to make sure either of your decisions sticks is to use an htaccess file and rewrite to your preferred.
If using the www version:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^[0-9]+(.[0-9]+){3} [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]if using the non www version:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mydomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mydomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]A few other questions to keep in mind:
Do you get a lot of type-in traffic?
Do they tend to type the www?
In the SERP it is easier to read the domain name with out the www if looking for a specific domain name. Do you have a brand built where people just say your domain name?
-
You need to make a decision. Do you want your site address to be seen with or without the www?
Try to assess which version of your URL would require the least number of re-directs. You mentioned the links you built mostly include the www. Take a look at all of your links. You may have a higher number of organic links without the www. Evaluate all the links, then make a decision.
Once you make a decision, stick with it. Canonicalize all your pages with the correct version of the URL. Search your site for all internal links and standardize them.
While you are on this project standardize whether you use a "/" on the end of your url as well. www.mysite.com is not the same as www.mysite.com/. I make this suggestion because if you will go through the painful process of standardizing your site for the www issue, you should resolve all issues at once.
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
-
301 Old domain with HTTPS to new domain with HTTPS
I am a bit boggled about https to https we redirected olddomain.com to https://www.newdomain.com, but redirecting https://www.olddomain.com or non-www is not possible. because the certificate does not exist on a level where you are redirecting. only if I setup a new host and add a htaccess file will this work. What should I do? just redirect the rest and hope for the best?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waqid0 -
Duplicate content issue
Hello! We have a lot of duplicate content issues on our website. Most of the pages with these issues are dictionary pages (about 1200 of them). They're not exactly duplicate, but they contain a different word with a translation, picture and audio pronunciation (example http://anglu24.lt/zodynas/a-suitcase-lagaminas). What's the better way of solving this? We probably shouldn't disallow dictionary pages in robots.txt, right? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpuzakov0 -
Internal Duplicate Content Question...
We are looking for an internal duplicate content checker that is capable of crawling a site that has over 300,000 pages. We have looked over Moz's duplicate content tool and it seems like it is somewhat limited in how deep it crawls. Are there any suggestions on the best "internal" duplicate content checker that crawls deep in a site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tdawson091 -
Robots.txt & Duplicate Content
In reviewing my crawl results I have 5666 pages of duplicate content. I believe this is because many of the indexed pages are just different ways to get to the same content. There is one primary culprit. It's a series of URL's related to CatalogSearch - for example; http://www.careerbags.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?q=Mobile I have 10074 of those links indexed according to my MOZ crawl. Of those 5349 are tagged as duplicate content. Another 4725 are not. Here are some additional sample links: http://www.careerbags.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?dir=desc&order=relevance&p=2&q=Amy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Careerbags
http://www.careerbags.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?color=28&q=bellemonde
http://www.careerbags.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?cat=9&color=241&dir=asc&order=relevance&q=baggallini All of these links are just different ways of searching through our product catalog. My question is should we disallow - catalogsearch via the robots file? Are these links doing more harm than good?0 -
Penalized for Duplicate Page Content?
I have some high priority notices regarding duplicate page content on my website www.3000doorhangers.com Most of the pages listed here are on our sample pages: http://www.3000doorhangers.com/home/door-hanger-pricing/door-hanger-design-samples/ On the left side of our page you can go through the different categories. Most of the category pages have similar text. We mainly just changed the industry on each page. Is this something that google would penalize us for? Should I go through all the pages and use completely unique text for each page? Any suggestions would be helpful Thanks! Andrea
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach0 -
Category Content Duplication
Does indexing category archive page for a blog cause duplications? http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success After reading this article I am unsure.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
301 from penalized domain to new domain
I have a client whose site isn't necessarily penalized since they still show for many terms in the SERPS, however at one point they did an xrummer blast of 13,000 links for two anchor texts they were trying to rank for. They have purchased a new domain and have gone white hat and want to 301 some of the old site to the new purely for the users sake so past visitors still find them at t the new location. Will creating 301 redirects pass on to the new domain any bad Karma from the old one in Google's eyes? Thanks for the help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoshGill270 -
How to seo : two domain having exactly the same content
Target website in question is ikt.co.id,it is hosted in our server located in US, what I am going to do right now is create a new subdomain id.ikt.co.id that served EXACTLY the same content but it is hosted in our Indonesia server. Whenever people go to any page within ikt.co.id, it will detect their country, if they are from Indonesia, I will redirect them to our Indonesia server. Okay, from SEO point of view I know there are couple problems such as Content duplication, and perhaps there are more. I think to handle the content duplication I can cannonical all URL on id.ikt.co.id to the ikt.co.id version instead. The same thing for social sharing, all links shared will be the one from ikt.co.id, so all of those link juices go to ikt.co.id, and for good measure I can also set the robots.txt to tell them not to index id.ikt.co.id ... All sounded good to me, until the I became paranoid and start thinking "have I missed anything that might hurt my SERP" ? here is the question, did i miss something important, if i did could you please tell me what it is and if possible brought the solution you think might work into this discussion?? Again thanks a lot for your help 😃
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IKT0