www. or no www. that is the question?

[Clojo]

Hi Warriors,

I am having some issues with having no www. and having www. at the beginning of my domain.

When I set up a wordpress site using cpanel, it automatically has NO www., so I change it to www. in the wordpress settings and all seems fine.

I then submit my site to webmasters and it seems to want to display the site as without www. unless I submit both sites (even though it is actually only one site) only then can I set it to show the preferred domain as www.

I am now seeing that my site is indexed as no www. rather than with www. and my with www. site has disappeared.

I was on page one for the with www. but have no completely gone out of the index and only appear on page 65 for without www.!

I am confused and I bet you are too after that lot! But if anyone can shed any light I would be really grateful. Would all this confusion effect my rank? I seem to have double the pages indexed as it is showing both sites, and submitting 2 sitemaps - sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz? Why does it do this?

Thanks in advance

Clojo

[Wechito]

1. Set your canonical domain on Wordpress (what you seem to have done already to www)
2.Google webmaster tools will ask you to confirm that you own the 2 URLs. To do so, just upload the HTML confirmation file tot he root folder of your site and press "confirm" on both the www and the non-www sites on Google webmaster tools

[Clojo]

Originally Posted by Wechito

1. Set your canonical domain on Wordpress (what you seem to have done already to www)
2.Google webmaster tools will ask you to confirm that you own the 2 URLs. To do so, just upload the HTML confirmation file tot he root folder of your site and press "confirm" on both the www and the non-www sites on Google webmaster tools

Thanks for this. That's great. I have been doing this, but wasn't sure if this would effect my SEO?

[yunie6]

hi clojo!

been having this problem when i first started.

you have to change your .htaccess file on your domain root folder to add this code that redirects all non-www to www. the code is

# Redirect non-www to www 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. 
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.net/$1 [R=301,L]

once so, there will not be any confusion between www or non www as all the backlinks that are directed at non www are now redirected to www.

hope I answer you qn. and if so.. kindly give me my first thanks!

[John Williamson]

Doesn't matter, but whichever one you use, stick with it and stay consistent when building backlinks.

[Clojo]

Originally Posted by yunie6

hi clojo!

been having this problem when i first started.

you have to change your .htaccess file on your domain root folder to add this code that redirects all non-www to www. the code is

# Redirect non-www to www 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. 
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.net/$1 [R=301,L]

once so, there will not be any confusion between www or non www as all the backlinks that are directed at non www are now redirected to www.

hope I answer you qn. and if so.. kindly give me my first thanks!

Yunie thanks for this that is great. I will do that. SO I presume I keep everything the same in that code you have posted except change the http://www.domain.net/$1 to my domain. What is the relevance of the /$1?

[iAmNameLess]

The problem was, your site was ranked as the version you changed. Unfortunately, google now treats it as a site that is not existing anymore and pointed towards the non www. So you will still get some link juice, but it may take a little longer for you to show up.

[HorseStall]

Originally Posted by John Williamson

Doesn't matter, but whichever one you use, stick with it and stay consistent when building backlinks.

Exactly! Pick one and stick with it.

[App Developers]

I had the same issue. I picked one and stuck with it! lots of good advice here! appreciate it.

[Clojo]

This is driving me mad!

I have set up a new site. I installed wordpress and immediately change it to www. in the settings. I have now added both www. and no www. to webmasters and set the preferred url to www.

My www. was ranking for my keyword but has now disappeared and my no www. is now ranking. The problem is all my backlinking is to the www. site. Does this now mean that it will take longer to rank?

How can I just have one or the other and not both!?!?!

It is making me crazy!

Can anyone advise?

Thanks in advance.

Clojo

[zoobie]

Originally Posted by Clojo

This is driving me mad!

I have set up a new site. I installed wordpress and immediately change it to www. in the settings. I have now added both www. and no www. to webmasters and set the preferred url to www.

My www. was ranking for my keyword but has now disappeared and my no www. is now ranking. The problem is all my backlinking is to the www. site. Does this now mean that it will take longer to rank?

How can I just have one or the other and not both!?!?!

It is making me crazy!

Can anyone advise?

Thanks in advance.

Clojo

The problem is not adding both version to the webmaster tools. The problem is you have to tell Google which version of your site you want Google to index.

Since Google treats, non-www, www and http://www.xyx.com/index.html,
differently, so you need to tell Google which version to be indexed so that you will have the desired ranking.

Now to achieve that, you need to first redirect non-www to www version
using a htaccess file or a php, asp redirect script if it is a windows server,

and secondly you need to build links using the following html code consistently:

<a href="http://www.abc.com/" title="your keyword">your keyword</a>

Note the trailing slash on your the website. The title bit is optional but it will boost Google ranking if you can add that bit on the code.

I hope tat helps.

[Clojo]

Originally Posted by zoobie

Now to achieve that, you need to first redirect non-www to www version
using a htaccess file or a php, asp redirect script if it is a windows server,

Thanks so much Zoobie. Can you tell me the code that I would have to put in the htaccess file in order to redirect? This is all new to me.

Any help would be brilliant.

Thank you

[askloz]

you will want to have the site load WITHOUT a www.

cos WWW is a known definition. so it goes towards the overall prominence score which makes it lower, so take it out and it will be higher

here, use my code, change my domain over to yours. dont touch the .com's unless your domain extension is different

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.dailytradingsystem.com$
RewriteRule ^.*$ "http://dailytradingsystem.com" [R=301,L]

hope that helps

[askloz]

it really doesn't matter how a site is linking to you, Google understands that some ppl are aware that a www. in the domain name is normal, while ppl like us who do SEO, know it should be non-www... so google takes that into account and you wont be punished by it or have rankings drop... so you're all good to go... use my code above and you'll be fine... just let google sort it self out. and continue with the content creation on your site and backlinking and you'll be ok

Originally Posted by Clojo

The problem is all my backlinking is to the www. site. Does this now mean that it will take longer to rank?

[Clojo]

Originally Posted by zoobie

The problem is not adding both version to the webmaster tools. The problem is you have to tell Google which version of your site you want Google to index.

Since Google treats, non-www, www and http://www.xyx.com/index.html,
differently, so you need to tell Google which version to be indexed so that you will have the desired ranking.

Now to achieve that, you need to first redirect non-www to www version
using a htaccess file or a php, asp redirect script if it is a windows server,

and secondly you need to build links using the following html code consistently:

<a href="http://www.abc.com/" title="your keyword">your keyword</a>

Note the trailing slash on your the website. The title bit is optional but it will boost Google ranking if you can add that bit on the code.

I hope tat helps.

Originally Posted by askloz

you will want to have the site load WITHOUT a www.

cos WWW is a known definition. so it goes towards the overall prominence score which makes it lower, so take it out and it will be higher

here, use my code, change my domain over to yours. dont touch the .com's unless your domain extension is different

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.dailytradingsystem.com$
RewriteRule ^.*$ "http://dailytradingsystem.com" [R=301,L]

hope that helps

Hi askloz,

Thanks that brilliant. I will use your code. Only problem with directing it to no www is that I have just had a load of backlinks build to the www. site.

Will this have a massive effect? or not so much?

I presume that I just switch the sites in your code to direct to the www. site?

[askloz]

Originally Posted by Clojo

Hi askloz,

Thanks that brilliant. I will use your code. Only problem with directing it to no www is that I have just had a load of backlinks build to the www. site.

Will this have a massive effect? or not so much?

i guess you skimmed past my post where I mention its ok

btw... its LOZ

All the best

Originally Posted by Clojo

I presume that I just switch the sites in your code to direct to the www. site?

did you skim past my post again

[Clojo]

Originally Posted by askloz

it really doesn't matter how a site is linking to you, Google understands that some ppl are aware that a www. in the domain name is normal, while ppl like us who do SEO, know it should be non-www... so google takes that into account and you wont be punished by it or have rankings drop... so you're all good to go... use my code above and you'll be fine... just let google sort it self out. and continue with the content creation on your site and backlinking and you'll be ok

Thanks Askloz. Thats brilliant. I will do this then. Ace! Thanks for you your help.

[Clojo]

Originally Posted by askloz

btw... its LOZ

All the best

Haha! Thanks Loz. Worked it out now..."Ask Loz". Makes sense now! Sorry.

[askloz]

heheee, you're welcome

Good luck!

Originally Posted by Clojo

Haha! Thanks Loz. Worked it out now..."Ask Loz". Makes sense now! Sorry.

[yunie6]

to be on the safer side, it's still best that you now start backlinking to your non www domain.

[askloz]

exactly

Originally Posted by yunie6

to be on the safer side, it's still best that you now start backlinking to your non www domain.

[kimseo]

Originally Posted by John Williamson

Doesn't matter, but whichever one you use, stick with it and stay consistent when building backlinks.

I perfectly agree with John

[Ettienne]

It really makes no difference whether there is a WWW in front. It is VERRRRRY seldom that someone will have issues when NOT using www

PS. I NEVER type www when visiting sites, it's simply not necessary