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SEO Question on prefixes

by markhimeb
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
One thing that isn't clear to me is whether a site should have the www. prefix added in the url or not. What I can say from my experience is that due to SEO reasons this is very important, and I think this is what the majority of internet marketers believe.

However, is there any evidence that Google ranks the sites having www. added higher than those who don't have it?
#prefixes #question #seo
  • Profile picture of the author Barry Unruh
    Originally Posted by markhimeb View Post

    I think this is what the majority of internet marketers believe.

    However, is there any evidence that Google ranks the sites having www. added higher than those who don't have it?
    I disagree with your belief the majority of internet marketers believe that at all.

    Actually, every single one of my sites can be reached equally well with the www in place or not. I focus my ranking efforts without it. If someone is going to type in my site name and they use www they have success. If they type it in without it, they have success. If they click one of my links without it, of course they have success. From what I have seen it makes zero difference in the ranking of a site.
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  • Profile picture of the author Crank
    I'm sure that having a www. or not is not a ranking factor, but you have to choose one main mirror to minimum the chance for google to think that you have duplicate content.
    Same with / and /index after the domain name.
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  • Profile picture of the author eurekapsycrille
    It's a very long conversation mate. But I will give my answer based on my experience: Google is not treating a site having a www. prefix in the URL as special as many SEOs think. It's just that majority of the webmasters today are using URLs with www. prefix.

    Search engines don't actually care about a site having a www. or not when it comes to giving a rank in their lists. You might wanna check it here.

    So, from a ranking perspective, both are treated the same. And based on my understanding about this matter, you should also consider what's in the mind of the searchers. Most of the time, they are just typing a non-www domain in their address bar but totally expect a www. domain to appear in their browsers.

    Again, when it comes to search engine rankings, both are treated the same.
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  • Profile picture of the author Soren
    No, not at all. Many SEO professionals doesn't use www but just http://

    I've never used the www prefix either, and I've never had any problems outranking my competitors.

    Just remember to always backlink the same exact url (including the trailing slash), since google will see www.sitename .com/ http://sitename .com/ and http://sitename .com as different variations.

    If you type in the wrong variation of the url most servers will use a 301 redirect to send you to the correct url, however, if you link to the wrong one, you lose up to 10% of it's value.

    Also be sure to use canoncial urls.
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    • Profile picture of the author Bofu2U
      Originally Posted by Soren View Post

      Just remember to always backlink the same exact url (including the trailing slash)
      Definitely. A lot of people forget about this and it's a big deal.
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  • Profile picture of the author markhimeb
    one more thing: if I have a site with a number of backlinks and decide to add the www prefix, what happens with the backlinks I have? Are they lost?
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