Link to www.CoolSite.com or CoolSite.com ?

the www is redundant these days. i register and backlink without it.

NOTE: this is my personal opinion. i would love to hear from other people about this.

cowboy123,

My suggestion is to choose one version (your preference) and have the other version redirect to the preferred version e.g. using .htaccess. That way your SEO ranking is not split between the two.

If you use Google Webmaster Tools, you can let Google know how to treat those versions.

Good Luck!

You should have a 301 redirect to the non www site so that you will be credited with all the traffic.

Whenever you create a website or a blog it usually can be accessed either through “http://www.domain.com” or “http://domain.com”. While this feature might appear useful at a first sight (since people can type whatever version they prefer) over the long run it will harm your search engine ranking.

The problem arises because Google and other search engines view the two versions as two distinct sites, even if they have the exact same content (technically, in fact, the “www” denotes a subdomain that could point to different content).

How do you solve the problem for your site? The easiest way is to set up a “301 Permanent Redirect” from the “no-www” version to the one with “www”, or vice-versa. Once the redirect is in place every time a visitor types http://domain.com he will automatically be redirected to the “www” version.

By the way, if you are wondering whether you should go with or without “www”, it does not matter. The important thing is that you pick one and stick with the one you choose.

Quentin

Here's a good article about how to set up a 301 redirect for the problem you're stating.
(for the record it's called a cononical redirect!)

http://www.seo-consultant-services.c...-problems.html

all the best
Rob

for seo purposes it doesnt really matter.

Just choose one to use and redirect the other to it in htaccess

yeah it doesn't really matter which one you redirect to but it's very important that you have a redirect to one or the other. otherwise they're deemed two separate sites and therefore duplicate content.

When I begin SEO for existing sites, I check Google to see which version they have indexed and which has the most existing links. Then set up that version as the target of the redirect and the backlinks.

For people who set up a new wordpress website and set the appearance to the www version, would wordpress already do the redirect? I believe I read it does, but if anyone can confirm that, that'd be great.

My personal opinion is that most people have been conditioned for www and without it, a website looks less professional. But I have no research to back up that opinion.

It depends have you set up your site as www.domain.com or domain.com?
you want to link to your site directly not a variation of it.

Although all in all the difference isn't as much as you should be concerned about your actual on site optimization.

What I fine best though is when setting websites I prefer http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...rum/www...just a preference though. I like it better

Also as you see right now sometimes when you write domain.com on it's own it doesn't automatically form a link. as with putting www in front of it. This isn't a big issue in itself as if you actually linking you put the http://domain.com but it might make a minor minor difference such as with talking about domain.com right now or www.domain.com

The best thing to do is:

1. Check which one is indexed on Google
2. 301 re-direct one to the other
3. Backlink only the URL indexed by Google

I used to be heavily involved in SEO a few years back and
the information below is what the top guys do. However,
we can never be sure because only the guys at
Google will really know for sure.

You can check out Matt Cutts blog. He discussed this
issue there as well.

It doesnt matter where you link to with regards to which one google indexes. If google indexes a page on your site via www you can still use the 301 redirect without the www or visa versa. Thats the point of a 301 redirect, your telling the web that this is a permanent redirect and that the new page is now the page that represents this url.

link to www.yoursite.com as on some later stage you might decide to use subdomains -> forum.yousite.com etc.

but of course, if you use 301 redirect to www - it doesn't make a difference