Backlinks: With or without "www"?

Sheryl Polomka

15 years ago

I don't think it matters, as long as you stick with one and keep building backlinks with that one way.

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Tom Goodwin

15 years ago

You are correct in that Google, and the other search engines, certainly do treat hxxp://www.mysite.com and hxxp://mysite.com as two completely different domains (however most browsers will redirect one to the other so you would still get there using IE or firefox for instance).

You should be building backlinks to whatever you have your domain set as (with or with the "www"). For instance in Wordpress, you can change this in the General Settings of the admin panel. Personally, I always set my sites up with "www" as I view that as more "normal", but I knoiw others who always use without the "www". It doesn't matter which you choose, but you need to choose one and go with it.

If you have links built to hxxp://www.mysite.com, but your domain is actually set up as hxxp://mysite.com, those links generally will not help your site in either SERP ranking or Pagerank. Note that if you have some straggler backlinks going to the wrong "www" version, you can set up a 301 redirect (which Google treats as a permanent redirect) in your site's .htaccess file. The 301 redirect will redirect all of the links going to the wrong version to the right version. You won't get 100% of the full power from the links, but you'll get most of it.

Tom

Originally Posted by tragictrip

This has been bugging me lately. When building backlinks, do you guys include "www" in your website's URL?

I know that Google does index the non www version as well as the www version, so my guess is that it treats both URLs as seperate sites. If that is really the case, which version would it be more advisable to build backlinks for?

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tragictrip

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Tom Goodwin

You are correct in that Google, and the other search engines, certainly do treat hxxp://www.mysite.com and hxxp://mysite.com as two completely different domains (however most browsers will redirect one to the other so you would still get there using IE or firefox for instance).

You should be building backlinks to whatever you have your domain set as (with or with the "www"). For instance in Wordpress, you can change this in the General Settings of the admin panel. Personally, I always set my sites up with "www" as I view that as more "normal", but I knoiw others who always use without the "www". It doesn't matter which you choose, but you need to choose one and go with it.

If you have links built to hxxp://www.mysite.com, but your domain is actually set up as hxxp://mysite.com, those links generally will not help your site in either SERP ranking or Pagerank. Note that if you have some straggler backlinks going to the wrong "www" version, you can set up a 301 redirect (which Google treats as a permanent redirect) in your site's .htaccess file. The 301 redirect will redirect all of the links going to the wrong version to the right version. You won't get 100% of the full power from the links, but you'll get most of it.

Tom

Thanks Tom, this answered my question and has really cleared things up.

I'm glad I'm on the right track, that is, building backlinks with the www in the URL, as my sites are all configured with the www in them.

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BillWynne

15 years ago

This is an excellent detail Tom.
It is the small things in life that make up the total sum.

Originally Posted by Tom Goodwin

You should be building backlinks to whatever you have your domain set as (with or with the "www"). For instance in Wordpress, you can change this in the General Settings of the admin panel. Personally, I always set my sites up with "www" as I view that as more "normal", but I knoiw others who always use without the "www". It doesn't matter which you choose, but you need to choose one and go with it.

Tom

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1 reply

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BillWynne 15 years ago

Most people still think you need to put the www in front of the web address so do you think we should stick to the www format?
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- FredJones 15 years ago
  
  Does not matter - choose any one and stick to it. And make sure the other one redirects 301 to whichever you are using (permanent redirect). About people typing in the WWW - again, does not matter if you redirect. There are two things being discussed here.
  
  (1) SEO: Going for any one of www or non-www and sticking to it will ensure that you are getting the backlinks onto the same domain and thus your links are getting counted properly rather than getting split into www and non-www. The split, if it happens, would reduce your link horsepower because www and non-www are two unrelated domains, as so correctly pointed out. And a 301 redirection would still give the juice. In fact, 301's can be so powerful that I have seen a completely new site outrank me simply because its predecessor used to outrank me (no more, I am #1 in that domain now, thank goodness), and then they had decided to abort the older domain and move onto a new one and had also decided to put 301 redirects. Do you see how powerful 301 can be? By the way, in the new domain they did not even have the keyword in URL and they were STILL ranking #1 then (the older one had the keyword in the URL at least). And I am talking directly from my own experience, if that makes it even more valuable.
  (2) Direct traffic: This is nothing to worry about. WWW is the natural way to go but if you set up redirection then people typing www will be redirected to the non-www page so that should still be okay.
  
  Great answer from Tom above, as he always gives. I know I have echoed many things that he said, but wanted to reinforce that what Tom is saying is perfect.
  
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Science Friction

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Tom Goodwin

...The 301 redirect will redirect all of the links going to the wrong version to the right version. You won't get 100% of the full power from the links, but you'll get most of it.

This is interesting. Presently, I have a 301 redirect (.htaccess style) from the root directory of my domain to the URL of the portal page, which is dynamically generated off a PHP index page in a subdirectory. I asked in here a couple days ago if that would be a problem, but nobody answered. Since I made that change, I haven't seen any difference in my SERP ranking on Google. 'Course, it's only been just under a week, and there's no telling what will happen in the future. Most of the external links to this site, though, go to the forum anway, so maybe it's not a big deal at all.

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paulgl 15 years ago

If you consistently make backlinks to the same one, it won't matter.

I think the days of wanting to put a www in front are gone. Most people know
you can just go to domain.com.

99.99% the site goes to the same thing.

In some strange circumstances, your host has not automatically
set up the www as most do. If this is the case, adding a www
will go nowhere. This is rare, but does happen.

And the opposite is true as well. Sometimes your host does not
like the non-www version and the index page can only be gotten
using the www in front.

These are rare cases, and for the most part, google figures it out.
SEO advice: url canonicalization

You can really get into some crazy stuff if you talk about it too long.
People will then bring up the trailing slash or no trailing slash.

Bottom line, is if google knows which one is preferred, no problems.
Browser are amazing things nowadays.

Paul
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MrSimit

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Tom Goodwin

If you have links built to hxxp://www.mysite.com, but your domain is actually set up as hxxp://mysite.com, those links generally will not help your site in either SERP ranking or Pagerank. Note that if you have some straggler backlinks going to the wrong "www" version, you can set up a 301 redirect (which Google treats as a permanent redirect) in your site's .htaccess file. The 301 redirect will redirect all of the links going to the wrong version to the right version. You won't get 100% of the full power from the links, but you'll get most of it.

Tom

Many thanks for this explanation Tom. I've been building my own backlinks for a while and was using Traffictravis to monitor their effectiveness. I was beginning to wonder if my work was worthwhile as TT didn't appear to be picking up any new backlinks. After reading through this thread, I ran another TT report, minus the "www" in my url, and lo and behold there were most of my new high PR backlinks showing.

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kposs

15 years ago

One tip. If you are starting SEO for an existing domain, check the domain in Google with the "site:domain.com" command and check the backlinks for both versions in Yahoo Site Explorer (or other backlink tool) to see which has the most.

If there are insignificant backlinks, I use the version indexed in Google. If there are significant backlinks, I use that version.

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jhonsean

15 years ago

Like everybody said in this thread it really doesn't matter with or without www the only concerns in this matter is to have quality backlinks whenever what the domains is the important is how do you optimized well your site.

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iAmNameLess

15 years ago

Very interesting. I have 53 pages in google indexed with the www but 178 indexed without the www

So, does it not matter, or when using back links should i skip out on the www?

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yukon

Banned 15 years ago

[DELETED]

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iAmNameLess

15 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

If it's the site in your Sig, then you should use www

Then 301 redirect all non-www, back to the www

Build future backlinks with www, for the site in your Sig. since your site is running www

Well, if you go without the www it runs without that as well... if you go to the site www all links in that site are www but when you go without then all the links are without.

I have more pages indexed without, should I just go without, or what? I'm not sure how to 301 redirect, I am quite new at this. Will this make much of a difference?

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DireStraits

15 years ago

The "www." is a subdomain, so Google views "www.mydomain.com" as being independent from "mydomain.com", just as it would view any other subdomain.

What I normally do on my sites, using a 301 redirect, is forward all visitors to "non-www." URLs.

This also has the added benefit of rerouting any backlink juice and PageRank to the "correct" URLs, whenever someone happens to build a link to my sites utilising the "www."

My advice: pick an URL format, and stick with it. Build all your links accordingly, and perhaps consider setting up a 301 redirect to force people to utilise the correct/preferred format, and to reroute any link-juice/PR to the correct destination URL.

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iAmNameLess

15 years ago

Thank you, I use a joomla site so it wasn't very easy to accomplish. Had to add a string in the configuration php file in order to get it to work, but now it is working. Thank you very much for the information. I have a lot of learning to do, and I think a lot will come from here!

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smartalex4

15 years ago

Wow....thank you for this info. I've been mixing my links between www and non-www as I thought that looked more natural....so much for that!

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iAmNameLess 15 years ago

Originally Posted by smartalex4

Wow....thank you for this info. I've been mixing my links between www and non-www as I thought that looked more natural....so much for that!

Exactly, I was curious when I noticed the non www had more pages indexed but less back links, when my www had more back links and less pages indexed. So I was curious and did a google search, found this thread. Glad I came across this.
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coolseo

15 years ago

You don't have to worry about www or non-www while building links...in fact you will not always have control over how people link to your site...so the best solutions is to use 301 permanent redirect of all the versions of url to preferred or canonical url...Goggle will accumulate all the link juice to that chosen version

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yrafanan

15 years ago

Originally Posted by tragictrip

This has been bugging me lately. When building backlinks, do you guys include "www" in your website's URL?

I know that Google does index the non www version as well as the www version, so my guess is that it treats both URLs as seperate sites. If that is really the case, which version would it be more advisable to build backlinks for?

For me I do include the "www" so that I can make sure that when you click the link it will lead you directly to the website that you have made back link.

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Conrad Stuart

15 years ago

Just choose one.... Although I prefer no www as its easier to remember!

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Conrad Stuart

15 years ago

PS I once had thousands of links pointing to my http://www. address, and then we switched companies and it just so happened that the default setting for our new shopping cart host was strictly to the http:// with no 301, and my rankings dropped like a stone. Had to reconfigure my webmaster tools account to specify the http://www. as my preference. Proof this stuff does matter.

Thanks
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themew

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Conrad Stuart

PS I once had thousands of links pointing to my http://www. address, and then we switched companies and it just so happened that the default setting for our new shopping cart host was strictly to the http:// with no 301, and my rankings dropped like a stone. Had to reconfigure my webmaster tools account to specify the http://www. as my preference. Proof this stuff does matter.

I got a message from Google on Webmaster tools asking me to verify ownership of the non-www version of the site. I verified ownership, to which Google merged both sites into the www version. Google then suggested I do a 301 redirect, which I did and now Google Webmaster tools is merging everything into the www version.

Here's the problem... Since I've done this, my keywords completely been destroyed. My top keywords are now random words like 'contact', 'press', 'email' etc and my top keywords which were at 85-100% are now in the 35-47& range.

Anyone know how this happened?? The 301 redirects are working perfectly and Google is linking both versions of the URL to the www version, so why the messed up keywords??

Also, if I check for searches in Google Webmaster tools, my original keywords are still showing the most searches, but I've gone from page 1 to page 2 or 3 for most searches -- I assume because of the keyword problem.

Finally, if I search for my site in Google Keyword tool, the results are all my original keywords as well -- so why is Webmaster Tools showing random words for my keywords since the 301?

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maryparker

15 years ago

As far as Google is concerned www.domain.com is a separate site to domain.com and it takes Google a very long time to merge the data. If you use a 301 redirect, from non-www to www then they will sort this out much faster than otherwise.

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jacked

15 years ago

Exactly what tom said, use the address that your domain has and do not link to the other variation, as it will count as two different domains and you will be splitting links.

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jessyjose123

15 years ago

Using the exact address would be a better idea than using without "www" and redirecting.

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logoonlinepros1

15 years ago

It doesn't matter that you can put www or not google can get backlink automatically.

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TheSEOmo

15 years ago

You can use the canonical tag to redirect the non www to the www or vise versa. It doesn't matter which you choose or you can claim both versions on Google Webmaster tools. This way your links could go to either version of your site. A natural link profile usually includes links to both version of a site so it's important to point one at the other.

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Backlinks: With or without "www"?

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