SEO Resources - Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Consolidate my WWW and Non-WWW Inbound Links?
In a word: absolutely. Many Webmasters recognize that their sites are accessible both with and without the "www." prefix and find it useful for whatever reason to use both methods when gaining inbound external links to their pages. However, in the eyes of a Search Engine WWW and non-WWW links point to two different domains. The result is essentially two separate SEO campaigns instead of one. For instance, if you gained 200 inbound links to http://yourdomain.com and another 200 to http://www.yourdomain.com, you would essentially only have 200 inbound links for each domain, and your PageRank would not reflect a combined measurement of these inbound links.
Here's what you can do to solve this problem:
- Choose one or the other.
- Review Your Site. Go through your website and find any links that point to your pages using the option you decided not to go with and fix them.
- Repair the links offsite that are within your control. Sometimes this will be out of your hands, but you should request wherever possible that your link be changed to reflect the single format that you have chosen. Many Webmasters, if you explain to them the issue at hand, will be understanding and make the change for you.
- Set up a server-side redirect. This can be somewhat technical and beyond the scope of the abilities of a less-experienced Webmaster. If you're running a Windows server and have access to IIS (Internet Information Services) you can give this a try yourself. Microsoft offers very informative articles that explain this process. Follow this link to read the information on the Microsoft website: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313074.
