optimization with www or no www

[beantown]

I had a question on the www vs. no www in a domain name. As an example, I'd like to use craigslist.org. Each of their webpages seems to not use the www: http://atlanta.craigslist.org/, http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/, etc. If someone links to their site using www instead of no www, would this link be useless? What does everyone recommend? The reason I ask is that I have a new site that is similar to craigslist where there's a seperate page for a different location. The way the site was built was without the www on each page.

Beantown

[dcristo]

use one common link format. i always opt to use the www version and 301 redirect the non www version to www using .htaccess so you don't lose link juice.

[beantown]

So if someone links to my site with www.example.com and my site is at example.com, would this link not help me?

[dcristo]

Originally Posted by beantown

So if someone links to my site with www.example.com and my site is at example.com, would this link not help me?

Then redirect www version to non www version to get link juice. Most webmasters will link to you using www so I think this is the best option.

[webd]

As long as you 301 redirect one version to the other it doesn't matter which one people link to. The 301 redirect will pass the link juice.

Here is some sample code for the .htaccess fule -- change example.com to your domain name:

The following code will redirect example.com to the www version:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

[grace5]

I like the NO www myself,but as posted its more of a personal pref thing.

I like the NO www myself,
but as posted its more of a personal pref thing.

[webd]

Originally Posted by grace5

I like the NO www myself,but as posted its more of a personal pref thing.

To redirect from the www to the non-www version use this instead:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

I think it depends on the site. If you are branding a great domain name targeted towards non-tech savvy people, you might want to use the www as part of the name of the site.

If I'm doing SEO on an already well-indexed site, I search Google for some queries that I know will return the site. Google will let you know how it has already indexed the domain. You can also use the site: query to find out. Then I redirect to the version that Google has already chosen.

[kissedbymysweety]

I always use the www version and use htaccess to redirect http:// --> www version.

[bhartzer]

>I always use the www version and use htaccess to redirect http:// --> www version.

Generally speaking, it doesn't matter what subdomain you use (www is a subdomain) or whether you use one or not. The biggest issue is the duplicate content issues you run into when allowing a search engine spider to crawl both the www version and the non-www version of your site.

Whatever you do, be consistent, especially on your site's internal linking and requesting links from other sites.

[stevesko]

find the one that has the most in comming links to it and use that. redirects "solve" the problem, but you never know what the SE's will disallow next, so don't create a problem just to solve it.

Steve

[servdomain]

most websites with commercial control panel (cpanel, directadmin,etc....) can have both www and non-www, and display the same contents