With or Without WWW
When you visit a website, you would have noticed www preceding the domain name, for example you would see URL for blogger as http://www.blogspot.com. At the same time you may have also seen some sites without the www prefix, such as scientifictrades.com.
I often had the following questions
History of www
When internet was first launched after lab experiments, folders that would contain text, images and other information for general public were stored in a folder / subdomain www (world wide web) , and since then it became a defacto standard for web servers to redirect requests made to domain.ext to www.domain.ext
What is a subdomain
If you look at URL structure, www is actually a subdomain of your domain name. An example to understand would be to review http://www.pubdomains.com where http:// signifies the protocol to be used which is Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, next comes subdomain www of domain Pubdomains with an extension of .com (for commercial -- since I register domain names, and sell web hosting space)
Advantage or Disadvantage?
When search engine like Google lists your site with and without www, do you think you are getting advantage with extra links that keywords bring in search result or does it harm you in your destination of better page rank. The answer is a definite -- Disadvantage!!! Search engine spiders are but programs and they look at URL's, check description and search for keywords for indexing by dropping terms and retaining unique phrases or words from your site content. For a search engine spider http://www.pubdomains.com and http://pubdomains.com are 2 UNIQUE URL's and they would be treated separately even though both bring you identical content because you and I know that we are talking about the same site.
Why have a standard format?
Those who allow use of all forms of URL's loose out in pagerank competition because of some of the following factors
I read somewhere on the net and I quote "There’s a common SEO claim that a double domain pointing to the same content isn’t good for SEO due to what can be perceived as duplicate content"
I agree to the statement made above and would appreciate if you could pause here and read next few lines carefully. Even if you didn't set up duplicate content, while building links for your site, you or your developer forgot to add www at a few places and thus http://www.yoursite.com/services.html has 5 inbound links and http://yoursite.com/services.html has 15. We know both links are for the same page namely services.html for you and me. Is it the same for spiders? No. In all you should have had (15+5) 20 links for services.html and perhaps a better pagerank but for this minor ommission of www, and now you have distributed set of 5 and 15 (and perhaps different page rank when you view the page with and without www!!!) Do you notice the difference 5 or 15 or 20 inbound links could make to your search engine ranking!
How do I standardize URL's
Fortunately the process is rather simple to have standard URL format. You can make use of .htaccess files to redirect all page requests from yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com
This is achieved by rewrite module by adding following lines in your .htaccess file
If the above directives don't work on your server, you may try following
Alternatively you may like to opt for no www version so that all requests made to www.yoursite.com are redirected to yoursite.com. This can be achieved by following lines in .htaccess file
In all directives R=301 is to give Header Response of Moved Permanently.
So, while it still remains your choice to live with deprecated www version or to move to Class B of internet naming for your site, I hope you would now review if your sites show up in search engine in both formats and take corrective action to have just one of them active, and let the other version fade away from indexed pages on search engines.
I hope you find the information posted here of use to you, and hope that you score better in search engine ranks with proper link building. If you have a comment or suggestion, please do post your view and comment. I would love to hear your views on this!!
Cheers
pubdomains.com -- domain registration, web hosting and ssl certificates
July 4th has gone, but you may still buy your .US domain today * Didn't get a .com for your business, get a .In domain * Free SEO Web Directory * Sell Domain Names, Web Hosting Services and Earn a passive Income - Become a Domain Reseller
I often had the following questions
- Do you think it makes sense to have your URL without www?
- Does it have an advantage in your quest for search engine ranking?
- How is your page rank affected if you have www version and without www indexed by search engines?
History of www
When internet was first launched after lab experiments, folders that would contain text, images and other information for general public were stored in a folder / subdomain www (world wide web) , and since then it became a defacto standard for web servers to redirect requests made to domain.ext to www.domain.ext
What is a subdomain
If you look at URL structure, www is actually a subdomain of your domain name. An example to understand would be to review http://www.pubdomains.com where http:// signifies the protocol to be used which is Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, next comes subdomain www of domain Pubdomains with an extension of .com (for commercial -- since I register domain names, and sell web hosting space)
Advantage or Disadvantage?
When search engine like Google lists your site with and without www, do you think you are getting advantage with extra links that keywords bring in search result or does it harm you in your destination of better page rank. The answer is a definite -- Disadvantage!!! Search engine spiders are but programs and they look at URL's, check description and search for keywords for indexing by dropping terms and retaining unique phrases or words from your site content. For a search engine spider http://www.pubdomains.com and http://pubdomains.com are 2 UNIQUE URL's and they would be treated separately even though both bring you identical content because you and I know that we are talking about the same site.
Why have a standard format?
Those who allow use of all forms of URL's loose out in pagerank competition because of some of the following factors
- Search Engine treats them as different sites or pages
- Search Engines rate each URL based on links from and to each page
- Search Engine may in fact penalize one version for identical content
- Potential weightage of each Page drops during your link building excercise and thus a waste of your time and energy
I read somewhere on the net and I quote "There’s a common SEO claim that a double domain pointing to the same content isn’t good for SEO due to what can be perceived as duplicate content"
I agree to the statement made above and would appreciate if you could pause here and read next few lines carefully. Even if you didn't set up duplicate content, while building links for your site, you or your developer forgot to add www at a few places and thus http://www.yoursite.com/services.html has 5 inbound links and http://yoursite.com/services.html has 15. We know both links are for the same page namely services.html for you and me. Is it the same for spiders? No. In all you should have had (15+5) 20 links for services.html and perhaps a better pagerank but for this minor ommission of www, and now you have distributed set of 5 and 15 (and perhaps different page rank when you view the page with and without www!!!) Do you notice the difference 5 or 15 or 20 inbound links could make to your search engine ranking!
Let me ask you this -- What would you like, 50 and 100 links or 150 links? I know the answer, read below to rectify the common mistake for your site!!!
How do I standardize URL's
Fortunately the process is rather simple to have standard URL format. You can make use of .htaccess files to redirect all page requests from yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com
This is achieved by rewrite module by adding following lines in your .htaccess file
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.yourdomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,QSA,L]
If the above directives don't work on your server, you may try following
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yourdomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule .? http://www.yourdomain.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
Alternatively you may like to opt for no www version so that all requests made to www.yoursite.com are redirected to yoursite.com. This can be achieved by following lines in .htaccess file
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^yourdomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,QSA,L]
In all directives R=301 is to give Header Response of Moved Permanently.
So, while it still remains your choice to live with deprecated www version or to move to Class B of internet naming for your site, I hope you would now review if your sites show up in search engine in both formats and take corrective action to have just one of them active, and let the other version fade away from indexed pages on search engines.
I hope you find the information posted here of use to you, and hope that you score better in search engine ranks with proper link building. If you have a comment or suggestion, please do post your view and comment. I would love to hear your views on this!!
Cheers
pubdomains.com -- domain registration, web hosting and ssl certificates
July 4th has gone, but you may still buy your .US domain today * Didn't get a .com for your business, get a .In domain * Free SEO Web Directory * Sell Domain Names, Web Hosting Services and Earn a passive Income - Become a Domain Reseller
No comments:
Post a Comment