WWW vs non-WWW: Why You Should Put All Your Links in One Basket

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www non-www canonicalization imageMany of you have heard of this issue, but I bet very few of you can actually say it without twisting your tongue: canonicalization.

A mouthful of a word to describe a simple concept:

In Google’s eyes, https://trafficgenerationcafe.online and https://trafficgenerationcafe.online are 2 different sites.

Without getting all technical on you (actually, I couldn’t even if I wanted to - all I know about the issue is what an average blogger should know about it, and that it how to take care of it painlessly), here’s what it means in practical terms:

When any kind of link building to your blog occurs - whether it be natural link building through other people linking to your posts or intentional link building that you do on your own, all your links have a potential to be split between those 2 versions of your site. It all depends what version of link used: www or non-www version.

Also, there is a question of duplicate content issues, since now you basically have two website with identical content.

Bottom line: you need to fix it now.

If you don’t know whether you use linux or apache server or what your .htaccess file is, don’t fret - I make it my job to not know these things.

Here are 2 practical steps you need to take to resolve this issue:

1. Set It in Your WP Dashboard

In your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings ==> General.

In the “WorPress address (URL)” box, enter your chosen URL - with or without WWW.

It doesn’t matter which one you chosoe, as long as you choose it and stick with it.

www vs non-www example image

2. Set It in Your Webmaster Tools

If you don’t have a free account with Google Webmaster Tools, get it now.

Here’s the simple precess step by step.

If this is your first time using Google Webmaster Tools, you will have to verify both of you www and non-www versions of your site. Just follow the directions on how to do that.

Once both sites are verified, click on one of them and go to Dashboard ==> Site Configuration ==> Settings.

Then set your preferred domain as one or the other.

www non-www webmaster tools image

By doing this, you are basically telling Google which domain you prefer and they use that information for all future crawls of your site.

For instance, now when Google see a link that is formatted as http://yoursite.com, but your preferred domain is http://www.yoursite.com, they will follow that link as if it were http://www.yoursite.com.

Plus, whatever version your visitors use to get to your site, they will be automatically redirected to the one you prefer.

More on the Technical Side

Here’s a post by Chris Burns, SERPd founder, that talks about the same issue (and some) in a bit more technical way:

Thanks for the resource, Chris!

Marketing Takeaway

You should be properly canonicalized now and all your links will be just where they should be: in one basket.

And one more thing: to make sure everything is set up properly, just type your non-preferred URL into the Google address window and see if you are properly redirected. If you are, you know you did it right.

As always, comment to show me that you’re alive!

ana hoffman www non-www




{ 105 comments… read them below or add one }

Claudio November 12, 2011 at 5:34 am

I went on google webmaster select the Display URLs as harmonianatureza.com.br save command but it appears. Part of the process of setting a preferred domain is to verify that you are the owner of the site. Even confirming and changing the google analytics google webmaster does not change.
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Ana Hoffman November 12, 2011 at 8:58 am

Yes, you need to verify your site first, Claudio.

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Aniket from Freelance Website Design October 31, 2011 at 11:02 pm

Another great post. Thanx Ana.
I have already corrected this problem, by having my site redirected from the non-www version to the www one.

“Canonicalization”
When I started my SEO campaign for my site, by adding metatags, I came accross a metatag for CANONICAL url. (rel=”canonical”). It was only after reading the following post that I understood, what it really meant.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

I couldnt understand, what its meant for, at first. Then I understood the issue of “www” vs “non-www” that you have raised here. A simple solution that google has offered is adding a new metatag for canonical url. I havent added it yet. Coz all my site-pages indexed by google are the www ones. :)

Thanx again.

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Ana Hoffman November 1, 2011 at 7:57 am

That’s great, Aniket. Glad you got it sorted out.

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Robin Jennings October 9, 2011 at 3:21 am

When I changed my site from www to mywebsite.com my links disappeared and everything went slightly pear shaped for 2 months- including plenty of 404 errors. It is all fine now but at the time I was a little worried.

The only advice I can give is decide to www or not as soon as your site goes live and don’t change it unless you have to.

@creative web design
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Ana Hoffman October 9, 2011 at 11:12 am

That’s good advice. Thanks for stopping by, Robin.

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JKAR from electric strikes August 21, 2011 at 9:29 pm

This is very useful Ana. That’s why when I build my links, I always make sure that it is the actual site address considering “/”,”www.”.

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Ana | Traffic Generation August 22, 2011 at 9:55 am

Always a good practice.

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Tosin from Home-Based Business Coach April 11, 2011 at 7:27 am

Hey Ana,

Sometimes you read some of these stuffs, and you are like oh…what is wrong with google?… but you gotta take note of all these simple stuffs because they make a huge difference eventually.

Thanks Ana, for this resource!

Tosin

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Pavel Hoover Vacuum March 29, 2011 at 4:03 pm

Thanks for clarifying canonicalization Ana!

I don’t get the reason why Google takes http:// www google and http:// google for two different sites .. or is there any exception for it’s own domain ;-)

Anyway, we have to adjust to the Internet king to survive in cyberspace.

/Pavel
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Ana | Traffic Generation March 30, 2011 at 5:52 am

You are welcome, Pavel.

Mostly it’s because they are not human, and to the machines those 2 versions are coded differently.

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Melz from Maryland Personal Injury Attorney January 18, 2011 at 8:53 pm

With the “www” and “non-www” , do prefer to use www. With the “cananocalization” thing, I was enlightened with the importance of it. I know how critical search engine’s Algorithm, and I haven’t got the time to study and read more about it. Since, I knew some, then I’ll be very much careful when I set up a blog, on the issue regarding url’s. Thank you for that informative posts. Have gained knowledge to it.

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Ana January 20, 2011 at 12:47 pm

You are very welcome, Melz - glad I offered some knowledge in that area.

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Alex Whalley February 23, 2011 at 5:52 pm

How does this differ from say a 301 redirect from the wwww to the non (or the other way around)

I have only ever known this one, so am concerned now that I need to make changes within my Google dashboard?

(sorry for replying to first commentator like this, wanted to get your attention quicker you see -besides my question is a GOOD ONE :)
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Ana February 23, 2011 at 8:13 pm

You are all set, Alex - 301 is the best way to do it, but a bit too technical for some of my readers. Thus I gave them the easier options.

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madhav January 17, 2011 at 11:07 pm

This is totally depend on the wish and interest of blog owner and site owner in which manner he/she wants to promote his site. With www. or without www.

But personally I wanna to go with WWW because it is more known url by the peple.

Thanks for this post @Ana

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Ana January 20, 2011 at 12:44 pm

That’s my reasoning behind it as well, Madhav.

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Raj January 17, 2011 at 7:33 am

Yaa.. you are right we should stick to one domain whether www or no www. I use no www its easy and short

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Ana January 20, 2011 at 12:44 pm

I prefer www personally, but makes no difference.

Thanks for coming by, Raj.

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Kevin January 11, 2011 at 3:26 am

I had to problems changing my URL from http://simplebutcreative.com to http://www.simplebutcreative.com in the beginning.

I scoured the net for answers and couldn’t find it, but when I looked around the wordpress panel thoroughly I saw that it was in front of me all along.

I tapped my head on that :)
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Alan Mater January 11, 2011 at 6:22 am

How did you fix the problem? I had the same issue and had to change it back. Could you provide some insight on how to change it without messing the blog up?

Thanks!
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Kevin January 11, 2011 at 3:33 pm

It’s exactly how Ana explained it above. Just go to general under the settings tab. You’ll see your URL there and you can decide between http://www or http://

I was shaking my head when I found out that it was that easy to change…
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Alan Mater January 11, 2011 at 3:36 pm

If only it really was that easy. I followed the steps to the T (not that they’re complicated), and I got completely locked out of my WP dashboard.

Any ideas?
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Kevin January 11, 2011 at 3:49 pm

Huh? You’re locked out of your own account? I don’t know what to tell you there bud. Hmmm…Did you just changed your URL from the instructions above? Once you make the change and your refresh the page, you’ll see that you’ve been logged out. That’s what happen to me If I remember it right…
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Alan Mater January 11, 2011 at 4:15 pm

Yep, did exactly as it said. Got logged out, and when I attempted to log-in again, it wouldn’t let me. I tried multiple times to no avail. Had to re-do the change via phpMyAdmin, and then I could get back in.

I’ll try doing it again to see what happens. Maybe it was just a fluke or something as no one else seems to be having any problems. Fingers crossed.
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Kevin January 11, 2011 at 5:13 pm

Yeah try it again. But that was the only problem I had with it. I got logged out as soon as I changed the URL.

Good Luck to you!
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Alan Mater January 11, 2011 at 8:10 pm

Okay, so I figured it out. When attempting to log back in with FireFox, it won’t let me. So, I opened up Internet Explorer, and it logged me in just fine. Not sure why I can’t with FF, but I’m guessing it’s a cache issue perhaps.

Either way, the URL is changed, and no harm done. I’m a happy camper. :)
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Kevin January 11, 2011 at 8:19 pm

That’s great man! You should use Google Chrome. It’s much faster and it runs very smooth…You won’t have problems with cache as suppose to firefox.
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Ana January 11, 2011 at 9:53 pm

Nice discussion, boys - I should charge you rental space. :)

Glad you figured it out, Alan!

Kevin: I just downloaded Chrome and like it so far.

Kevin January 12, 2011 at 12:20 am

lol! it was a good back to back right…

Yeah I love Chrome! I’ve been using it for almost a year now.
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Leo January 11, 2011 at 3:02 am

Canonicalization isn’t limited to www vs non-www issue, but also the directory index pages or pages with query strings.

The first relates to links to http://www.mywebsite.com/index.php or http://www.mywebsite.com/ (how do you link back to your homepage for example, do you use the full domain name (recommended in most cases) or simple /index.php?

The second is often a issue with ecommerce websites where their product pages can be sorted and filtered with the use of querystings in the URL. Having said that, it also happens on WP when you navigate to a category, an archive or use the main loop to get to a post.
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Ana January 11, 2011 at 9:49 pm

No techie talk on my blog, Leo - we are all site simpletons around here! :)

I am sure you are right…

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Leo January 12, 2011 at 1:44 am

sorry, didn’t know :)

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Dennis Edell January 10, 2011 at 5:47 am

Ana, please consider raising the reply levels. ;-)

Thanks for “getting me”, I appreciate that.
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Ana January 10, 2011 at 7:50 pm

Anytime, my friend!

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Mavis Nong January 9, 2011 at 4:37 pm

Hey Ana,

Thanks for sharing this great tip. It does help to have your links in one basket :)

All the best,
Mavis
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Ana January 9, 2011 at 6:50 pm

I know you do, Mavis! :)

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Ian Belanger January 9, 2011 at 10:48 am

Great post Ana, I had no idea this was even a problem. Thank you so much, now I have something to do today, right now actually!
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Ana January 9, 2011 at 6:50 pm

Glad I am keeping you busy, Ian! :)

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Lou Barba January 9, 2011 at 8:15 am

Hi Ana,

This could be a postscript coming from left field. I have had several instances where links that were posted without the www became broken links. When I went back and added the www, it fixed the link.

Lou
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Ana January 9, 2011 at 6:49 pm

That simply means those website didn’t have their URL set up properly, Lou. When they are set up correctly, then www or not, all links get redirected to the site.

Ana

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Jackie Christiansen January 8, 2011 at 7:27 pm

Great Advice! Thanks for sharing this information!
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Ana January 8, 2011 at 10:05 pm

You’re welcome, Jackie.

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Linda G. Cox January 8, 2011 at 9:02 am

Ana,
Thank you! I like the way you educate us in a very simple way! That is exactly what I needed!
Linda
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Ana January 8, 2011 at 10:04 pm

You are welcome, Linda - the only way I know how. :)

Ana

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John from Electricians in Paddington January 7, 2011 at 10:12 am

Ana! Your post is really informative and enlightening. http:// www dot sitename dot com and http:// sitename dot com is really bothering me, now I fully understand the difference between them. Thanks for letting me know.
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Ana January 7, 2011 at 12:23 pm

Good to know, John. :) I surprise myself sometimes.

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Dennis Edell January 7, 2011 at 6:58 am

Who knew it would become such a thing. When I first came online, 7-10yrs ago, my mentor that stated me blogging told me to do it.

I doubt canonicalization was even a word then.

I don’t recall doing any of the webmasters tool stuff, but when inputting it into the address bar, it’s redirected. :)
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Ana January 7, 2011 at 7:16 am

Small things, bit problems… Wow, Dennis, 10 years online? You are a veteran; most people give up after a year or two. :)

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Dennis Edell January 8, 2011 at 4:17 am

7 for sure, the first 3 of 2000 are a little hazy with personal illness issues.

The fact that it has been so long is actually a little embarrassing, but, if I do tell you not to do something, you’d be smart to listen…know what I mean? LOL
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Ana January 8, 2011 at 10:01 pm

Point taken, Dennis… You speak, I listen.

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Dennis Edell January 9, 2011 at 5:02 am

I just reread what I wrote…..wow did that not come out with the sarcastic humor I intended. lol
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Ana January 9, 2011 at 7:06 am

Believe it or not, I know you enough by now to know that you meant well, and that’s all that mattered to me. :)

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Chris Dale January 7, 2011 at 1:45 am

Thanks for this tip Ana. Canonicalization is one thing I do not get and your post helped me fix this with my website. I actually thought I had set this up before, but I checked it in Webmaster Tools after reading your post and - you guessed it, not verified - doh! Thanks again.

Chris
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Ana January 7, 2011 at 7:11 am

Thanks so much, Chris - it makes my day to know I actually helped someone.

Have a good one!

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Facebook Applications January 6, 2011 at 9:17 pm

Hello Ana:
I think both website method are OK for Promotion.What you think Ana.Either you used HTTP or without HTTP but if u used HTTP website then google count only HTTP website back links not without HTTP website links

I thank Ana for reply my quries
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Ana January 7, 2011 at 7:14 am

Yes, either one is fine as long as you stick to it.

I think you meant to say WWW, not HTTP. Google will count links to both sites and combine them into one if your canonicalization is set up correctly, so you won’t ever loose a single link.

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Patricia January 6, 2011 at 7:40 pm

Hi Ana

That’s why having super-geeks as friends is a life-saver or should I say blog-saver for me ;-) Great information that those who have to do all this themselves.

For some reason I was taught this when my blog was first being set up, but I’m sure there are heaps of bloggers out there who this is a revelation and a very helpful one at that!

Patricia Perth Australia
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 8:44 pm

Definitely yes to that, Patricia!

This was one of the first issues I somehow knew to fix as well; go figure…

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Tia January 6, 2011 at 7:37 pm

Good stuff, Ana. If someone’s blog has been around, they should also do a permanent redirect from the non-www to the www (or the other way around).

The thing about setting it up the right way in Wordpress is crucial! Many one-click Wordpress installs don’t use the www, and people go for years without realizing that!

Cheers,
Tia
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 8:41 pm

So true, Tia - it’s always great to tie all the loose ends and make a permanent change.

Good to see you here!

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Demetria January 6, 2011 at 6:26 pm

Your tutorial- PRICELESS! Thanks for this HUGE tip of advice. Ive been meaning to get more savvy with canonicalization and I had some major questions about what it is and how to even fix the whole “www.” vs. “site.com” issue. You’ve resolved it for me! Thanks a bunch.

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Ana January 6, 2011 at 8:40 pm

Oh, so good to know, Demetria - always great to know I am not talking to myself here.

Thanks for coming by.

Ana

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Alan Mater January 6, 2011 at 4:33 pm

Hi Ana,

After following step 1 and changing the Wordpress address URL, I’ve now been locked out of my Dashboard and can’t get in. Is this normal? Is there some way to fix this?

I don’t want to try anything else at this point until I can log back in and know that everything is back to normal. Your help would be appreciated.

Thanks!
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Ana January 7, 2011 at 7:22 am

Ayayay, Alan - so sorry to hear it happened and the worst part is I have no idea why; I’ve never heard of such a problem! I am also not technical enough to know how to fix it; if this were to happen to me, I’d call my host to see if they can fix it for me.

Please let me know how you were able to fix it!

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Alan Mater January 7, 2011 at 10:25 am

Hey Ana, I did a little research and figured out how to set it back by going into phpMyAdmin and changing the site URL back to what it was previously.

Now, I’m not sure where to go from here. Would following the steps you outline in the Google Webmaster account be enough? Should I still use a redirect plug-in or 301 redirect script?

Thanks for your help!
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Ana January 7, 2011 at 12:19 pm

Glad you fixed it, Alan; still have no idea why it happened.

I never bothered with changing .htaccess since I didn’t want to run any chances I’d screw it up in the process. So all I did was the 2 steps above.

However, if you know what you are doing, that’s definitely the way to go.

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Alan Mater January 7, 2011 at 8:32 pm

I’m wondering if anyone else ran into the problem I had?

I tried the 301 redirect route but that sent the blog into an infinite redirect loop. Not sure why, either. I’m not having much luck with this. LOL

In any case, I did set my desired display URL in my Google Webmaster’s account, so hopefully that will count for something.
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Ana January 8, 2011 at 10:03 pm

You know, now thinking about it, I did have problems with 301 redirect when trying to fix the same issue. It didn’t come from my blog though, rather my host server. It’s been a while, so I forgot all about it.

So far, I haven’t heard any problems reported, Alan.

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Liz January 6, 2011 at 3:41 pm

Hi Ana,

This prompted me to look at my settings in general and I found a few things that were questionable, things I fixed of course ;-) Also I never really recognized the issue of the duplicate content issue. Suffice it to say, I’ve got it fixed now. Thanks so much Ana.
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 8:38 pm

You are so welcome, Liz.

I think the whole duplicated content issue deserves a post of its own; so many bloggers are so entirely confused on what it means…

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Alex January 6, 2011 at 3:23 pm

Well Ana, this indeed is a problem that many don’t fix and they are building links to www and the non-www version thus wasting some link juice and not to mention the duplicate content that they are creating but never notice because google onnly keeps a single version of duplicate pages.

I am fully “canonicalizated” with my .htaccess(good article from Chris Burns) redirect and with the help of the canonical html tag
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 8:37 pm

Glad to hear that, Alex - such a little problem can cause such big issues. :)

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technosuman January 6, 2011 at 11:32 am

Well Ana! Really a great piece of information. I think I am convinced that we should indeed put our links in one basket.

For a beginner getting traffic through a blog or a website is not that easy. I hope your tip is really going to help us.

Thank your for this wonderful post
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 8:35 pm

I know they will, like they had so many other readers of my blog! :)

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Sheila Atwood January 6, 2011 at 11:27 am

Ana,

I discovered I had a problem with this when I would comment on sites with Comment Luv. My site URL was www. and when I added my comments I left off the www. and my last post would not show up. Once I wrote the correct URL it worked.
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 3:05 pm

Never even thought about possible CommentLuv implication, Sheila - thanks for bringing it to my attention. Always good to know in case I get a question on it.

Ana

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Jared Holland January 6, 2011 at 11:06 am

I’ve messed up in the past and not done this correctly. I made sure when I started this blog that I had it right. I’ve got all mine setup and as of today have 44 listings in Google results. I’ve been seeing a whole 3 people a day from search engines. Maybe one day I’ll convince them to stay on the page.
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 3:03 pm

Love your sense of humor; you’ve got to have it, then you might have a chance with your 3 visitors! :)

I ranked for hundreds of keywords, but most of them are pure junk of course.

So when someone says “I am on the first page of Google! “, I say oh yeah? what keyword would that be?

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Lou Barba January 6, 2011 at 9:55 am

Hi Ana,

Do we have to go to a protestant or catholic church to get canonicalized?

This seems to be important for any website, because you want to make it easier for Google to index your pages and build your rank. If you’re showing two sites, I guess it would take twice as long to accomplish the same thing. I think you mentioned this a few months ago, and I started doing it then, even though I don’t have a Wordpress blog at this point. Some things are so simple, the rocket scientists can’t catch on.

Lou
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 10:59 am

Funny guy you are, Lou. :)

Glad to see someone’s listening to me!

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Heather C Stephens January 6, 2011 at 9:42 am

Unlike you and Dwayne…I was clueless until I met you, Ana! Thanks for explaining it so simply and clearly for me. I need to check into the google webmaster tools but when I type in my www, I get redirected to my non www, so I assume I’m somewhat on the right track.

Thanks for the help, as usual!
Heather
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 10:58 am

You must’ve set it correctly through your WP dashboard, Heather.

I did both just in case. :)

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Lisa January 6, 2011 at 9:32 am

Ana:

Plain and simple…a lifesaver you are. I visit here everyday and I am running out of things to say to express my gratitude! This issue drove me nuts and I am so glad someone could explain it to me without all the “reflux capacitor” terms!

Lisa
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 10:56 am

You are great, Lisa - I would write great content even if you were my only reader; you build me up so much!

From a non-techie to a non-techie… that’s the whole point.

BTW, I wrote a post about your guest blogging question, will publish next week. :)

Thanks for the idea.

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Susan January 6, 2011 at 9:27 am

Ohhhhhh great tip! And one I actually have already done! Thanks for the reminder though, because I checked to make sure I was redirected just in case!
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 10:54 am

Yay - one less thing to do… Always great to know that you are actually ahead on something, huh? :)

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Donace January 6, 2011 at 9:19 am

Yep it is a ‘Must do’. On a side note comment links also need to be canonicalized. The latest batch of SEO plugins do this for you and in the case of super comments in webmaster tools you can set the preference there though google figured it out on mine on its own with the help of a seo plugin.
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 10:54 am

Hey, Donace - not quite sure what issue you are referring to; would love more details.

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Donace January 6, 2011 at 11:09 am

Using a example from a page I have open npw,

http://www.untwistedvortex.com/2011/01/02/attempt-consolidating-life-web/comment-page-1/#comment-40175

will still display the post
http://www.untwistedvortex.com/2011/01/02/attempt-consolidating-life-web

So you need a canonical to say that the comment(s) url is not the ‘primary’ one but the post is as the ‘content’ on both links will show the same material.

For example your above comment links is
https://trafficgenerationcafe.online/www-non-www/comment-page-1/?cid=18476

Though the canonical is being shown as
https://trafficgenerationcafe.online/www-non-www/

A SEO plugin in the background has ‘fixed’ that.

That was what I was getting at.
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Andy January 6, 2011 at 8:31 am

Which is better though www or not www?
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 10:52 am

Absolutely no difference, Andy. I use www version because I think readers are more familiar with that format, but that’s it.

Your choice won’t affect your rankings as long as you make one.

Ana

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Ryan Biddulph January 6, 2011 at 8:29 am

Hi Ana,

A helpful step by step tutorial here.

Like yourself and Dwayne, I also did this for my blog early on. And yes, I had no clue how the heck or why the heck I did it. I just know that someone told me to. Good thing that person knew what they were talking about.

It pays to have all your links in one basket. I made the error of not following this process for one of my squeeze pages. I finally fixed it a few weeks back and noticed an instant rise in traffic, opt-ins and subscribers. We never know who types in the “www” and who doesn’t. Why not attract both crowds to your website by making this simple fix?

Thanks for sharing your insight Ana.

RB
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 10:51 am

Nail in the head, Ryan - it’s a simple fix and needs to be done, even if you don’t quite understand why. :)

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mark January 6, 2011 at 8:25 am

This is one of those ‘little’ things that can be frustrating for people who do not have much technical experience. Another part of this is to set up 301 redirect. There are a couple of wordpress plugins that will also do this for you, or someone can google “set up 301 redirect” for directions.

I definitely recommend testing to see if your url with and without the ‘www’ take you to the same page. If so, it is beneficial to fix it.

Great tip!
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 10:49 am

I found it that many bloggers have never heard of the issue, Mark, and definitely have it on their blogs.

One way or another, it’s an easy thing to fix and needs to be done.

Have a great day!

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Tommy DiPietro | MLM Sales January 6, 2011 at 8:19 am

Hi Ana,

Many people are confused with this subject.

I use the Redirection plugin for my blog address, so regardless of how someone types it in, I am not losing traffic.

Tommy
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 10:48 am

Actually, you are the one who inspired the post, Tommy. :)

I saw it on your blog as I did the audit, so you definitely need to fix it. It’s not about your traffic; it’s about your links. Redirection plugin does nothing to fix the issue.

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Tommy DiPietro | MLM Sales January 6, 2011 at 6:18 pm

I see what you mean.

Thanks.

I went back and fixed it both in Wordpress and in webmaster tools. I also had to change things up in analytics.

It was all be good to go!

Tommy D.
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Chris Burns January 6, 2011 at 7:43 am

I’ve written in more detail about this topic that may be useful to your readers. They can learn how to use .htaccess to make their sites www vs non and also to ensure a trailing slash on all URL’s regardless of if they are on Wordpress, Joomla, or any other platform.

http://www.searchengineoptimizationx.com/how-to-make-site-conanical-friendly/
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 10:37 am

Added your post to mine, Chris; I am sure my readers will benefit from it, like I did.

Thanks!

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Brankica January 6, 2011 at 6:56 am

I was thinking about this after reading a post somewhere.
When I registered my blog, I included it in my Webmaster tools and after a few days I got a message fro Google saying something like: “we have found this blog too, do you want to claim it”, and it was the other version (one was www one was no-www).
As far as I see, I get the data in only one of the blogs there but I will do the thing you suggested since I am sure it will benefit me.
Thanks, Ana and can’t wait for Sunday and coffee with you and all of these great bloggers :)
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 7:15 am

Definitely do it, Brankica - easy and needs to be done only once.

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Dwayne Huggins January 6, 2011 at 6:10 am

Hey Ana

This was strangely one of the first things i did with my blog. I have know idea who advised me to chose one or the other, but I did and haven’t looked back since.

It is crazy this little issue can really throw a spanner in a blog link building plan.

Chat soon
Dwayne
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Ana January 6, 2011 at 7:14 am

Actually, it was the same for me, Dwayne. :)

Back when I knew nothing about blogging, I knew to do this one right!

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