Redirecting your urls to a www prefix
Here is a sure way to ensure that your site always starts with a http://www. prefix. It doesn’t really matter as far as SEO is concerned whether a www. is better than a non www, but it still appears that at least 90% of all sites on the web start with a www.
If you use Fantastico to install your WordPress sites, you will have your url configured as http://YourSite.com and so if you want to have your site always start as http://www.YourSite.com, here are 2 ways to do it fast and easy.
1) Mod rewrite your .htaccess file by adding this piece of code to it:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
2) Use the excellent plugin from Justin Shattuck called WWW-Redirect. Just activate the plugin and under WordPress Options > Redirect Options, choose “redirect to www” – true and “redirect index.php” – true and update the options.
Note, that if your site has already grown in backlinks and in the search engines without the www prefix, than it is best to leave it as it is, because Google still considers both types of prefixes as distinct. So your site could get a duplicate penalty hit if you tried to change the prefix all over again.
It is essential, to combat the possibility of duplicate content, to make sure that you choose ONE of the two and stick to it!
You can also do this in Google’s Webmaster Tools.
I have built a number of blogs in the last year and not really known which option to go for – though where I have used Fantastico it does as you say have decided for me (so I have generally gone for the non www version). I seem to have some incoming links from www but more from non www. Is this a problem? Is there anything specifically need to do to redirect traffic coming from the alternative version? I am basically a marketer and my technical knowledge is limited.
@ Kevin
No it won’t be a problem as it is out of your hands, but you can redirect traffic to the non www version of your domain, using htaccess again.
Why would you not just use the function built into WP to set your blog url to www? That’s what I do. Like Kevin, I’m not exceptionaly adept at the techie side of things so this is an easy fix.
I have done many blogs before and i hardly use the www. anymore i find it much eaiser to use http:// Thank you for the tips!