SEO www domain or naked domain?

[Working First Aid]

Evening all,

I understand that the search engines see the www and naked domains as different domains in their own right.

If a site defaults to a naked domain, rather than showing the www (although it does forward from the www to the naked domain) which would you suggest would be best to concentrate focusing offsite SEO efforts on?

Is it worth trying to SEO both, or just pick one and work on that?

Cheers!

 

[SEO Lady]

It's best to set up a permanenet 301 redirect. Usually from the naked to the www domain.

Linkbuilding should then be directed to the www domain.

 

[Working First Aid]

Ah I have it the other way around at the moment (www points to naked), but that does make more sense.

The majority of my currently built links point to the www anyways.

Thanks for your help!

 

[SEO Lady]

You are welcome

 

[joshgoldstein]

It doesn't matter as long as you stick to one and then build links to it.

I find that WWW is better to market, and looks better in Google - but it doesn't really matter at all.

Evening all,

I understand that the search engines see the www and naked domains as different domains in their own right.

If a site defaults to a naked domain, rather than showing the www (although it does forward from the www to the naked domain) which would you suggest would be best to concentrate focusing offsite SEO efforts on?

Is it worth trying to SEO both, or just pick one and work on that?

Cheers!

 

[RadiusBPO]

I hate the www. on most sites I 301 to naked.

 

[Working First Aid]

Out of interest, will link juice carry on through a 301 redirect?

For example, if a naked domain currently ranks higher than a www in google and the redirect points from www to naked, will new links added pointing at the www benefit the naked domain too?

Cheers!

 

[Andrew Baker]

If I'm starting out on a new website for a client I prefer to use the "naked" TLD.

As previously stated it doesn't matter which you use at the outset so long as you consistently stick to one.

 

[Andrew Baker]

Out of interest, will link juice carry on through a 301 redirect?

For example, if a naked domain currently ranks higher than a www in google and the redirect points from www to naked, will new links added pointing at the www benefit the naked domain too?

Cheers!

"Link juice" will flow through a 301 however a little may be lost.

Reference:- Matt Cutts Google Webmaster Help Video

 

[Working First Aid]

"Link juice" will flow through a 301 however a little may be lost.

Reference:- Matt Cutts Google Webmaster Help Video

Ah good, as some of my links are pointed at the www and some at the naked...

From now on though, I'll stick to one only!

 

[cosmosis14]

The triple w version is more preferred today and most of the users would think that it is more proper than the non-w.The triple w was set on the mind of users to be a prefix on every website. Additionally, on major search engines.. like google or yahoo, they redirect the non-w to triple w version - from that point, seems that even search engines are into triple w version..

But, check first the backlinks of your website.. there might be different number of backlinks to triple w version and non-w. Practically, if your website already has lots of backlinks in non-w than the triple w version, why bother to redirect it? it would be more logical in that case to redirect the triple w version to non-w to not decrease link juice already established.

 

[grazzenger]

sort of related (and we have the naked linking to the www btw)... if we buy similar domains but with more generic search terms which we see customers using, i assume we can link these through to the master domain homepage? or is it possible to create sub domains with these terms linking to the master homepage?

there are a couple available which would be ideal, so another question. what effect would this have in terms of SEO?

sorry if this sounds daft