What’s the difference between using WWW in the URL or leaving it out?
In this week’s FAQ Friday video we discuss what you need to know about structuring your URLs.
Transcript
Hey, what’s up guys? This is Grayson from www.leadcadence.com. In this week’s frequently asked questions Friday video, I want to talk about the difference between using the www in your domain name versus using no www in your domain name. What I’m talking about is most websites have the option to reside at one of two places, their main home page. You can have it written with the www in it or you can have it written without. For example, you can type in either one of these to get to my website. Having the option to pick either one, which one should you use?
From an SEO perspective, either one is 100% fine. There’s no difference in Google’s eyes which one you use. However, you have to pick one. What we don’t want to happen is we don’t want your website to resolve at both places. What that’s saying is that we don’t want a visitor to be able to type in both of these options and land on either one of these pages. The way it is now, if somebody types in one of these two options and both of these work out, Google’s going to see these as two different pages and split the authority and the value of both those pages into two. What we want is that no matter which version a visitor types in, that they end up at the correct place.
In this example, I have it set up on my website so that if somebody types in leadcadence.com without the www, they’re automatically directed to this version. We do that through what’s called a 301 redirect. What that’s telling Google is no matter which version somebody types in, we want them to end up here. The second way we do that is through Google Webmaster Tools. It’s part of Google’s website platform and it allows us to tell Google which version we prefer. What that does is it allows us no matter where somebody types in our website, that they always end up at the right one.
If you haven’t already done this and you are able to type in both these versions and both these versions resolve, and you can do that by just going to Chrome and Firefox. Type in both versions of your website. Look at your address bar and see if both of these are possible. What should happen if it’s been done correctly, is that no matter which one you type in, it’ll end up at the one you prefer. Either one of these will work just fine from an SEO perspective, which one should you pick given the option? In my preference, is to use the www. There’s a few technical advantages that later on down the road if you want to take advantage of them, this would be a better option.
I just think that more people are more familiar with typing in the www when they’re going to be typing in a domain name. Given the option, I would pick this one. If you already have it set up to not use that version, then that’s completely fine too. There’s no problem there. Leave me a comment, let me know what you think. Did this make sense? If you need help setting up the code to be able to make sure that these direct to the right version, leave me a comment and let me know if you need some help with that. That’s all for now. Thanks for watching. We’ll see you next week.