Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can access my site using www
-
Hello, when I try to access my website using www i would like it to redirect to non www but instead it shows a sal error message.
-
Yes, you can access your website using the prefix "www". The "www" is simply a subdomain that is conventionally used to identify web servers. It is not required by any technical standard, but it is a widely recognized convention.
In short, you can access your website with or without the "www" prefix. It is simply a matter of personal preference.
Here are the tutorials I have followed to set redirects with or without www.
Via cPanel: https://www.milesweb.co.uk/hosting-faqs/redirect-www-non-www-urls-htaccess-cpanel/
Via DirectAdmin: https://www.milesweb.co.uk/hosting-faqs/redirect-www-non-www-urls-htaccess-directadmin/
-
This is common and can sometimes be easy to fix. Sometimes as simple as the setting of some HTTP rewrite rules in the .htaccess file. You will need to secure your domain for the wildcard domain including www when issuing an SSL certificate.
If you are using WordPress there are add-ons such as Really Simple SSL to help you with this.
Example of Rewrite
RewriteEngine On # This will enable the Rewrite capabilities RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on # This checks to make sure the connection is not already HTTPS RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC] # Replace domain with your domain. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301] # Replace domain with your domain.
This .htaccess rule will redirect all visitors from the non-www to the www version of your website.
[https://www.hostinger.co.uk/tutorials/cpanel/how-to-redirect-non-www-urls-to-www](link url)
This is the most common way however if you use CPanel it might be slightly different you might need to set up a redirect.
If you use Cloudflare you can just use some page rules and use a forwarding URL with 301 permanently redirected to the non-www of the domain.
Since we can use both www and non-www make sure your DNS records are updated for both.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Moving site from www to non www and also hosting to vps what will be the effect?
Hi SEO gurus,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoBlogs61
I am trying to move my site from shared hosting to VPS hosting and also moving from www to non www version.
What is the best possible way to avoid any issue and without losing the backlinks.
Is it good or bad to do? URL: https://buylikesservices.com/0 -
What is the best tag to use for your Logo ?
Hi, I'm wondering what is the best tag to use on your logo. We're currently using h1 and i want to scrap that ASAP.
On-Page Optimization | | Alex.harvey.Cortex0 -
SEO audit on a beta site
HI there, Is there much point conducting an SEO site audit on a site that has not yet launched and is protected behind a login? Presumably none of the usual SEO tools (Moz, Screaming Frog etc) can crawl this site becuase it is all locked behind a login. Would it be better to launch it and then do a site audit? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | CosiCrawley0 -
Thoughts on archiving content on an event site?
I have a few sites that are used exclusively to promote live events (ex. tradeshows, conference, etc). In most cases these sites content fewer than 100 pages and include information for the upcoming event with links to register. Some time after the event has ended, we would redesign the site and start promoting next years event...essentially starting over with a new site (same domain). We understand the value that many of these past event pages have for users who are looking for info from the past event and we're looking for advice on how best to archive this content to preserve for SEO. We tend to use concise urls for pages on these sites. Ex. www.event.com/agenda or www.event.com/speakers. What are your thoughts on archiving the content from these pages so we can reuse the url with content for the new event? My first thought is to put these pages into an archive, like www.event.com/2015/speakers. Is there a better way to do this to preserve the SEO value of this content?
On-Page Optimization | | accessintel0 -
Multilingual site with untranslated content
We are developing a site that will have several languages. There will be several thousand pages, the default language will be English. Several sections of the site will not be translated at first, so the main content will be in English but navigation/boilerplate will be translated. We have hreflang alternate tags set up for each individual page pointing to each of the other languages, eg in the English version we have: etc In the spanish version, we would point to the french version and the english version etc. My question is, is this sufficient to avoid a duplicate content penalty for google for the untranslated pages? I am aware that from a user perspective, having untranslated content is bad, but in this case it is unavoidable at first.
On-Page Optimization | | jorgeapartime0 -
Duplicate content on partner site
I have a trade partner who will be using some of our content on their site. What's the best way to prevent any duplicate content issues? Their plan is to attribute the content to us using rel=author tagging. Would this be sufficient or should I request that they do something else too? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | ShearingsGroup0 -
Trying to SEO a site that used Header Tags for Design
I am trying to SEO a website that was built years ago and uses Header tags for design. The site must have 25 and tags used for design purpose. Is there any way to work around this problem? Perhaps a code that tells Google to ignore these as Headers? The web designers say that they are looking to fix the problem sometime this summer but you never know if that means it a month away or years away. I really want to help this website but I believe that the Header tags are one of the reasons that his site does not show in the top 100 rankings for any keywords. Any help would be great. www.wallybuysell.com Chris.K
On-Page Optimization | | CKerr0 -
Website accessible on http and https. Is it bad?
We noticed that our website is accessible on: http://www.example.com and https://www.example.com Both the versions have page rank of 4. Though on https version we have added canonical tag indicating http:// version as preferred. Is this fine or we need to use 301 redirect and let the site be accessible only on http:// version??
On-Page Optimization | | CyrilWilson1