WWW or Non-WWW, That is the Question

A recent spate of questions in the office from clients on whether or not to use a URL with www in it prompted me to write on this topic.  Your website’s address is a critical part, and especially crucial to your SEO.  After all, you want people, search engines, and any benefits associated with links to come your way.

But should you use a URL that is www or non-WWW?  Is http://www.mysite.com better than http://mysite.com?

Technically, these could be two different websites with two completely different sets of content on them.  Also, technically speaking, mysite.com is your domain, while www.mysite.com is a sub domain.  However, www has become so standard that many people append it automatically, there are shortcuts to append it in your browser bar (CNTRL + shift), and even the big search engines redirect their non-www sites to www (compare http://google.com and http://www.google.com).

But which address should you use for your website?  There are a few things you should consider when deciding on this: duplicate content, link juice, URL canonicalization, and age of site.

Duplicate Content
Search engines don’t favor duplicate content, because content that is the same across websites and domains does not give them any special insight into the websites or their authority.  Google has announced that they don’t penalize duplicate content exactly.  What they do is group URLs that have the same content together.  When the appropriate search term in entered, Google picks a URL that it thinks best represents that set of content.  If it’s several of your pages that are lumped together, you don’t know if Google will pick the page that is actually most useful at presenting the information you have.  Needless to say, if you have the same content across your www and non-www sites, it’s luck of the draw as to which URL will present in the SERPs.

Link Juice
Well, maybe I lied a bit.  It’s not quite luck of the draw as to which URL will present in the SERPs.  It’ll be the one with the best Page Rank and link authority (if it’s Google doing the work).  You may not have the same link juice for your www and non-www pages.  Because of how other people have accessed your site, they may be linking with one form more than another.  Even your inner linking on the website may be favoring one version over another (probably due to people believing that www and non-www is exactly the same).  Because of the links, one of your sites could have better link juice (and maybe even page rank) than the other.  What you want for your website, and it’s URL, is the most link juice possible, contributing to the most page rank and authority your site can gather.

URL Canonicalization
Again, Google (and Matt Cutts himself) suggest that you perform what is called URL canonicalization.  This means that one standard URL is chosen, and the other is permanently redirected (with a 301) to the chosen URL.  Google makes no preference if it’s www redirected to non-www or vice versa.  It’s a matter of choice.  Most importantly, it tell search engines which one of the sites is more important and to choose to “see” and which one to ignore.  Also, when visitors type in one address or the other, they’ll be automatically taken to the correct address and most importantly, accessing the correct domain/website.

Age of Site
So now, how do you decide which URL to pick:  www or non-www?  Consider the age of your site.
•    If it’s a brand new site, choose the www URL.  Internet users are very accustomed to these and it’s a force of habit to use www.yoursite.com.  It’s a hard habit to break.  Also, the number of websites that redirect non-www to www URLs sets a pretty compelling precedent.

•    If you have an older domain, choose to use the URL that has the best link juice, page rank, authority, indexation, etc.   This may have you redirecting your www to the non-www or the other way around.  The most important consideration is that your chosen domain has the most oomph behind it as possible.  Use the domain with the most accrued value and permanently 301redirect all other address to it.

In short, there’s no inherent difference in choosing to use a www or non-www URL for your website.  SEO is not affected by it unless you do not caononicalize your approach.  I would prefer to see www URLs instead of non, but a non-www should be used if you’re working with an older site and that has proven the be the more valuable URL for the site.

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