One of the most common issues with blogs that I critique is the WWW/No-WWW issue. That is where you can see the same content with both the WWW. in the URL and without. Doesn’t seem like much of a problem?
- There is a theory around SEO circles that having content available on both creates problems in search engines with either duplicate content or counting links or both.
- A growing movement is trying to remove the WWW. because it is unnecessary
- For usability concerns at the very least you want all versions to work and not throw up an error
While there are as many people who argue against this, I have 301 redirected my URLs one way or the other for a long time and found visible benefits, especially where links are concerned. The worst case scenario is where someone links to your site and the visitor gets access denied or a 404 page not found error.
Using a WordPress plugin, .htaccess, or in some cases your web hosting control panel, you can quite easily redirect from the URL you don’t use to the one you prefer. Obviously the No-WWW people would like you to redirect the WWW. version to the non-WWW version but as you can see on this particular blog, I do it the other way.
So now I have described the issue in brief … Do you WWW.?
