The Difference Between http://www and http://
I like to consider myself pretty knowledgeable when it comes to blogs and the internet. By no stretch am I some uber genius, but, I do like to think I have a pretty vast knowledge of the blog-o-sphere. However, recently I was informed by a good friend of mine that I might have been doing something very wrong when it came to creating and maintaining blogs. Something so simple that could have a catastrophic effect on my blog. Something that most of us don’t even pay attention to.
You’ll notice that when you visit a website and/or blog, sometimes the blog URL will read “http://www.sitename.com and at other times it will read “http://sitename.com”. I never really thought this was much of an issue. I actually never even gave it a second thought. But apparently, I should have. The problem with this situation is that most search engines treat those addresses as two different domains, splitting your backlink count. That in turn effects a variety of things, especially your PageRank and where you place on search engine index’s. Now, be aware, not all websites and/or blogs have this issue but a fair amount do.
So the question begs - how do you fix it? Well, there are two ways to go about this. The more difficult way is to create a 301 Permanent Redirect using PHP which the average blogger simply lacks the knowledge to do. So, for those of us who need the easy road, there is Enforce www. Preference plugin. This plugin is extremely easy to use. Simply install it, activate it, and it will automatically create a 301 Permanent Redirect page for you and you’ll no longer need to worry about search engines confusing your website/blog as if it were two totally different webpages.
To find out more about Enforce www. Preference and/or to download it, click here.
I highly recommend this tool.
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