Does it matter for SEO if you use “www” in your domain name?
In terms of SEO, it doesn't matter whether you use "domain.com" or "www.domain.com" as your primary domain. However, it is important to pick one and be consistent to avoid duplicate content issues. Search engines, like Google, may treat "domain.com" and "www.domain.com" as two separate websites, which can result in a dilution of your SEO efforts and negatively affect your search engine rankings.
There is no inherent benefit or drawback of using www or not
There is no inherent benefit or drawback to using either "domain.com" or "www.domain.com" as your primary domain. It's mostly a matter of personal preference. However, having both versions configured in your DNS can be beneficial in terms of user experience and accessibility, as some users may type one version or the other when attempting to access your website.
To avoid duplicate content issues and ensure that search engines index only one version of your site, you should do the following:
Set up a 301 redirect: Configure your web server to redirect one version of the domain to the other (either "domain.com" to "www.domain.com" or vice versa). A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect that passes most of the SEO value to the redirected page, ensuring that search engines understand which version is the preferred one.
Configure the canonical URL: Use the
<link rel="canonical">tag in the HTML header of your website to specify the preferred version of your domain. This tells search engines which version to prioritize when crawling and indexing your site.Set the preferred domain in Google Search Console: If you have a Google Search Console account, you can specify your preferred domain in the settings, which will help Google understand which version to prioritize.
By following these steps, you can ensure that search engines index only one version of your site and consolidate your SEO efforts, regardless of whether you choose to use "domain.com" or "www.domain.com" as your primary domain.
