Top

Skip links

  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content

Call us on: 01706 310880

SEO Agency Lancashire - Valen Digital

Digital Marketing & SEO Agency Rochdale Greater Manchester

  • Home
  • What We Do
    • SEO
    • Content Marketing
    • Responsive Websites
    • PPC (Pay Per Click)
  • Blog
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Our Blog / non-www to www

non-www to www

Last Updated: 30th September 2020

non-www to www 301 redirects

When it comes to optimising your website, duplicate content is always an issue but much overlooked. Many webmasters do not even realise that Google may be inadvertently looking at 2 versions of there home page. The non-www to www versions, and inadvertently be hit by the duplicate content penalty!

That’s because if you haven’t redirected your non-www to www version (or visa versa) then Google sees 2 versions of your site and slaps a duplicate content penalty on to your site.

The code below will help get rid of this. It will redirect the non-www to www version of your website via a friendly 301 redirect (technical SEO) telling Google that the site permanently exists at the www version. Of Course this also applies for the rest of your site for which this code also helps.

Simply replace the example.com with your site reference (highlighted in orange) and the save code to your .htaccess file and upload it to the root. If you don’t have a .htaccess file then simply paste the code to a text file and save it as .htaccess then upload to the root of your folder. Of course your UK Web Hosting account needs to be an based on an Apache server for this to work correctly or a server of the similar type.

PHP
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]
 
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html
RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.example.co.uk/ [R=301,L]

The last 2 lines of code above simply redirect your index file to the root and apply’s a / so that Google doesn’t cache 2 copy’s of your home page i.e. www.example.co.uk and www.example.co.uk/index.html.

You can replace the html part of the code for php or htm if that’s what your using on you site.

UPDATE: Since this original post search engines have given huge emphasis on sites which use SSL to those that dont.

We have a detailed guide on how you can migrate from http to https which can be combined with the above code to have 1 variation of your site.

0 Comments

About Amir Farid

Amir Farid is a #TechnicalSEO geek, WordPress enthusiast #WPDeveloper based in Rochdale. He regularly talks and provides online digital marketing solutions to SME's and start-up businesses. Brands he has helped with include Umbrella Host, SEO Umbrella and of course Valen Digital. You Can find him on LinkedIn

guest
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Follow Us!

  • Valen Digital on Facebook
  • Valen Digital on Instagram
  • Valen Digital on Pinterest
  • Valen Digital on Twitter

Visit our social media channels for hints, tips and marketing tricks ;)


We are Experts in World Class Technologies Such As:

Experts in CSS3
Experts in HTML5
Experts in Magento
Experts in Wordpress
Experts in Javascript & Jquery
Experts in PHP

  • SEO Rochdale
  • Content Marketing
  • PPC
  • Web Design Rochdale
  • About Us
Valen Digital Footer Logo

Call Us Today
01706 310880

All rights reserved | Prices exclude VAT @ 20% unless specifically stated.

Copyright © 2010 - 2021 Umbrella Interactive Ltd | Valen Digital is a trading name of Umbrella Interactive Ltd.

Handcrafted with by Valen Digital 15 Water St, Rochdale, Greater Manchester, OL16 1TL | 01706 310880.Valen Digital Marketing Logo£350-£25000

Privacy | Cookies | Terms | Directions