Are there any rules as to which DNS settings are the best for SEO? For instance, with Godaddy, should I just set forwarding (301 redirect) to the www. version and be done with it? (If so, my next question is will 301 redirects also redirect Page Rank? This is important because I have one site that has two previous URL's pointing to it through 301's, have I lost all pagerank or not?)
If not a 301 redirect, should I set the "A Name/Host" or the Cname or both, or does it matter and what is the best way (most effiecient for bandwidth and SE rankings. On that one site when I run the DNS test at DNSstuff.com it says my CName setting is acceptable but not the most efficient). I am trying to get to the www.mydomain.com version for everything (rather than without the www).
Sorry for all the questions, this is just new for me and I have searched all over the place and I can't seem to find very much of anything. Thanks in advance!
On the other hand, anybody typing the "wrong" site name will suffer a typically somewhat larger penalty as a result of the HTTP redirect.
Note that the only possible legitimate use of CNAME here is to CNAME "www" to the base domain name. The base name should never be CNAMEed, and should use an A record.
If you use a CNAME for www, and your canonical name is www, then every user suffers one penalty. If your canonical name is "non-www", then users who type www suffer one penalty, and those who type just the domain name suffer two.
If you use A record for both, and your canonical name is www, then users who type just the base name suffer one penalty, www none. If your canonical name is non-www, users who type www suffer one penalty, non-www zero.
I prefer the more "modern" "non-www" as canonical, with an A record for both the base name and "www".
