Canonicalization to "no-www" and possible issues

[con771]

What is the best way to solve a possible canonicalization issue? i want to go from non-www to www for all pages.
Are there risks with this such as loosing more traffic, pagerank, indexed pages, etc...

I was reading about this and seems many people have more issues after they try to solve the canonicalization issue then before they address it at all..

[tedster]

The big issue is choosing the "wrong" version of your url to be the new canonical version. By wrong, I mean if your highest search traffic pages or your backlinks both say "www" and you now try to switch to "no-www" within that established picture, that's when the chaos can set in. So study your situation carefully before you introduce a set of 301 redirects to an already successful site.

[con771]

So how would you recommend implementing this change when I decide on www or no-www. Are there risks that I'll loose more traffic like this?

[tedster]

If you decide to implement this canonical fix, then once you know which way you want to point the 301 redirect, just put the code in place on the server. If you already have other 301 redirects in place, such as a "url rewrite scheme" and so on, study your situation very closely so that you don't get into a tangle and generate chains of redirects.

Yes, there are naturally some risks with an established site. You may see a dip in traffic from Google while they sort things out.

The key is to get it right the first time. Don't put a canonical fix in place and then switch it around to the other direction and so on. We've seen several cases of long term trouble in those situations. If you do it, just do it once and stick with it. If needed use webmaster Tools to communicate about any extended problems if they come up.

It's probably a good idea to back up your canonical fix by making the same decision in your Webmaster Tools account. And definitely change every internal link on your site to your chosen canonical form. I'd make that step #1

[g1smd]

As you put the redirect fix in place, make sure that all of the internal linking also points to the canonical form.

It is vital that users clicking on any internal link never see their browser hitting a redirect as they navigate the site.

Programs like Xenu LinkSleuth are very useful to find such problems.