Canonical URL Issue On Major Site

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Canonical URL Issue On Major Site

Just need a quick sanity check before proceeding

CliffR

9:37 pm on Aug 22, 2007 (gmt 0)

Hello All,

I just started a new full time job as an SEO manager for a major website (2M unique visitors/month) that's on a .NET platform. There are a lot of basic SEO issues that need to be addressed right off the bat, and one of the first is that the non-www version of the site is a PR5 and the www version is a PR8. I want to go ahead and implement a 301 redirect to the www version, but I need to be 100% certain I'm doing things right.

Can anyone offer suggestions to help ensure this process proceeds smoothly? Given the fact that there is always more than one way to do something, is there a single method to do this in ASP that is the most widely accepted? What results can I expect to see in the short term?

I wouldn't even hesitate to make this change on one of my own sites, but 1) I've always used Apache in the past, and 2) I've never worked with a site this big, so I need to make sure I'm considering everything.

Thanks!
-Cliff

g1smd

9:39 pm on Aug 28, 2007 (gmt 0)

This thread may be useful:

[webmasterworld.com...]

pageoneresults

9:47 pm on Aug 28, 2007 (gmt 0)

The non-www version of the site is a PR5 and the www version is a PR8. I want to go ahead and implement a 301 redirect to the www version, but I need to be 100% certain I'm doing things right.

Great choice! Now, let's talk about "why" the PR is split like that. Apparently, there are links to both versions. Are those links coming from external sources? Or, are those links coming from internal sources? If internal, how come? Are sub-domains being used? If so, then other things will need to be addressed.

If its .net with that many pages, they are probably using the built in .net rewrite utilities, yuck! You should check first and see how they are handling existing rewriting routines.

Is there a single method to do this in ASP that is the most widely accepted?

Yes, ISAPI_Rewrite. Two lines of code and you're done with it.

RewriteCond Host: ^example\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http\://www\.example\.com$1 [I,RP]

What results can I expect to see in the short term?

Any listings sitting out there that are split between www and non www will be merged. Things normally improve a little afterwards too because you are now providing "explicit indexing instructions" and not leaving it up to chance.