Your domain name is the first thing that you need to set up, before creating your blog or site. That will affect your indexed pages if you forget to configure it. Your website domain has two versions www.yourdomain.comand yourdomain.com without the (www).
People forget sometimes that Google will index their pages for different domains, this will risk their long-term page indexing. That way, they lose page ranking because the indexed pages will be divided between two domains, instead of one.
Note: with the new version of the Google search console, you don’t have to define or set a preferred blog domain name. Just add a new domain property and Google.
Why setting a preferred domain for your site?
How many backlinks you have to your blog? Do you know the anchor text in these links?
Most of the people who link to your blog will use different domain names, with, and without the www. So, they link to different domain names, and this will affect directly your website ranking, for example, you will have two different Google page rank or the same domain name, of course to your domain name ranking will be much better with one single domain name.
At the same time, there is a risk that Google will mark some of your pages as duplicates content.
To set up your preferred domain name, you need to forward yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com, this way you get all the pages indexed for your main domain name without problems. So you’ll redirect all your traffic to the same domain. To set tell Google about the right version fo domain you like, just follow the next easy steps:
The first thing you need is to add your secondary domain name to your Google webmaster tools to verify your ownership. Just add your site as normal, and verify it as the main domain, now, you have verified the Yourdomain.com without the (www).
Sign in to your Google webmaster tools account, click your site, then ”Site Settings” at the top right.
Now, all you have to do is to select www.yourdomain.com, your ”main domain” as shown in the screenshot below.
In this case, you have one domain name instead of two. Congratulations.
Important, Verify the site URL redirect
Please make sure to have one single domain and not two that can be accessed separately. If you can access your website URL with the naked domain, and with the full domain, then, you need to redirect one of them to the preferred domain that you’ve selected in Google webmaster tools.
To change your site URL, so that it redirects to one domain and not two, add these codes to your ”wp-config.php” file in WordPress.
define('WP_HOME','http://example.com');
define('WP_SITEURL','http://example.com');
Of course, change the example of the URL above with the one that you’ve selected as preferred. That’s the easiest way to do the job. However, if you need more options to change the URL in WordPress, then, check out this WordPress codex.
If you’re using other applications like Joomla or any other one, search for how to change the site URL for that software and you will find lots of tutorials online.
Please remember that Google will see all your incoming links even with www, or without it as the same. Thus, your domain will look like the majority of domains.
You can also define the full domain name for your blog from the beginning, it’s easy and all you have to do is select the protocol www with auto installers like Softaculous. At the same time, you can change your domain directly from your WordPress dashboard, but, it will cause problems, especially, if you’re a newbie.
There is no exact domain name structure to use, but, the majority of popular websites are using the full domain name instead of the short one. Some people believe that the full domain adds some value to their SEO, some others believe the inverse.
If you type Google.com in your browse’s URL bar, you will be taken to www.Google.com, so remember this and make your website look professional when people type your URL address.
Anyway, you’ve learned how to set a preferred domain for your blog in the Google search console, your links will redirect to the same domain and this is what you need after all.
If you have lots of backlinks, then, this will add real value to your domain, you need one single address and not two of them.
