www and non-www for pbn

I'm in the process of building my first pbn at the moment.

Now after creating 5 of my pbn sites with content I realised that some of these domains have stronger backlinks to their www-version, however I created them all without www.

How important is it to create the pbn on the correct version?
Is all the link juice lost building without www?

Now that I already have content on the pbns how do I change it the easiest to www-? Sites are build with WordPress.

Thanks guys

No, not all the link juice is lost without the www. However, it's always a good idea to determine which has the stronger metrics and create your site based on that. Switching is pretty straight forward. Just delete your current installation of Wordpress. Install a new one via cpanel and then select the 'http://www.' root/directory version from the dropdown menu.

jamesjk1 said:

No, not all the link juice is lost without the www. However, it's always a good idea to determine which has the stronger metrics and create your site based on that. Switching is pretty straight forward. Just delete your current installation of Wordpress. Install a new one via cpanel and then select the 'http://www.' root/directory version from the dropdown menu.

Click to expand...

Ok thanks! What's best way to transfer content then? Copy to word files and repost on new version?

Sorry I'm not most knowledgeable WordPress guy

If you haven't got stacks of content to transfer, then yeah you could just copy them into Notepad, then paste them on your new site version.

You gotta make your PBN look natural. If every site has the same style URL, text and other footprints it's gonna get discovered.

bartosimpsonio said:

You gotta make your PBN look natural. If every site has the same style URL, text and other footprints it's gonna get discovered.

Click to expand...

Yeh I know. I'm avoiding footprints as much as possible

You can just 301 one to the other via htaccess

301 non-www to www

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

301 www to non-www

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

or

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Remember, that if you check the root of a domain, you get all the backlink data on the big crawlers (ahrefs, majestic et al.) - it gives you a better picture on the overall metrical baseline of a domain. Because you can't really compare root to subdomain variations (which includes www.). We personally only build PBN sites on the root itself, as that is our baseline for metrical evaluation - even if the www. version shows better metrics.

Having said that, you can probably use either version of the 301 above. The www to non-www 301 will pass the juice to the root, which works too - while the other one will 301 the root version to the www version (which is basically what you asked for in the first place.

janist said:

You can just 301 one to the other via htaccess

301 non-www to www

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

301 www to non-www

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

or

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Remember, that if you check the root of a domain, you get all the backlink data on the big crawlers (ahrefs, majestic et al.) - it gives you a better picture on the overall metrical baseline of a domain. Because you can't really compare root to subdomain variations (which includes www.). We personally only build PBN sites on the root itself, as that is our baseline for metrical evaluation - even if the www. version shows better metrics.

Having said that, you can probably use either version of the 301 above. The www to non-www 301 will pass the juice to the root, which works too - while the other one will 301 the root version to the www version (which is basically what you asked for in the first place.

Click to expand...

Interesting.
So keeping the sites as non-www will still have the juice of the www version if redirected.
I use redirect plugin to make ppl. visiting www being redirected to non www.
So that should pass enough juice then.

I'll build future pbn sites on correct version then. Thanks.

In wordpress dashboard, you can change your site from www. version back to non-www. if I am right, then things should be done automate, and you can go to Google webmaster tool and re-fetch your whole site again and just let he bot do everything for you, all link juice saved.

If I am wrong, someone correct me plz, because I am not 100% sure of this.

DON'T delete your current WordPress installation. @jamesjk1 that's horrible advice. All you need to do is change both of the URLs inside WordPress dashboard. The blog reloads and that's it.

bartosimpsonio said:

You gotta make your PBN look natural. If every site has the same style URL, text and other footprints it's gonna get discovered.

Click to expand...

I disagree on this for the most part (about www not footprints). I mean it's okay to have a couple non-www in there, but for the most part most the sites today get redirected to www anyways. I think it just looks better. I've put up over 500 sites in the past ten years and I always made sure it's www. I bet 90%+ of sites today are www.

I will chime on this a little bit too.

I do not think that having everything on http://www.domain.tld is a problem, especially if you have 5 domains in your PBN. If you had 100, then okay, but even then, throw in 5 - 10 without www and you are fine.

About which version to use... always use the one where majority of links point to. However it's more of a rule, that most will be pointing to a www version.

What to do with the links pointing to internal pages? Well... there are a few options. One of them is 301 redirect of dead pages to homepage. Many people here aren't fans of that, because Google pronounced, that this kind of redirect is consired more of a 302 rather than 301 redirect, so it's weak. I think Google is full of shit really like always. So you can do that if the domain has for example 50 referring domains and only 10 point to homepage and rest is scattered across dozens of non existent internal pages.

Another option, if most of the links point to a few internal pages is to recreate them. This way, the link juice is definitely going to be retained within the website.

And the last option is to do nothing. If you have domain with 50 referring domains and 47 point to homepage, screw that and leave it be. Don't redirect anything and don't recreate anything.

You should really vary between these 3 options to have as much diversity as possible to stay away from red flags.

I'll try this when I'm home. If it works you saved me a lot of headache mate

Both www and non www are equal. But we choose the one that has a better metrics especially the TF, DA, and PA. You can 301 to pass the link juice or add the needed code to your htaccess file.

You also don't need to copy and paste content into word docs. There are plugins out there that back up your wordpress into a database you can upload into your new installation if you choose to start over on the installation. Essentially the plugins backup content and such.

Hi OP,

As others have mentioned, doing a 301 via your htaccess file is the easiest way and will pass on the link juice to your desired URL.

You can also set-up the redirection on the server-side in order to reduce client-side (RTT).

FYI: Round-trip time (RTT) is basically the amount of time it takes for a client to send a request and the server to send a response back over the network.

So reducing the number of HTTP redirects cuts out additional RTTs and wait times for users meaning an increase in website loading speed!

I know this is a bit more info than you were probably looking for but I figured might as well share my in-depth knowledge on this subject with the community!

Hope this helps!

Best Regards,
Mark T. - President

I issue having all www. But should be no issue having non-www even if links to www were stronger because with a default install of wp www will redirect to non-dub anyway, or vice versa, so all the link juice ends up in the same place.

jon_xx_x said:

I disagree on this for the most part (about www not footprints). I mean it's okay to have a couple non-www in there, but for the most part most the sites today get redirected to www anyways. I think it just looks better. I've put up over 500 sites in the past ten years and I always made sure it's www. I bet 90%+ of sites today are www.

Click to expand...

I agree, but OP mentioned somewhere he made *every* site non-www....which kinda sticks out if all those sites have a link back to him don't you think?