Using www in sitemaps - help needed

Hello, i'm beginner in almost anything so please try to explain more detailed if you can .
any way, i have my website finally online, and now i'm starting to do the seo, so i made the xml site map with http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and i need some help to understand what to do or not to do.

the website is php files, a master page that including pages and sub pages, dynamic..
now i have two things that i have problem to understand how to do right -

1) in Google Webmaster tools i have 2 profiles of the website. one with www and one without, how to do right with this? which one to delete?
2) the sitemap, according to #1 above, should be with WWW or just site.com?

i want it to be "site.com", but i need the basic guidelines to understand what is right to do or more what is wrong to do and why so i can go with my seo right,

thanks

 

Hi,

First set your Preferred domain in Google Webmaster tool Settings Page.

The preferred domain is the one that you would like used to index your site's pages. If you specify your preferred domain as http://www.site.com and Google find a link to your site that is formatted as http://site.com , Google will treat that link as if it was http://www.site.com . In addition, Google will take your preference into account when displaying URLs in Google search results. But It may take some time for changes to be reflected in Google index.

Thanks & Regards,
Medical Transcription India

 

listen, i have the google webmaster account for sitename.com and the www.sitename.com both, so what is the right thing to do? if i set the preferred as without the www, is its better to delete the tools for the www one?

and if i keep them both, should i make two sitemaps (with and witout www)? or jusr the same without the www will be fine?

thanks.

 

You can redirect www.aaa.com to aaa.com, then they are the same!!

 

Here's the deal...

You Need to 301 redirect to fix the issue:

The fact that you can access pages on your site with and without www means that your site has URL canonicalization issues. Using Google webmaster tools ONLY fixes this problem with Google, and not ALL search engines.

Ideally, each page on your site will have ONE URL that can be used to render the page called the canonical (or "preferred") URL. All other non-canonical URLs for that page should be 301 redirected to the canonical URL as jucychau suggested. This is the absolute BEST way to fix your URL canonicalization issues. Left unfixed, URL canonicalization issues lead to duplicate content and split PageRank/link juice which will hurt your rankings in the long run. Basically you need to determine if you want ALL canonical URLs on your site to include the www or not. Most want the www version to be the canonical URL, but it's a personal choice... it really doesn't matter which you pick.

Using 301 redirects to correct URL canonicalization issues has been the fix suggested by search engines since the beginning of time. ALL search engines (including Google) understand how to handle 301 redirects. This is a global fix to fix URL canonicalization across all engines.

If your site is hosted on Apache, you'll have access to Mod_Rewrite. You may have noticed a file in the root of your web named .htaccess. You can add the following to your .htaccess file in the root of your web to correct the canonicalization issues:

To make www version of URLs your canonical URLs:

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

To make the non-www version of URLs your canonical URLs:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]


Webmaster Tools:

You "can" fix the problem at Google by taking the easy way out and using Google Webmaster Tools preference setting to indicate whether you prefer www or non-www as ssuresh.rks1 suggested. But you need to realize that this ONLY fixes the problem at Google. It will not fix your URL canonicalization issues for Bing, Yahoo!, and other engines so your rankings there will likely continue to suffer.

In general you should refrain from depending on Webmaster Tools to fix problems when there are other fixes available that will fix problems across all engines...

To answer your original question, you have to be a verified site owner for BOTH the www.site.com AND site.com (non-www version) in order to set the preferred domain setting in Google's webmaster tools. Once you pick one (like www) then you'll stop seeing data under the other (like non-www). Just leave both of them there and ignore the one that is not the preferred domain.

 

I know I have changed non www to www by registering both on WMT. However that is only Google. The above 301 advice is correct if you want ALL users to use www.

 

Google webmaster tool gives us features to solve the canonical issue. you can select option to redirect example.com to www.example.com or another way is to use 301 Redirects.

 

Yes, use 301. redirect from site.com to www. site.com and then select preferred domain in GWT.

 

if u are geting inbond links to www then use prefered domain to www under google webmasters tool use only one prefered domain so u can earn all links to your prefered domain if u are using both than u have lose distribution of inbond links