What is better in term of SEO and SERP www.domain.com or just domain.com? And which is more usual, to type in browser or when linking etc. www.domain.com or domain.com. Thanks. n.b
Go with the www since if you get natural links more than likely they will use www. Or if you do a 301 redirect to one or the other then it doesnt matter at all.
I used to be all for the www. prefix when I first started out with my first sites (Devil May Cry / Fable 2), however when starting a new project nowadays I tend to lean more towards going without it (Resident Evil). I haven't noticed any real difference just yet but I'm still optimistic.
You will get different answers depending.. Pick one and run with it. If you pick www then redirect the other to www and redirect index.html there too. Then try and make sure all link are to the version you choose.
As mentioned above, consistency is the key. Choose one and stick with it. The 301 redirect between the 2 is critical. It prevents Google from getting confused between which version to index, and it ensures you get link juice no matter which version is used. Some sites / web hosts have one version returning a 404 not found error, which is really lazy / stupid.
Its depend on how you are taking the backlinks to your site. and for natural linking - mostly natural link coming with www.
Kind of an old site, but it's still valid (and some good free PR links when you get on their list) but I thought it was relevant to this discussion. http://no-www.org/