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Audit your www vs non-www redirect and canonicalize properly

15 min Impact: medium Effort: medium ✓ Manual completion

If both www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com load as separate, live sites instead of one redirecting to the other, search engines see duplicate content, splitting ranking signals across two URLs instead of concentrating them on one canonical version.

This is a foundational technical fix with a direct SEO impact, not just a cosmetic detail — it affects how your ranking authority concentrates.

How to do it

  1. 1
    Decide your one canonical version
    Either www or non-www — there is no inherent SEO advantage to either, consistency is what matters.
  2. 2
    Set up a permanent 301 redirect
    From the non-canonical version to your chosen one, at the DNS, host, or CDN level.
  3. 3
    Update canonical tags and your sitemap to match
    Every reference to your site should consistently point to the same version.
  4. 4
    Test both variants after the change
    Visit the non-canonical version directly and confirm it redirects cleanly.

Common mistakes

How you will know it is done

The non-canonical variant correctly 301-redirects to your single canonical domain.

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