Comments on: Charging $250 for a sitemap and other SEO things you should NOT be paying for

By: Jill Olkoski

Jill Olkoski — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:48:56 +0000

Well, it all has to match. Your redirect target (sounds like it’s without the www) needs to be identical to the link building targets (which unfortunately are with the www). So you’ll either have to change the WordPress redirect, or go back and change the links if you can. Theoretically, the redirect will help the “link juice” be passed to the right domain, but it’s best if the links go there directly. And yes, the Webmaster account also needs to match. Everything has to match, this is why URL Canonicalization is an important SEO practice to follow. Please note the redirect needs to be permanent, not temporary, a 301 redirect. Also note that you can see what’s in the Google Index by Googling both site:www.yourdomain.com versus site:yourdomain.com to see which it has used.

By: kyle

kyle — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:42:47 +0000

im so screwed…see wordpress,s software does the temporary redirect from http://www.domainnamegoeshere.com to http://.domainnamegoeshere.com so my site as far as google thinks is without the http://www.? see put when they google webmaster account was made it was made with the www. and has all the stats for that. So what can i do. Im a new webmaster at this site. and i dont know what to do?…should i make a whole new webmaster account for this domain?…without the www. also i have been doing a lot of link building and i have been using http://www.domainnamegoeshere.com so that was all for nothing?

By: Jill Olkoski

Jill Olkoski — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:05:33 +0000

Hi Kyle, Please read over this article by Google's Matt Cutts called "SEO advice: url canonicalization", this is exactly what problem you're having.

By: kyle

kyle — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:04:01 +0000

forgot to check notify of follow up comment wich i need so soemoen can help me ill never remember were this post it so …

By: Jill Olkoski

Jill Olkoski — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:00:51 +0000

Hi Kyle,
No, you should not create two sitemaps, you only have one site. What you need to do, is to pick either the “www” or the non-www version of your website to be the official one, and then via your hosting company, redirect the one you don’t want to the one you do want. So in other words, let’s say you pick the “www.mysite.com”, and therefore, you need to create a permanent (301) redirect from “mysite.com” to “www.mysite.com”. I’d check with your hosting company on exactly how to accomplish this, they’re all different. Some have control panels you can do this from, others will require you to create a helper file (.htaccess) and put code in there. But you definitely only have ONE set of website files, so you want ONE sitemap.