Ever wonder if you’re splitting Google PageRank?  Splitting precious link juice to your site between your www and non www domain name?  Well if you found this page, you ‘prolly are wondering just that because you’re here reading this.

Here’s a few things you’ll have to do before we can even get started.  First off you’ll need to grab the Google Toolbar for your browser (if you don’t have it already) and install it.  Secondly, from your newly installed Google Toolbar, you’ll need to check the box enabling ”View PageRank” from the Tool Bar menu.

Check your site by going to the non www version of your domain name ie http://yourdomainname.com.  Now go to the www version ie http://www.yourdomainname.com.

If you see a different ranking for the two domains in your Google Toolbar - you’re splitting PageRank. That’s not a good thing because it means your splitting your inbound link juice between two different url’s.  Even though they are the same site, search engines see them as two separate addresses.

Here’s a simple fix to the problem.  Add this code to your .htaccess file in the root directory of your website:

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

Of course you have to change the url from what you see above to your domain name.

Your finished .htaccess file may look like this now:

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index.html
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.html$ http://www.whereslumpy.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index.php
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.php$ http://www.whereslumpy.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^whereslumpy.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.whereslumpy.com/$1 [R=301,L]

# -FrontPage-

IndexIgnore .htaccess */.??* *~ *# */HEADER* */README* */_vti*

<Limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from all
</Limit>
<Limit PUT DELETE>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Limit>
AuthName www.whereslumpy.com

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

As you see on this site, if somebody stumbles upon the non www version ie http://whereslumpy.com, it automatically switches the web browser address to http://www.whereslumpy.com.  Try it.

With this fix, search engines, visitors and bots will now index your www address and you’ll never split PageRank or backlinks again. Every visitor to your site is now guided to your www address only.  Another plus is you don’t have to backtrack and “tune up” links that were sent to your non www address before you knew better!

Some of you may have also noticed these statements in my .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index.html
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.html$ http://www.whereslumpy.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index.php
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.php$ http://www.whereslumpy.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This is another great tactic for squeezing PageRank off of your index.php or index.html pages too.  Note, if you go to my actual home page of http://www.whereslumpy.com/index.php - watch the address bar in your browser.  No split PageRank to the index.php page.  Since this site was around a few years ago, and since it was built back then with a static index.html homepage, I also added the html page rewrite in the .htaccess file so if there were any old links out there in cyberspace, they’d be sent to the right url now.

Hope this helps ya’!

L2 Lumpy

Welcome to Where’s Lumpy!  We just went live tonight (Wednesday, Jan 21)!

Here’s my personal blog and thoughts on life, motorcycles, domaining, website development and search engine optimization.  Keep an eye on this blog as we gain some momentum in the coming weeks and months.  I think it’s fair to say you won’t be disappointed.  LOL.

Thanks for Riding In!

L2 Lumpy