Home > Tips > Web Design > Non-WWW Page Protection

Many websites get nailed by Google's duplicate content penalty for the simple reason that they fail to protect themselves against non-www page access. Without WWW page protection in place search engines will typically index your site as "www.domain.com" and as just "domain.com". When this happens a page may be indexed twice and you get penalized for duplicate content.

There is a simple fix. With a quick modification of your .htaccess file you can automatically re-write urls to always ensure the WWW is in place and prevent duplicate indexing.

Simply copy the code below and paste into your htaccess file. Pay special attention to change any place it says "webmarketingnow.com" to your domain name. This will help ensure that this is not a reason why you get nailed by the Google Duplicate Content Penalty:

# Begin non-www page protection #

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.webmarketingnow\.com [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.webmarketingnow.com/$1 [L,R=301]

</IfModule>

# End non-www page protection #

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2000, WebMarketingNow.com
Jerry West is the Director of Internet Marketing for WebMarketingNow. He has been consulting on the web since 1996 and has assisted hundreds of companies gain an upper-hand over their competition. Visit http://www.webmarketingnow.com/ for the latest in marketing tips that are tested and proven.

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