Cart
Google have now announced that they no longer support their preferred domain setting.
Selecting a preferred domain used to be as easy as just directly communicating to Google which domain you want to use through their settings.
This is what it used to look like:
Since they’ve removed these settings, you need to give signals to Google in other ways to inform them of your preferred domain.
This can be tricky to figure out if you’re a beginner to SEO but lucky for you this article will walk you through the steps.
When we’re talking about a domain, we’re referencing the address that web users type into their browser to find your website.
.png)
We select domain names that are memorable as it’s easier to reference compared to your IP (Internet Protocol) address.
Setting a domain name is easy. You should pick something that’s easy to remember and associated with your site.
As the name suggests, a preferred domain is the domain that you want to be presented to search engines and web users.
You may be thinking, I’ve only got one domain…
But in all likelihood when you chose your domain name, two different domains were created.
It’s likely that you have something like this: www.yourwebsitexyz.com and yourwebsitesxyz.com.
Can you see how they’re different? One has the www. and one doesn’t.
And now let’s find out why it’s important that you choose one over the other!
Setting a preferred domain is important because search engines will see your website as two different sites.
This can split your market share in Google’s rankings…
You may have two sites on the 3rd page instead of your one site on the first page, thus significantly impacting your traffic and web presence.
Imagine writing content for days upon days, only for it never to be indexed by the likes of Google.
This is much more common than you think.
You may be producing content on your preferred domain…
But Google may have decided to index the other domain (the one without any content) because they were unsure of which domain you wanted to display.
And you don’t need me to tell you that this is one of the most frustrating things in the world for those trying to grow their web presence.
Google are quick to penalise any websites which have identical content from another site.
This is because they want to show their users unique content to deliver the best possible user experience.
When you have two different domains, you may have two different websites that have the exact same content (screaming frog is a great tool to identify duplicate content).
And Google will know no better, they’ll think that these two sites are copying each other.
Then this usually leads to penalties for both parties.
This could be a drop in rankings or being removed from their search engine results.
Backlinks are crucial to your SEO rankings.
Backlinks are when other websites reference your site. They act as a vote of credibility for your site in the eyes of Google.
We’ve used backlinks to other SEO blogs within our content (as shown as below).
If some backlinks refer back to one domain whilst other backlinks refer to another domain, you’re missing out on some serious SEO growth.
Such a small error could be costing you tens of thousands of web traffic on a monthly basis.
This is entirely up you. For most readers, this is all going to be down to individual preference.
We’ve opted for without the “www.” just because of the sleek look.
If your website is fairly new than by all means just pick whichever one you prefer.
If your website is already established, it may be worth looking at which domain has more authority.
This means identifying which domain has received the most backlinks and bookmarks from your users.
You can use tools such as Semrush or Ahrefs to identify which domain has more authority.
Now that Google have removed the setting to simply choose which preferred domain you want, you need to resort to different methods.
Lucky for you, there’s four different ways you can indicate to Google which domain you prefer.
The first method is to use a canonical tag on your undesired domain page.
A canonical tag tells Google that this page is a duplicate of another page.
And this stops Google from indexing the specified pages.
This ensures that your preferred domain remains the only domain to be indexed and to be ranked.
To do this you need to add a <link> element into the code of your duplicate page.
For more information, please do see Google’s instructions.
It’s worth noting that this method marginally increases your page size…
If you don’t have an excessive amount of content on your page then you should be more than fine.
The next method is incredibly similar to the first.
This time you’re using a canonical tag on the headers of your page.
Again, this can be done via Yoast SEO…
Both methods get the exact same results.
The only difference is that using it on your headers doesn’t add to your page size.
That’s why we recommend that you opt for this method if you’re trying to warn Google about a large duplicate page.
By large page size we mean pages that have plenty of words and images.
The main disadvantage of the canonical tag method is that it can be hard to maintain on larger sites.
This is because you’ll have to manually identify each duplicate page and then correct it. This is where the next step comes into play…
The next method is an indirect way of informing Google of which domain you prefer.
A sitemap is basically a blueprint of your website’s structure which you upload for Google to use when indexing, crawling, and ranking your site.
If you haven’t created a sitemap before, I highly recommend using Yoast SEO which does everything for you.
Just be sure to only include your preferred pages on your sitemap.
Google will then decide which of the other pages should be labelled as duplicates.
Whilst you can never be sure that they’ll get everything right, they’re normally pretty accurate
Just to be clear, every single site should have a sitemap.
You just may not want to exclusively rely on it for indicating a preferred domain.
As we mentioned, you’re putting things into the hands of Google to identify which pages are duplicates.
We prefer to be a little bit more accurate…
So we recommend that you pair this method with one of the others!
As the name suggests, redirects are when you direct users from one page to another.
These can be used on your duplicate pages to redirect users to your preferred domain.
Similar to using canonical tags, this is a sure-fire way to ensure that Google knows which domain you prefer.
You can opt to use a 301 redirect, 302 redirect, or a 3xx redirect.
We recommend that you use the 3xx redirect for optimal results.
And then you just need to identify each duplicate page and redirect your users to the page on your preferred domain.
If you’re new to the world of SEO and web design, it may be useful reading more about redirects here.
The only disadvantage of redirects is that it may take a little bit of time for search engines to take notice.
They often go months without scanning your site so don’t be surprised if results aren’t immediate.
They may still be sending traffic to your duplicate domain for the next few weeks.
But all you need to do is sit back and be patient…
Eventually they’ll point all traffic towards your preferred domain.
Hopefully this article has been helpful!
Should you have any questions, be sure to leave them below.
