Search engines consider http://seous.com and http://www.seous.com different websites. As a result, if your website has been linked to from other websites using a mix of the two URLs you are effectively splitting the potential benefit of valuable link popularity.

Using a 301 redirect on the “non-www” version of the URL can effectively consolidate all of your link popularity to a single URL. This consolidation will serve to increase your website’s chances of obtaining and maintaining top rankings.

Open the httpd.conf file on your server, back it up somewhere in case of error and then uncomment the following line:

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

Once the line is uncommented, save the file and restart the server then proceed with the following steps.

Download the .htaccess file from your website’s root web folder to a folder on your machine where you can edit it.

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

Upload the file back to your website in the exact same place you downloaded it.

Once the upload is complete open a browser and try visiting the “non-www” version of your website address. If the .htaccess is working as it should you will be redirected immediately to the proper “www” version of your website. This will be reflected in your browser’s address bar.

To be 100% certain this has worked appropriately I suggest typing in your “non-www” website address into the:

http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html

This tool will show you whether the 301 redirect is being provided by the server. This is what a search engine will see when it visits the site.