December 16th, 2011 
iancheow 
Do you know 301 redirects and www/non-www URL canonical issues can affect your SEO?
There are 2 ways to view a website: either by typing the URL with www or without www. Example is as followed:
This has led to problems with Google indexing both versions of the URL, resulting in duplicate content. Also, with 2 versions, your anchor text benefits and PR will be shared over 2 sites (www and non-www). This is known as Canonical Issues.
To check whether your site has canonical issues, simply type the following in Google:
site:http://yourdomainname.com
If the search results returns www and non-www URLs of your site, you need to fix the canonical issues.
How to fix canonical problems?
To fix canonical problems, you need to edit your .htaccess file located in your root server. The following code uses 301 redirect (permanent redirect) one form of the site to the other.
(If you prefer to standardize your URLs with www, use the code below. The code will redirect non-www version to www version)
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yourdomainname\.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomainname.com/$1 [R=301,L]
(If you prefer to standardize your URLs without www, use the code below. The code will redirect www version to non-www version)
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^yourdomainname\.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://yourdomainname.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Hope this post helps you to fix the canonical problems of your site.
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