“What on earth are you talking about?” I hear you say…
Try this quick test for your web site. Navigate to the two following URL’s:
http://yoursite.com
http://www.yoursite.com
If you can actually have these show up in your browser then you have a problem. What is happening is that Joomla will happily process both URL’s, with and without the www.
“Is that bad?” you now ask.
Actually yes, I found that on this site, compassdesigns.net actually had a pagerank. I expect people had been linking to me and had been lazy with the www. This meant from Google’s point of view, they were actually TWO sits and each was getting ranked individually. Not to even mention the perils of duplicate content!
Luckily there is an easy fix. You just need to edit your .htaccess fiel with the following:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Note, in the Joomla htaccess file the “RewriteEngine On” statement is already there, you don’t need it twice.
Check you secret competitors page today, you might be shocked at how well it is doing!