A website quite often has two addresses one with all the w’s and one without. So you can type in www.mywebsite.com or mywebsite.com and still find the same website. The problem with this is, the search engines find two identical websites at two different addresses which will harm your search engine rankings because the search engines think there are two websites on the Internet with the same content but at different addresses.
You can solve this problem by setting up what’s known as a ‘301 redirect’ that will make sure anytime your website is found by the search engines or actual visitors they are directed to the correct place. It can be a little complicated to set up and it is done through the admin panel where the website is hosted. Any good hosting company should set up the redirect for you if you ask them. Once set up, it will dramatically improve your search engine visibility.
We suggest using Google Webmaster Tools which provides you with free detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google, search query stats and you can also set your preferred URL within the system.
To check if you already have it set up you can simply type in your web address without the w’s and when you reach your website your browser will display the w’s if the 301 redirect has been set up.
Or you could use Pear Analytics, a great online SEO analysis tool, simply type in your domain name to get an instant, in-depth analysis of your website and where your ranking problems could be.
Check out www.pearanalytics.com