301 Redirect And Nofollow Links

[allen2]

Hello, I started a Wordpress blog not too long ago and I'm having some trouble with both of these subjects.

I've seen so many guides that all say different things.

As I understand it, I should move the files on my site from http://mydomain.com to http://www.mydomain.com for SEO puporses? Would I have to move all the links there? Right now my site is at http://mydomain.com and I've used it for linking quite a bit, so should I set up a 301 redirect or just keep it like it is? How exactly should I do it?

With the nofollow issue, I see a lot of sites tell you how to remove your nofollow links with plugins and stuff, but I don't quite understand how to add nofollow links in. Pretty much everyone says that Wordpress is set up to automatically make links (specifically comments) nofollow, but mine wasn't set up like that for some reason (maybe because I used GoDaddy to install it?) and I don't want all the comments to be dofollow links like they are now. Is there any code I can insert to make the comment links nofollow?

I'd really appreciate help on either of these.

Edited February 26, 2009 by allen2

[Falcon1986]

As I understand it, I should move the files on my site from http://mydomain.com to http://www.mydomain.com for SEO puporses? Would I have to move all the links there? Right now my site is at http://mydomain.com and I've used it for linking quite a bit, so should I set up a 301 redirect or just keep it like it is? How exactly should I do it?

The reason that many SEO articles recommend using either non-www or www is usually because they are considering that http://mydomain.com can be interpreted as being completely different from http://www.mydomain.com from a search engine's perspective. Stick to one convention and use it in all the links you provide. Since you have been using http://mydomain.com for quite some time now, you should not try to change anything now. What you can do for those visitors who come to your website via http://www.mydomain.com is to use a permanent 301 redirect to the non-www version. That way, things remain consistent with your non-www.

A permanent 301 redirect from the www version to the non-www version can be done by some .htaccess statements. Ensure that this is the .htaccess file that resides in the root web directory. Replace 'mydomain' and '.com' with your domain name's details.

RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.mydomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

With the nofollow issue, I see a lot of sites tell you how to remove your nofollow links with plugins and stuff, but I don't quite understand how to add nofollow links in. Pretty much everyone says that Wordpress is set up to automatically make links (specifically comments) nofollow, but mine wasn't set up like that for some reason (maybe because I used GoDaddy to install it?) and I don't want all the comments to be dofollow links like they are now. Is there any code I can insert to make the comment links nofollow?

This has nothing to do with your web hosting provider. For what you are talking about I use the WordPress Tweaks plugin and the Platinum SEO plugin. These plugins will also help you with a host of other SEO tweaks. Although nofollow/noindex/etc. can be set for general things through the plugin's "Settings" panel, these options are also added to individual posts/pages so you can have more control.

[allen2]

Thanks for the help with these. Everything's cool now. Turns out the second issue was all caused by my theme making the link that the commenter leaves dofollow. I updated the theme and they're nofollow now. Thank you for the help again.