301 Directs and seo

[Bindi]

Here i am back again with another question . I was just scanned website with a website analyzer tool and it says there is duplicate content in the http:// and the http://www. versions and says this is bad because it could be classed as two different websites and may cause search engine to lower rank if they find the same content on two urls and suggested setting up a permanent http 301 direct ? Would this be because of the mobile pages ? If so how do i correct ? I did try google webmasters in the site settings but it says i have to verify the http version ? the website has been published under a www. version .Our website has been dropping position in google search since changing to Xara yet none of the competitors pages ever move . Is anyone here good with seo maybe i am doing something wrong here ? I am lost, can anyone help? Thank you.

[Bindi]

NB Other information on internet says you don't need 301 or canonical tags on mobiles that are responsive ? is this the case with Xara software ? Confused ?

[Cloud]

Xara webdesigner uses variants, therefore each time you add a variant you are in effect repeating all the content. True responsive sites have just one set of content and the elements are responsive to the browser window size, variants however use fixed widths and fixed content and serves the appropriate variant to the site visitor based on their browser window's size. Also you will be best to use webmaster tools to resubmit the sitemap and to add the new urls to the crawler, even if the page titles are the same xara uses the suffix .htm whereas others use .html this is something to be aware of.

[Egg Bramhill]

Bindi. As well as what Cloud suggest re Webmaster Tools, set the desired url in your .htacces file. EXAMPLE

Xara webdesigner uses variants, therefore each time you add a variant you are in effect repeating all the content.

Is this correct Cloud? The content is the same for each variant, just how it's laid out within the browser is the difference.

[Bindi]

Hi cloud and egg bramhill, sorry I am new to trying to understand this , when I published site I did publish as .html as I changed over from serif , does this make a difference ? Can you give dummies instructions on how to set the desired URLs in the.htaccess file ( webmaster tool is new to me as well... I only recently started using this ) . However I also received a reply from xara as well which I have copied here in case other uses have the same question
(No, the way the adaptive/ responsive Xara works, if you make 2 or more variants in Xara, but they are published as 1 html page. Then depending on what width the browser window / device is, some content is set to hide, whilst other content is set to be visible.).
I am assuming as I published with .html extension all is ok , just set the .htacess file ? Thanks for your help . Bindi

[Egg Bramhill]

.... when I published site I did publish as .html as I changed over from serif , does this make a difference ?

Shouldn't make any difference at all. However check your site on Filezilla (or similar) and ensure you haven't also uploaded as index.htm as well, as this would be seen as two different sites.

.... instructions on how to set the desired URLs in the.htaccess file

Did you view the link I gave in my earlier post?

[Egg Bramhill]

If you use Filezilla, you can find the .htaccess file. Right Click and choose View/Edit. This opens the file on your local computer. Insert:

#Force www:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

BUT CHANGE THE EXAMPLE.COM to your own websites url

Save & Close the file & Filezilla will ask you if you want save it on the server. Click Yes.

I suggest you retain a copy of your .htaccess file before doing the above just in case something goes amiss,

[Bindi]

Hi Egg Bramhill , so off i went to filezilla and i could not locate the .htaccess file , even after i clicked server hidden file ? Anywhere else it could be hidden ? If i dont change the .htaccess file what affect does it have ?Your link is gone , i am interested into looking into further . Bindi

[Egg Bramhill]

Okay Bindi, .htaccess files aren't compulsory so maybe one doesn't reside on your root directory.

They're easy to create. SEE HERE

CLICK FOR MY EARLIER LINK

[Cloud]

However I also received a reply from xara as well which I have copied here in case other uses have the same question
(No, the way the adaptive/ responsive Xara works, if you make 2 or more variants in Xara, but they are published as 1 html page. Then depending on what width the browser window / device is, some content is set to hide, whilst other content is set to be visible.).

I remembered (it seems incorrectly) that a separate html file was produced for each variant, good to see I was mistaken.