Debate: The Necessity of the 301

On my personal blog, I have a little section called “David’s Dilemma.” I thought I’d bring my dilemma to the SEO.com blog. It’s a pretty simple concept, I ask a question, and you leave an awesome comment. Remember this only works if you leave a comment.

photo by Marco Bellucci on Flickr

Back Story

Last week, I wrote a post about quick and easy ways to see if a page was optimized. My second point was about checking for the 301 redirects of the non-www version of the site. It’s simple and in most cases it is one of the first things that an SEO would do to optimize a site, right? However, I was a little surprised about some of the comments I got: “The 301 redirect from the non-www to the www is actually not necessary in most cases these days.”

Now I know the engines are getting smarter and don’t need the 301s in place. But really, are we not even recommending it anymore? Hence the dilemma:

The Debate

Are 301 redirects of the non-www version of the site needed, or still considered best practice? If not, what do you recommend?

Different Idea

One of the commenter’s gave this idea:

“We are working in a linking environment where 301’s have been noted to pass no anchor text and possibly less link juice than believed. If you take this into account, you might see that automatically 301ing www/non-www URLs could reduce a site’s link juice over time.”

Instead, they recommend leaving out the 301s and implement the canonicals.

Let the Debate Begin

Ok, so now is the time for you to respond, and leave your mark on history . Next week, I’ll mull over all that you have to say, and give my fully educated opinion on the subject.

Thanks in advance,
David