WWW or non-WWW: pick a single address for your site

Your site works with and without www? Pick one main address and avoid inconsistent redirects.

Should you use WWW?

Both setups are valid: https://example.com and https://www.example.com. What matters is to pick one main version and redirect the other one to it. Choosing one over the other does not, by itself, give a guaranteed SEO advantage.

If both versions serve the same page without a redirect, they multiply the reachable addresses and blur the signals sent to search engines. If one points elsewhere or does not work, visitors get inconsistent results.

Pick the main address

1. Look at the addresses already used in navigation, emails, the sitemap and Google Search Console.
2. Pick a permanent address, for example https://example.com.
3. Confirm that both DNS names and their HTTPS certificates work.
4. Set up a single permanent redirect from the other name to the chosen address, keeping the path and parameters.
5. Align internal links, the sitemap and canonical tags with the final address.

Cloudflare: non-WWW example

In Rules → Redirect Rules, create a rule targeting www.example.com:

• Condition: (http.host eq "www.example.com")
• Dynamic target: concat("https://example.com", http.request.uri.path)
• Status code: 301
• Preserve query string: on.

This rule sends the www variant to the main domain. If http://example.com must also move to HTTPS, a single condition that also covers HTTP avoids two hops. If Always Use HTTPS is on, http://www will often go through https://www first: see the HTTP to HTTPS guide to do it all in a single redirect.

Note: Cloudflare rules only apply to proxied hostnames. If the site runs on a Worker, it may be better to handle this redirect in the Worker.

Apache and LiteSpeed

In a compatible .htaccess file, to redirect the www version to the non-www version:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

On its own, this rule does not handle http://example.com: combine the rules consistently to get a single hop from every variant. With OpenLiteSpeed, confirm that .htaccess rules are supported and enabled.

Nginx

In the server blocks that receive requests for www.example.com, return the main address directly:

return 301 https://example.com$request_uri;

Over HTTPS, the www server block must present a valid certificate before it can send the redirect.

What about subdomains?

forum.example.com is a separate site or service: it usually does not need a www.forum.example.com version. That is why Redirect Audit tests only HTTP and HTTPS for subdomains, and all four variants for main domains.

Final check

Test your domain in Redirect Audit: the variants should all reach the same HTTPS address. Also test an inner page, so you do not accidentally redirect all content to the home page.

These examples are a starting point: adapt them to your setup and test them before applying them to a live site.