My www version has better metrics than the non-www, so I'm preferring it in search console now. What else do I need to do?

Question

I am working on a website which was originally registered in Google Search Console as http://example.com/. After a few months I noticed that the http://www.example.com/ has higher domain authority (DA) and page authority (PA) than the non-www form of the same website.

So I made the www version (http://www.example.com/) as preferred in the Google search console. Now pages are indexed well in the google with www version.

I want some suggestions regarding the 301 redirect that i am going to make from the non-www to the www version (http://www.example.com/) of the website. (The www version property is not added in the search console.)

• Should I add the www version property separately in search console and Google Analytics?
• Will there be any backlinking and other issues?
• What are the possible SEO consequences after I make 301 redirect?

Answer 1

You should use a 301-Redirect, which is a server response that claims google that this site just moved to another domain and isn't just temporarily unavailable or something.

On top of that you should use the "canonical url" meta tag for google, to consolidate duplicate pages/content.

Here you can find more about that: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en