Domain structure: WWW subdomain
The use of www is optional (from an SEO point of view, there’s no fundamental difference between using www.mydomain.com or using mydomain.com). However, it’s absolutely crucial that the "unused" versions redirect to the active version. Thus, if a website choses to use URLs without www, https://www.domain.com/folder1/page1 must redirect in 301 to https://domain.com/folder1/page1, in order to capture all the SEO traffic. Vice and versa.
The redirects must be 301 redirects (and not 302 redirects for example).
How to check them yourself:
Directly on the browser: by entering the URL which is “unused”, to check that you are redirected to the active URL.
Using tools or extensions, such as "redirect path" to confirm that it’s indeed a 301 redirect.
Don’t hesitate to also check, taking into account the versions in HTTP, HTTPS, ".com", ".fr", etc., and any additional version available.
Let’s suppose that a website is "https://mywebsite.com", here are the combinations we need to look for:
From "http://mywebsite.com" to https://mywebsite.com
etc, the more versions we have, the more combinations we’re going to generate!
And there you go! Now you know everything about the WWW’s management and the basic redirects expected on a website!
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