When setting up a website, there is a technical decision that often goes unnoticed but can cost you dearly: is your public URL www.yourdomain.com or simply yourdomain.com?
Both can work, but they are not equivalent. And if you do not have a proper redirect configured, you are effectively publishing the same website at two different addresses. This creates SEO, cookie and performance problems that are easy to avoid once you know what to do.
1. What is the root domain and what is the www subdomain?
The root domain (also called the apex domain or naked domain) is the address with no prefix: yourdomain.com.
The www subdomain is technically a subdomain of the above: www.yourdomain.com.
Although it may look like just a decorative prefix, at the technical level these are two distinct things within the DNS system.
2. Why www is the recommended canonical option
There are three solid technical reasons:
A. DNS flexibility (the CNAME record)
To point a website to an external provider (such as Vercel, Netlify or a CDN), a CNAME record is used in DNS. The problem is that the root domain cannot use a CNAME by definition of the DNS protocol — it can only use an A record (a fixed IP address).
This means that if your site is hosted with a cloud provider where IPs change dynamically, the root domain has real limitations. The www subdomain does not have this problem: it can point via CNAME without restrictions.
B. Cookies and security
Cookies are set per domain. If part of your traffic arrives at yourdomain.com and another part at www.yourdomain.com, session, analytics or authentication cookies may not be shared correctly between the two versions. This can break features such as shopping carts, logins or conversion tracking.
C. Duplicate content in SEO
If Google can access your site at yourdomain.com and also at www.yourdomain.com, it indexes them as two separate sites. This splits your domain authority, can penalise your rankings and creates confusion during crawling. You need one of the two to permanently redirect (301) to the other, and to declare which one is canonical.
3. The best practice: www as the main URL with a redirect from the root
The correct setup is:
- Canonical URL: www.yourdomain.com - The root domain (yourdomain.com) redirects with a 301 to www.yourdomain.com - In Google Search Console: declare www.yourdomain.com as the main property
This way, any user or search engine arriving at yourdomain.com will automatically land on www.yourdomain.com, and all SEO authority is consolidated in a single URL.
4. How to configure it in GoDaddy
If your domain is registered with GoDaddy, follow these steps:
Step 1 — Access DNS management Log in to your GoDaddy account → My Products → next to your domain, click DNS or Manage DNS.
Step 2 — Configure the A record for the root domain Find the A record with name @ (which represents the root domain). Point it to your hosting provider's IP or redirect server. If you are using Vercel, add 76.76.21.21.
Step 3 — Configure the CNAME record for www Add or edit a CNAME record with name www pointing to your provider's destination (for example, cname.vercel-dns.com for Vercel).
Step 4 — Activate the redirect from root domain to www In the same DNS section, find the Forwarding or Domain Redirect option. Set up a permanent redirect (301) from yourdomain.com to https://www.yourdomain.com. Enable subdirectory forwarding if the option is available.
Step 5 — Verify in Google Search Console Add https://www.yourdomain.com as your main property. This confirms to Google which is your official canonical URL.
5. How Marte handles this
At Marte we configure the www subdomain as the canonical URL by default for all websites we publish. The redirect from the root domain is activated automatically during the deployment process, and SSL certificates cover both www and the root.
If you have a domain at GoDaddy and want us to connect it, we just need your login credentials to complete the DNS configuration in under 10 minutes.
Conclusion
Using www as your main URL is not a matter of aesthetic preference — it is a technical best practice with real impact on SEO, cookies and compatibility with cloud providers. The configuration is straightforward and, once done, requires no maintenance.
If you have any doubts about how your domain is configured, get in touch and we will review it together.