SEO linking structures: www.barelyevil.com vs barelyevil.com
 

For SEO, I have noticed that some people set their domains to redirect to not having the www. For example, if someone linked to http://www.barelyevil.com/aff/, it would redirect to http://barelyevil.com/aff/. They also encourage people to link without the www. Google linkback listings seem unimpacted by this, but some seem sensitive to whether or not the www is in there.

Is it better for SEO to link with or without the www? Is it better for SEO to make one version of the URL redirect to the other?

www. will also have a different PR than the url without www.

You can set your .htaccess file to set a permanent redirection for either with or without the www, your choice. I recommend every webmaster does this for PR reasons.

Type in yahoo.com, and it will add the www. This is how I set up my sites. It doesn't matter if someone links to my site with or without the www, the .htaccess settings redirect to www.sitename.com and Google counts it as such.

What is the best string to use in .htaccess for that?

#Redirect if url has no www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^devilspost\.com
RewriteRule .* http://www.devilspost.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

the haha123 part is one of these } only fliped around / the opening tag

thais is what at the bottom of my .htaccess

in google's eyes doesn't matter