Should I get inbound links to my site as:

http://www.mysite.com
http://mysite.com
www.mysite.com

I'm inclined to go for the first, but am not sure.

I assume consistency is the key, but what do you guys do?

Consistency is the key.

It's really six of one, half dozen of the other as long as you keep them straight. Mind you, with what Google (among others) has done in terms of canonical issues that way, it's almost a non-issue.

My own personal preference is to use www.mysite.com because I find it easier to read. But it's really up to you.

The first has become the accepted norm, but you're right, consistency is the key.

Cheers guys.

I'll probably stick to the first two as much as possible

Side note... Well done Chris I just gave you your third TP bubble!

i have set up an .htacess file to 301 people from www.domain.com to domain.com.
But as long as all your backlinks point to the same place it shouldn't be a problem, i third the "consistency" thing.

Yeah, I did a similar with my old site. Sounds like a plan.

Can't remember the code - d'you mind posting it? Thanks!

PS: It's telling me I'm not allowed to give TP to st0x or Adam - you'll have to wait a while lol.

it doesn't matter, but stick to one. don't promote all 3 as google sees them as 3 different sites

See this very informative site for 301 redirects. I've just implemented it and it's working like a charm.

I thoroughly recommend this:

There's been much talk lately of canonical issues and search engines. This is where both the www and non-www versions of your pages are listed in a search engine. This is said to possibly trigger a duplicate content penalty. If this is of concern to you, you may wish to use the following, but be aware that you may suffer a further loss of traffic while the engines sort out what's what. This example is where you wish to direct all non-www traffic to www:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [L,R=301]

... and sticking by no. 1, from what I've learnt in the last 5 minutes

This should do it.
you''l hhave to change the domain name accordingly

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.tell-your-friends\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://tell-your-friends.com/$1 [R=301,L]

edit: I see ya found it

fine 301 redirect

I use http://www.
But once you choose a certain way then stick with it...

1 and 3 are the same thing. Personally, this is the one I would use. 2 just doesn't look right to me, but it is a personal preference.

2 looks ugly yes.. but when you have to type in an url manually, it's a lot faster (i never type in www. then)