undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Link Building
  4. Should I 301 Redirect The index.html Page?

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Should I 301 Redirect The index.html Page?

Link Building
3
3
1.3k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • umtmedia
    umtmedia last edited by Nov 10, 2011, 4:07 PM

    Hello,

    As an experiment I am trying to work with an SBI site but am noticing index.html is being forced on me as the homepage.

    As I understand it's good practice to 301 redirect the index.html page to the to the actual home page. Can someone please confirm that I am right in thinking this?

    Here is an example:

    http://www.anguilla-beaches.com/index.html
    http://www.anguilla-beaches.com/

    According to yahoo 773 links are pointing to the index.html page and 771 links are pointing to the / page.

    I'm sure Google knows that these are the same pages and does not consider them as duplicate but surely the index.html page should be redirected right? am I going mad here?

    Now if we look at this site:

    http://www.jugglenow.com the homepage has 198 links according to yahoo
    http://www.jugglenow.com/index.html this page also has 198 links? now I am confused, are these 2 the same page?

    On this page:

    http://www.jugglenow.com/juggling-balls.html notice how there is no link to the actual homepage but there is a link to the index.html page.

    Am I missing something here because I can't figure it out, surely there should be just 1 homepage without a index.html page.

    Any help would be appreciated

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • RyanKent
      RyanKent last edited by Nov 10, 2011, 5:36 PM Nov 10, 2011, 5:02 PM

      The most important factor is to ensure only one URL is available for each page. You should not present the same page through both the /index.html and / URLs. Pick one.

      My strong preference is to use the simple / URL as "index.html" does not offer any value to users nor search engines. It just makes the URL longer and more cluttered.

      I'm sure Google knows that these are the same pages and does not consider them as duplicate ...

      Not true. On your site you may choose to offer the same content via /index.html and /, but another site could choose to present completely different content on those pages. You are offering two unique URLs, your content is duplicated and that can cause multiple issues. Duplicate content is an issue and a division of your links is another issue.

      The simple fix is to design your site from the beginning to only offer a / page and not a index.html page. If you have an existing site where this is an issue, use the 301 redirect to fix the problem.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • AlanMosley
        AlanMosley last edited by Nov 10, 2011, 5:36 PM Nov 10, 2011, 5:00 PM

        Go ahead nad 301, SE see it as a canonical as index,html is not always the default page. make sure you dont have any internal links point t the .html, of you will leak link juice though the 301 un-necessary.

        doing a 301 should consolidate you link juice.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • 1 / 1
        1 out of 3
        • First post
          1/3
          Last post

        Got a burning SEO question?

        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


        Start my free trial


        Browse Questions

        Explore more categories

        • Moz Tools

          Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

        • SEO Tactics

          Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

        • Community

          Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

        • Digital Marketing

          Chat about tactics outside of SEO

        • Research & Trends

          Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

        • Support

          Connect on product support and feature requests.

        • See all categories

        Related Questions

        • seogod123234

          Why MOZ just index some of the links?

          crawl indexing

          hello everyone i've been using moz pro for a while and found a lot of backlink oppertunites as checking my competitor's backlink profile.
          i'm doing the same way as my competitors but moz does not see and index lots of them, maybe just index 10% of them. though my backlinks are commenly from sites with +80 and +90 DA like Github, Pinterest, Tripadvisor and .... and the strange point is that 10% are almost from EDU sites with high DA. i go to EDU sites and place a comment and in lots of case, MOZ index them in just 2-3 days!! with maybe just 10 links like this, my DA is incresead from 15 to 19 in less than one month! so, how does this "SEO TOOL" work?? is there anyway to force it to crawl a page?

          Link Building | May 20, 2024, 3:33 PM | seogod123234
          0
        • Sodimaccl

          Parent pages : Duplicate content

          Hello, I think this question relates to "Parent pages" structure or SILO but I couldn't find an answer online. For a website that sell products, for example "Appliances". A link to this page appears in 1 category of the menu named "kitchen" but also in another 1 category named "household appliances". It means that it appears twice in the menu but with a unique URL. Would that affect SEO ? Is it duplicate content ? And would it be better to choose 1 father or let it that way ? Thanks for your help. Max

          Link Building | Oct 8, 2019, 9:47 AM | Sodimaccl
          1
        • mmohammadi125

          Does no-indexed page has an impact on bounce rate

          my question is: I have a page that contains some external links, I know when visitors click on them and leave my site it hurts my bounce rate, But I have a solution for that, I am using external link redirection code, with this code after users clicking on external links they are not leaving my site and first went to some link like this: "http://mysite.com/redirect/https://externalsite.com/" and after 10 seconds they redirect to the external site, I make this redirect page noindex and nofollow. but the question is does this noindex page can decrease my page bounce rate because users don't leave my site and first go to another page of my site. but I don't know does no-indexed page has an impact on bounce rate or my struggle is worthless

          Link Building | Dec 13, 2017, 9:49 AM | mmohammadi125
          0
        • ArtiKalra

          Linking to root domain or index page

          While link building, should I link to index page of my website i.e www.mydomainname.com/index.html or should I link to root domain i.e www.mydomainname,com Also I see duplicate title error for index page and root domain in error statistic. How can I get rid of this.

          Link Building | Apr 24, 2012, 10:01 PM | ArtiKalra
          0
        • ProjectLabs

          Value of Link Redirect from Google News

          Some sites are linking to us with the URL from Google News instead of using a direct link. For example: "http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=ghjgjhggjhgkjghjg&url=http://www.oursite.com/awesome-news-010123/" Does this pass the same value as a normal link? I asked the publisher to replace the link with a normal link but they pushed back saying that the news URL is better.

          Link Building | Mar 27, 2012, 6:48 PM | ProjectLabs
          0
        • MariaPerrone

          Why is my Page Rank 0.

          Hi, I am trying to understand why my Page Rank is 0. Many forums say that it is because my site has been blocked by google. Any help with this would be much appreciated. http://davincidrivers.com

          Link Building | Feb 6, 2012, 5:58 PM | MariaPerrone
          0
        • idv

          Site stuck on 2nd page on Google - how can it improve?

          Hi I am working on a site http://www.harrisbassett.co.uk that for search terms such as 'Chartered Accountants Swansea' appears near the top of the 2nd page of Google. When looking at what is listed on the 1st page for 'Chartered Accountants Swansea' I would appreciate any advice/guidance on what else could be done to give the site a final push to get on the 1st page of search results. Over the past 2 weeks I have been building inbound links from local citation sites yelp, qype etc along with sites from competitor analysis via opensiteexplorer. Looking at the sites that are on the 1st page I cant understand why many of them are ranking higher than me? Any insight and plan of attack would be most appreciated from any  search experts on the forum. Many Thanks

          Link Building | Oct 11, 2011, 5:04 PM | idv
          0
        • hfranz

          Are backlinks to a domain that redirects useless?

          I am working on trying to get backlinks. We are currently redirecting a few Domains to our current domain name. One of the Domains that is redirecting is the main Domain, we will be advertising in the near future. Can I send backlinks to the redirected URL or does it only carry link juice if it is to the main Domain?

          Link Building | Jun 3, 2011, 6:02 PM | hfranz
          0

        Get started with Moz Pro!

        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

        Start my free trial
        Products
        • Moz Pro
        • Moz Local
        • Moz API
        • Moz Data
        • STAT
        • Product Updates
        Moz Solutions
        • SMB Solutions
        • Agency Solutions
        • Enterprise Solutions
        Free SEO Tools
        • Domain Authority Checker
        • Link Explorer
        • Keyword Explorer
        • Competitive Research
        • Brand Authority Checker
        • Local Citation Checker
        • MozBar Extension
        • MozCast
        Resources
        • Blog
        • SEO Learning Center
        • Help Hub
        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
        • How-to Guides
        • Moz Academy
        • API Docs
        About Moz
        • About
        • Team
        • Careers
        • Contact
        Why Moz
        • Case Studies
        • Testimonials
        Get Involved
        • Become an Affiliate
        • MozCon
        • Webinars
        • Practical Marketer Series
        • MozPod
        Connect with us

        Contact the Help team

        Join our newsletter
        Moz logo
        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
        • Accessibility
        • Terms of Use
        • Privacy

        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.