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.
How to force a trailing slash after the domain name
-
My campaign analysis is predictably listing domain.com and domain.com/ as repeated content. I've searched and searched but cannot find a way to force a trailing slash on the end of the domain name unless there's a file or directory after it..
Is there a way to accomplish this using .htaccess
-
I've gone with this .htaccess from your soulgorithm.com:
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.)/$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule (.)/$ $1.php [L]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule .* %{REQUEST_FILENAME}/ [R=301,L]and I'm now getting the results I'm after. I'm getting similar behaviour to you in Firefox and IE, which explains a lot. I really appreciate the length you've gone to to help me here, so big thank you!
-
Test Site: soulgorithm.com
In the .htaccess file for this site:
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.soulgorithm.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://soulgorithm.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.)/$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
RewriteRule (.)/$ $1.html [L]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.)/$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule (.)/$ $1.php [L]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule .* %{REQUEST_FILENAME}/ [R=301,L]Which has the following effect:
soulgorithm.com > soulgorithm.com/
(slash is added, but only shows in IE and looks
likes its being stripped by Firefox but page
still loads fine)
soulgorithm.com/ > soulgorithm.com/
(loads fine, but only shows in IE and lookslikes its being stripped by Firefox but page
still loads fine)
soulgorithm.com/test > soulgorithm.com/test/
(loads fine, slash even shows in FF)
soulgorithm.com/test/ > soulgorithm.com.com/test/
(loads fine)
soulgorithm.com/testdir > soulgorithm.com/testdir/
(loads fine, slash even shows in FF)
soulgorithm.com/testdir/ > soulgorithm.com.com/testdir/
(loads fine, slash even shows in FF)
Let me know if this is what you see. I feel likes its getting close to working.
-
Thanks for sticking with this. Rather than me share the domain, do you know of any example sites using your code (or similar) which add a trailing slash after the domain name? I'd like to rule out my browser stripping it out.
-
Man, my mind is blown right now. I'm not giving up and hopefully someone else can chime in on this discussion and shed some light on this issue.
The code provided should have worked. Let me look into it some more. Also, if you don't mind what is the actual domain name?
-
That's right - nothing in there but the code you supplied.
-
Is this the only thing you have in your htaccess file?
if not, I would remove everything in the file and only have what i posted above, and let me know if it works.
-
Nope. Still no trailing slashes being added.
-
Try just the following:
Let me know if this works for you.
RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !index.php RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1/ [L,R=301]
-
Thanks for the reply, but this looks like all the other examples I've found. My .htaccess file looks like this :
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L,QSA]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$
RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://domain.co.uk/$1/ [L,R=301]But I get the following redirects going on:
domain.co.uk > domain.co.uk (ie nothing happens)
domain.co.uk/ > domain.co.uk (ie slash is removed)
domain.co.uk/page2 > domain.co.uk/page2 (ie nothing happens, but page loads)
domain.co.uk/page2/ > Internal server error
Any ideas?
-
Hi Clive.
Yes, you can easily do this with an .htaccess file, here is the code:
RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1/ [L,R=301]
Just replace "domain.com" with your proper url for your site. This should be all that is needed.
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
What should I name my Wordpress homepage?
I work almost exclusively in wordpress now. And I always hesitate when it comes to naming a site's homepage. I have to give it a name - right? I usually pick the business name or /home. And then that is identifies as the site's static homepage in the Wordpress settings and it works just fine. But I've started to get warning that it is an issue because it creates redirects. For example, I just ran the Ryte service analysis on a website and it warned me about "Non-indexable pages with high relevance" and it's basically my homepage that has 29 incoming links that "passes all pagerank to https://ourdomain/home But what am I supposed to call my homepage if not "Home"? It's not like the old days where anyone has to type it in. The root domain loads the homepage just as it should. Can anybody advise me regarding best practices for what to name a Wordpress homepage for good SEO? With thanks in advance for your help.
Technical SEO | Sep 18, 2020, 12:15 AM | Dandelion0 -
Trailing slash URLs and canonical links
Hi, I've seen a fair amount of topics speaking about the difference between domain names ending with or without trailing slashes, the impact on crawlers and how it behaves with canonical links.
Technical SEO | Feb 6, 2019, 8:09 AM | GhillC
However, it sticks to domain names only.
What about subfolders and pages then? How does it behaves with those? Say I've a site structured like this:
https://www.domain.com
https://www.domain.com/page1 And for each of my pages, I've an automatic canonical link ending with a slash.
Eg. rel="canonical" href="https://www.domain.com/page1/" /> for the above page. SEM Rush flags this as a canonical error. But is it exactly?
Are all my canonical links wrong because of that slash? And as subsidiary question, both domain.com/page1 and domain.com/page1/ are accessible. Is it this a mistake or it doesn't make any difference (I've read that those are considered different pages)? Thanks!
G0 -
Canonical homepage link uses trailing slash while default homepage uses no trailing slash, will this be an issue?
Hello, 1st off, let me explain my client in this case uses BigCommerce, and I don't have access to the backend like most other situations. So I have to rely on BG to handle certain issues. I'm curious if there is much of a difference using domain.com/ as the canonical url while BG currently is redirecting our domain to domain.com. I've been using domain.com/ consistently for the last 6 months, and since we switches stores on Friday, this issue has popped up and has me a bit worried that we'll loose somehow via link juice or overall indexing since this could confuse crawlers. Now some say that the domain url is fine using / or not, as per - https://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-and-rel-canonical But I also wanted to see what you all felt about this. What says you?
Technical SEO | Mar 8, 2016, 8:35 PM | Deacyde0 -
Help: domain name change and Google News
Hi. I work for a regional news source, and our (separate) Spanish-language news publication recently changed its domain name. The publication lost its Google News inclusion. Most of their traffic came from Google News, so traffic tanked. They're trying to get back in. They reapplied but didn't get approved. They're now in the 30-day waiting period to reapply again. The website is run by a third-party company, which handled the domain name change in April (2015). That company has been running their site for a couple of years. Our in-house devs' hands are tied on helping, because we (at the mother company) don't manage their site. This third party has not been responsive. The Spanish pub folks have reached out to me to help them prepare for Round 2 of reapplication. I'm the mothership in-house SEO, but I've never experienced this situation before. Because everything seems to be in order besides the ham-handed changes, my best advice to them so far is: You'll have to wait until Google gets to know you again, unfortunately. Does that sound right? Any pointers out there for bringing their best possible A-game to the next round?
Technical SEO | Jun 16, 2015, 6:13 PM | christyrobinson1 -
Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?
Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | Jul 25, 2013, 6:54 PM | inlinear
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
Holger0 -
Localized domains and duplicate content
Hey guys, In my company we are launching a new website and there's an issue it's been bothering me for a while. I'm sure you guys can help me out. I already have a website, let's say ABC.com I'm preparing a localized version of that website for the uk so we'll launch ABC.co.uk Basically the websites are going to be exactly the same with the difference of the homepage. They have a slightly different proposition. Using GeoIP I will redirect the UK traffic to ABC.co.uk and the rest of the traffic will still visit .com website. May google penalize this? The site itself it will be almost the same but the homepage. This may count as duplicate content even if I'm geo-targeting different regions so they will never overlap. Thanks in advance for you advice
Technical SEO | Feb 16, 2013, 4:42 PM | fabrizzio0 -
Domains
My questions is what to do with old domains we own from a past business. Is it advantages to direct them to the new domain/company or is that going to cause a problem for the new company. They are not in the same industry.
Technical SEO | Jun 17, 2012, 12:31 AM | KeylimeSocial0 -
Domain authority and keyword difficulty
I know there are too many variables for a certain answer, however do people take their domain authority into account when using keyword difficulty tool? I have a new domain which only has a score of seven at the moment. When using the keyword searching tool what is the maximum difficulty level keywords people would target initially? Obviously I would seek to increase the difficulty of the words over time but to start off its a hard choice between keywords which can be ranked for in a reasonable period of time and the keywords which are getting enough traffic to make the effort worthwhile.
Technical SEO | Apr 4, 2012, 7:37 AM | Grumpy_Carl0