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  4. Linking to root domain or index page

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Linking to root domain or index page

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  • ArtiKalra
    ArtiKalra last edited by Apr 21, 2012, 2:51 AM

    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.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Cyrus-Shepard
      Cyrus-Shepard last edited by Apr 24, 2012, 10:01 PM Apr 24, 2012, 10:01 PM

      Hi Arti,

      Generally, you want to link to your root domain. Many common website templates link to home as /index.html, but that really hasn't been necessary for years.

      The easiest way to fix this would be to add a canonical tag in your homepage, which is the /index.html file. It would go in the section and look like this:

      After you add this, when you look at your source code for your homepage, you should see this tag in there from whatever address you reached the page from.

      There's a lot of information on duplicate content out there, and a lot of different ways to fix the same problem. Here's a good overview of the subject:

      http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world

      Best of luck with your SEO.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • BedeFahey
        BedeFahey @Guan last edited by Apr 23, 2012, 10:39 AM Apr 23, 2012, 10:38 AM

        To me, that's not what your 404 page is for. I wouldn't recommend doing it. What happens if they typo something, or hit a bad link some other way? There's no message to tell them what happened and it creates a confusing user experience.

        Better, in my opinion, to redirect the file individually

        Arti, there's a good article on SEOmoz about redirects. Down the bottom, there are some how-to guides on how to do things like 301's. Just be careful of infinite loops if you're using apache.

        http://www.seomoz.org/blog/url-rewrites-and-301-redirects-how-does-it-all-work

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • ArtiKalra
          ArtiKalra @Anthony_NorthSEO last edited by Apr 22, 2012, 2:22 AM Apr 22, 2012, 2:22 AM

          Hi Anthony, Thanks for your reply. Does that mean that I should actually remove index.html from my website. Also please help me for 301 redirect. Rgds Arti

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Guan
            Guan last edited by Apr 21, 2012, 9:21 AM Apr 21, 2012, 9:21 AM

            If you have wordpress you can add

            <code>php
            header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: ".get_bloginfo('url'));  exit();  ?></code>
            

            <code>to your 404 page.</code>

            BedeFahey 1 Reply Last reply Apr 23, 2012, 10:38 AM Reply Quote 0
            • Anthony_NorthSEO
              Anthony_NorthSEO last edited by Apr 21, 2012, 3:33 AM Apr 21, 2012, 3:33 AM

              Hi Arti,

              You'll just need to create a 301 redirect from www.yoursite.com/index.html to www. yoursite.com. This will permanently eliminate the /index.html version (which is a duplicate page) and fix the duplicate content error.

              After that, build links to www.yoursite.com.

              Hope this help. If you need more info on how to do the 301 redirect just let me know.

              ArtiKalra 1 Reply Last reply Apr 22, 2012, 2:22 AM Reply Quote 1
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