Is there SEO penalties for having .htm homepage?
-
In the past, I have had very good SEO rankings but have recently slipped. I am trying everything I can. Only my home page has domain/index.htm while all other pages have .html suffixes. I have been reluctant to change the home page worrying that it could further hurt my SEO.
QUESTION
Does it even matter? If so, will changing home page to .html have any adverse effects for SEO?
-
Don't change a URL just because it is htm instead of html.
That change will have ZERO positive impact. ZERO.
-
IMHO, page extensions doesn't matter for ranking (the spiders are more concerned on what is on the page). However, there are positive aspects on being consistent.
Changing the page to .html and having the proper redirect will most likely yield no change. However, there is discussion on a dampening effect, but I don't think anyone really knows (except G's engineers). Great article on it.
-
Changeing any url to any other url without a proper 301 on the old url can have adverse effects, as old links then go to 404 pages. I wouldn't expect however there to be a gain or loss for that inconsistancy in your url structure, save in people linking to .html by mistake.
Also as a slightly less SEO related note, for best ux, try getting rid of the .filetypes entirely, and in the homepages case rid of the index too. This mostly helps with the homepage, reducing the odds of needing a 301 for the link to reach you correctly.
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
-
Has anyone ever tested to see if having an ads.txt file provided any SEO lift?
I know that the ads.txt system is designed to prevent ad fraud and technically has nothing to do with search. That said, the presence of such a file would seem to be an indicator of overall site quality because it would show that a site owner wants to participate in a fraud-free system. Has anyone ever tested that? If so, they don't seem to have published their results. Maybe it's a secret weapon that some pros are using and not sharing?
Web Design | | scodtt0 -
SEO Tips for Affiliate Website
Hi all , I would just like to have an expert Opinion on SEO for Affiliate Website . Basically if I list all Third party products (Amazon/Affilate Window etc ) on my website and then the customer will be redirected to the Affiliates website to make a Purchase will there be an issue with SEO (Lots of Outgoing Url's) and Will the website not rank for Important keywords or will it be hit by any penalty ? I heard it's not good for SEO , any work around this ? If this is case How come cashback Sites rank well with no issues , although the concept is basically the same ? Any Tips or Advice appreciated as how to get this done safe . My Preferred Option would be with Magento Shopping Cart or second option would be with Wordpress Cart only in case this provides some SEO benefits over Magento by some plugins .
Web Design | | Aus0070 -
SEO Audit for site redesign
I'm in the process of preparing my company's ecommerce site for a redesign - largely to move to a responsive design and improve issues with UI and some much-needed features. This is a very small ecommerce business (Less than $300K annually), and we have settled on Magento Community Edition for our platform. We understand it to be very "SEO" friendly, and its similar to our current platform - it gives us a lot of flexibility in design, and it appears scalable. While I am aware of our current sites shortcomings (from an SEO standpoint), I was wondering if I should employ an SEO person/company to do a pre/post redesign audit. I looked at the MOZ checklist, and ran my site through Hubspot and WooRanks free tools, and am aware of what they are reporting as SEO items to be fixed. As I am so small, I was wondering if an SEO audit in addition to what I already know might be overkill? Any thoughts/suggestions are welcome.
Web Design | | Artfx1 -
SEO and Squarespace? Is this Really an Option?
Hi all, Any feedback on Squarespace, SEO capabilites and ranking factors? I have a client wishing to use the platform and despite the good reviews, which appear to be from resellers by the way, the forums say not. Although apparently Rand Fishkin, SEOMoz (yes right here!) gave them a big thumbs up “The square space team have put together a remarkable platform, SEO friendliness! Really not sure here and don’t agree, there are many limitations and hosting with a template provider is always big no no. Cheers
Web Design | | VirginiaC
Virginia0 -
How does a Responsive Site kill SEO?
How does a Responsive Site poentially kill SEO? I've seen a few feeds on twitter how a website took a rankings dive after implementing a Responsive theme; yet, it's not clear to me what is actually going on within a Responsive site that would cause the SEO rank to tank? I can only speculate that it introduces a bunch of 404 errors, or that it changes all of the URLs into gibberish, so you loose all of the links coming into your website if not 301'ed? Can someone clarify, what are the actual mechanical issues on a Responsive website that becomes a concern to SEO? Thanks.
Web Design | | ExploreConsulting1 -
Best layout pages for SEO
Dear all, what would be the ideal layout of a webpage for SEO? How would a homepage and landingspage look like? Thanks in advance! Best regards, Ben
Web Design | | HMK-NL0 -
I've set up my own site which is still fairly new but I'm a bit concerned that there is a bloackage SEO wise somewhere because when I try to crawl the site on SEOmoz it only crawls one page.
I'm really baffled and none of my research has shed much light on it. My url is www.emporiumofmanliness.co.uk I'd really appreciate any help! Thanks
Web Design | | JoshED0 -
SEO to Drive Leads
Dear friends, I have clients asking for SEO to drive leads. I have no experience on it, how could I do that? Is there any web layout I can suggest to my client? Another question is how do I implemented the layout on the web structure? I usually structuring my website based on keywords. For example: Homepage niche: plumbing Category: london plumbing, plumbing service, etc Content: Finding London plumbing service in your area, what kind of plumbing service you should pay attention? So, based on these layout, my SEO efforts goes to the content, instead of the homepage. Now, the question is how do I increase conversion with these strategy? Is placing a form above the fold would be wise, then place the content below it. Please advice 🙂 Thanks for your kind support, Albertus
Web Design | | toeplly0