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
-
Advice on estate agent website SEO next steps
Hi everyone, I have been working on the SEO for this website for a while now and have had a good amount of success increasing the traffic and rankings. However our main hurdle is improving conversions on the actual website - we want to encourage more people to book a valuation. Does anybody have any suggestions on how we can improve this? The website is www.richardkendall.co.uk Thank you
Web Design | | sophiecrosby970 -
SEO strategy for UK / US websites
Hi, We currently have a UK-focused site on www.palmatin.com ; We're now targeting the North American market as well, but the contents of the site need to be different from UK. One option was to create another domain for the NA market but I assume it would be easier to rank with palmatin.com though. What would you suggest to do, if a company is targeting two different countries in the same language? thanks, jaan
Web Design | | JaanMSonberg0 -
Can external links in a menu attract a penalty?
We have some instances of external links (i.e. pointing to another domain) in site menus. Although there are legitimate reasons (e.g. linking to a news archive kept on a separate domain) I understand this can be considered bad from a usability perspective. This begs the question - is this bad for SEO? With the recent panda changes we've seen certain issues which were previously "only" about usability attract SEO penalties, but I can't find any references to this example. Anyone have thoughts / experience?
Web Design | | SOS_Children0 -
From Google Sites to Wordpress - Anyone Ventured this SEO terrain?
We have a few sites in Google Sites - and they are ugly! We have a majority (40+) of websites in Wordpress. But we have a few websites just stuck on Google Sites, and since Google won't let you fully edit the HTML, add scripts, or implement any technology since 2000, we want to move. The sad problem - the Google sites are ranking well. We rank well in Manhattan, Atlanta, Dallas, and Philadelphia. The problem is - the sites do not give much room for growth - and the bounce rate is high because they are so ugly. Has Anyone moved from Google sites to Wordpress? Should we just stay with Google and bite the ugly bullet? My fear is that these sites will not allow for growth. It is hard to update them and even harder to make them look nice. To get a sample - beware: www.counselingphiladelphia.com Even another reason to leave: The slider is non-semantic and terrible SEO. Google won't allow a slider script with tags and a hrefs, so the only way to implement a slider is through a Google Docs Presentation that keeps sliding. I know - terrible SEO (#donthate) but we needed something. Any advice and thoughts would help! Thanks Mozzers!
Web Design | | _Thriveworks0 -
Does redesigning a website affects SEO results
We have a website and we are getting good traffic to it. Its a travel related domain registered many years back. Now its ranking high for most of the potential keywords even if it is not at all SEO friendly (Domain is an exact match keyword). We are planning to redesign it. Will that affect the SEO Ranking? We need to ask some more doubts: 1. When redesigning we are planning to change the inner page URL. So it it wise to redirect (301) old URL to the new URL? Old url will not be there after redesigning. But its currently having page ranks. 2. Can we redirect more than one old url to a single new page? 3. Google new updates said "they will be going to diminish the exact match results domains". Does that updates affects us? 4. Any more suggestions for the redesigning?
Web Design | | jjv0 -
International SEO issues for multiple sites
We currently have 3 websites: oursite.co.uk oursite.fr oursite.ch We also own Oursite.com, and that URL currently redirects to Oursite.fr. We are considering a complete site redesign and a possible merge of the 3 sites. Assumptions: ** the 3 sites currently receive organic search traffic to varying degrees
Web Design | | darkgreenguy
** Oursite.ch is almost identical to Oursite.fr in terms of the site content
** Our target market is NOT the USA for English-language searches. It is the UK. With a re-design, we see our options as follows: Merge the 3 sites and make Oursite.com the "main site" and then have subfolders as follows: /uk /fr /ch Keep the 3 sites as they are. We see Option 1 as the best in terms of saving time when updating the site, and saving money paid to the site developers (1 site vs 3 sites). We see Option 2 as the best in terms of ability of the site to rank, as well as confidence of searchers when seeing our site in the search results (in other words, a person searching in France would be more likely to buy and/or submit a form on our site if they saw Oursite.fr vs Oursite.com/fr). I guess we're looking for some suggestions/guidance here. Are we missing any big issues? Does anyone have experience with an issue such as this? Thank you in advance...
-Shawn0 -
Implementing a new Nav Bar: Best practice, SEO benefit, your suggestions?
Hi Mozland, We are going to have a new Nav Bar for our site built from the horror that we currently have to up with. We want to make it a simple affair, similar to The Guardian two-tier Nav Bar - main menu which will drop down to the 2nd tier according to what you clicked on in tier one. Regular stuff, I think. Any suggestions, from your experience, about how best to implement this, what to include, what not to do, what can be included and done to make it as best it can be to get people to peruse our site as easily as possible? Thanks
Web Design | | Martin_S0 -
SEO Considerations for a Platform Change
We are getting ready to move our e-commerce platform from Zencart to Magento as the original Zencart framework is pretty dated. while I'm excited to move to a more modern platform, I'm terrified at the potential SEO risk involved with doing so given that all URLs will likely be different and we're considering updating many product listings. Almost all of the site's traffic is organic, so maintaining rankings is extremely important. I'd love any advice, but especially that related to: Best way to redirect all new URLs sitewide The prudence of heavily editing product listings at the same time of redirecting the URL (i.e. updating product descriptions) Site structure: Should I strive to keep the new site link structure as similar to the old as possible? Resources or guides on transitioning a site from a SEO perspective Other major facets I'm missing I appreciate any help or sights you can offer! Thank you....
Web Design | | AndrewY0