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 resolve Duplicate Page Content issue for root domain & index.html?
-
SEOMoz returns a Duplicate Page Content error for a website's index page, with both domain.com and domain.com/index.html isted seperately. We had a rewrite in the htacess file, but for some reason this has not had an impact and we have since removed it. What's the best way (in an HTML website) to ensure all index.html links are automatically redirected to the root domain and these aren't seen as two separate pages?
-
great code Josh...but , after i saved it on .htaccess , a "?" appeared on the link..
http://www.domain.com/?/example/file.html
Is this ok ? pls advice/
Thank you,
-
You touched on a good point here "We set up our site to utilize a index redirect for all of our sub directories as well, so with this method you simply name your sub directories to match the url path that you desire. Each sub directory has it's own index which you redirect with a variation of the above code. By doing this you can have nice clean url paths like http://www.semclix.com/design/ecommerce/ - and mitigate the duplicate content issue. We hope that this helps."
Too often I see sites where they get the home page right but miss the re-write on the directories.
-
Here's the .htaccess rewrite command that you can use for the index.html redirect -
Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine on
Index Rewrite RewriteRule ^index.(htm|html|php) http://www.amarasoftware.com/ [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^(.*)/index.(htm|html|php) http://www.amarasoftware.com/$1/ [R=301,L]
We set up our site to utilize a index redirect for all of our sub directories as well, so with this method you simply name your sub directories to match the url path that you desire. Each sub directory has it's own index which you redirect with a variation of the above code. By doing this you can have nice clean url paths like http://www.semclix.com/design/ecommerce/ - and mitigate the duplicate content issue. We hope that this helps.
-
I'd check it with some other software too... i.e. Raven Tools free trial or something, that will tell you if there's canonicalization problems... of course I'm not advocating Raven Tools over SEOmoz tools (I'm a member here and not there for good reasons), I just think best to try a few different tests before deciding if it's a problem. There might just be an issue with the SEOmoz campaign tool for the moment, which I'm sure they'll fix as soon as they realise.
Hey, aren't you the tutor I had in my SEC usability course?
-
Unfortunately I can't speak for how SEOmoz handles rewrites like this if it's already crawled the page.
The rewrite rule you're using looks like it's only rewriting the www portion of the URL, not index.html. So alone it wouldn't do anything to solve dupe content issues. (someone please correct me if I'm misreading the rewrite rule)
Here's a link to what I used to write a redirect for index.html on another site.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum92/6375.htm
I think it is a fairly safe assumption to make that SEOmoz is smart enough to realize if you're got a redirect in there (providing that its working). I'd still recommend taking a look to see if Google has cached or indexed an index.html version, though.
Edit: my personal, highly technical, acid-test for an index.html redirect is just going there and manually entering the url with index.html on the end, rather than waiting for a recrawl to see if you're heading in the right direction.
-
RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([a-z.]+)?amarasoftware.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC] RewriteRule .? http://www.%1amarasoftware.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] Is what I use. In Seomoz this leads to www.amarasoftware.com and index.html so 2 different URL's, both with different incoming links, and a different authority, which has an impact on my ranking if correct. in SEomoz this a returns a duplicate title and meta tags errors. If SEOmoz finds 2 pages instead of one I may assume that Google agrees with this.
-
As you did, I'd normally handle this with a 301 from index.html to the root domain. When you say that it's "not had an impact" do you mean that the SEOmoz dashboard continues to show an error after it re-crawls, or that the search engines are not picking up the redirect?
SEOmoz dashboard does a great job, but I'd check to see how the search engines are actually indexing yourdomain.com/index.html vs. yourdomain.com also. If the search engines are indexing it as you want them to, then I'd be inclined to ignore the dashboard error.
I apologize if this is a stupid question, but I assume you manually checked that the redirect worked?
-
You wish to canonicalize the pages. That is the SEO word which describes exactly what you are trying to achieve.
Above are 5 URLs which can possibly lead to the exact same page. If you add the following HTML in the code then the pages will be canonicalized.
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
-
Same content, different languages. Duplicate content issue? | international SEO
Hi, If the "content" is the same, but is written in different languages, will Google see the articles as duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chalet
If google won't see it as duplicate content. What is the profit of implementing the alternate lang tag?Kind regards,Jeroen0 -
Category Pages & Content
Hi Does anyone have any great examples of an ecommerce site which has great content on category pages or product listing pages? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Substantial difference between Number of Indexed Pages and Sitemap Pages
Hey there, I am doing a website audit at the moment. I've notices substantial differences in the number of pages indexed (search console), the number of pages in the sitemap and the number I am getting when I crawl the page with screamingfrog (see below). Would those discrepancies concern you? The website and its rankings seems fine otherwise. Total indexed: 2,360 (Search Consule)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Online-Marketing-Guy
About 2,920 results (Google search "site:example.com")
Sitemap: 1,229 URLs
Screemingfrog Spider: 1,352 URLs Cheers,
Jochen0 -
Ecommerce Site - Duplicate product descriptions & SKU pages
Hi I have a couple of questions regarding the best way to optimise SKU pages on a large ecommerce site. At the moment we have 2 landing pages per product - one is the primary landing page with no SKU, the other includes the SKU in the URL so our sales people & customers can find it when using the search facility on the site. The SKU landing page has a canonical pointing to the primary page as they're duplicates. Is this the best way? Or is it better to have the one page with the SKU in the URL? Also, we have loads of products with the very similar product descriptions, I am working on trying to include a unique paragraph or few sentences on these to improve the content - how dangerous is the duplicate content within your own site? I know its best to have totally unique content, but it won't be possible on a site with thousands of products and a small team. At the moment I am trying to prioritise the products to update. Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Duplicate Content From Indexing of non- File Extension Page
Google somehow has indexed a page of mine without the .html extension. so they indexed www.samplepage.com/page, so I am showing duplicate content because Google also see's www.samplepage.com/page.html How can I force google or bing or whoever to only index and see the page including the .html extension? I know people are saying not to use the file extension on pages, but I want to, so please anybody...HELP!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebbyNabler0 -
Copying my Facebook content to website considered duplicate content?
I write career advice on Facebook on a daily basis. On my homepage users can see the most recent 4-5 feeds (using FB social media plugin). I am thinking to create a page on my website where visitors can see all my previous FB feeds. Would this be considered duplicate content if I copy paste the info, but if I use a Facebook social media plugin then it is not considered duplicate content? I am working on increasing content on my website and feel incorporating FB feeds would make sense. thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
How to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content
I've attempted to follow advice from the Q&A section. Currently on the site www.cherrycreekspine.com, I've edited the .htaccess file to help with 301s - all pages redirect to www.cherrycreekspine.com. Secondly, I'd added the canonical statement in the header of the web pages. I have cut the Duplicate Page Content in half ... now I have a remaining 40 pages to fix up. This is my practice site to try and understand what SEOmoz can do for me. I've looked at some of your videos on Youtube ... I feel like I'm scrambling around to the Q&A and the internet to understand this product. I'm reading the beginners guide.... any other resources would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deskstudio0 -
301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?
Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi0