Adding .html To Wordpress Site
-
I am working on a team (my part is the SEO) where the developer added the .html extension to the permalinks. I don't understand why, on Wordpress, you would do this.
Is there any benefit, or penalty for it as an SEO standpoint?
I usually just set mine up %postname% as the permalink structure, but I am not the web design lead on this project.
I asked the designer why, but he seems to be reluctant to answer any of my emails about his work, (like he is above that or something).
Not wanting to make things worse, I dropped it and thought I would ask here since I saw a few posts in reference to it today in the forum.
Is there an advantage or disadvantage (either way) to using the .html extension on a Wordpress site?
-
There is no advanage, but there is disadvanatges.
There s the fact that now you have a 301 redirect to the new url. every 301 redirecte leaks link juice.
there is also the conversion factor, where you really want clear clean data, haveing the .html makes things look that little bit messy.
Most people rewite the other way for this reason, to get rid of the extentions.
Try uising the old url, does it work?
I dont use wopprdpress of develop in php, but php being a server side technology, the webserver will need to know that the page is php. So i assume what the dev has done is rewite the urls, so when .html is used, it rewrites to a url that the web server can understand. When you do a rewite you need to do a 301 redirect from the old url to the new url so that you dont get duplicate contnet, you can not have both redering the same content. UYou also need to change every internal link on the site so that they link directly to the new url, you dont want your internal links going thougth a 301 as they leak link juice, leaking link juice on internal links that you have full control over is an un-necessary waste.
See http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/friendly-urls-using-url-rewrites-with-iis
This is for Microsoft IIS serrver, but the concept is the same
-
My guess is either developer preference or lack of knowledge. Joomla is the same way. You can have domain.com/about or domain.com/about.html - both accomplish the same thing, one takes an extra step to do (adding the .HTML suffix.)
I guess if you are coming off of an old static HTML site and moving to a CMS, including the .html would allow you to keep the same URL structures much easier than setting up 100s of redirects.
-
Then I guess I would ask why? Why would you setup a wordpress (new installation) blog to have .html extension? You have to go out of your way, as the default is to not have it.
Just old school? If there is no benefit, I just wonder why I guess.... but not that it matters much.
-
Nope, either should be fine. The biggest thing to remember is if you change any URL structure, setup 301 redirects to go from the page's old URL to the new URL.
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
-
Site-wide Links
Hey y'all, I know this question has been asked many times before but I wanted to see what your stance was on this particular case. The organisation I work for is a group of 12 companies - each with its own website. On some of the sites we have a link to the other sites within the group on every single page of that site. Our organic search traffic has dropped a bit but not significantly and we haven't received any manual penalties from Google. It's also worth mentioning that the referral traffic for these sites from the other sites I control is quite good and the bounce rate is extremely low. If you were in my shoes would you remove the links, put a nofollow tag on the links or leave the links as they are? Thanks guys 🙂
Technical SEO | | AAttias0 -
GWT and html improvements
Hi all I am dealing with duplicate content issues on webmaster tool but I still don't understand what's happening as the number of issues keeps changing. Last week the duplicate meta description were 232, then went down to 170 now they are back to 218. Same story for duplicate meta title, 110, then 70 now 114. These ups and downs have been going on for a while and in the past two weeks I stopped changing things to see what would have happened. Also the issues reported on GWT are different from the ones shown in the Crawl Diagnostic on Moz. Furthermore, most URL's have been changed (more than a year ago) and 301 redirects have been implemented but Google doesn't seem to recognize them. Could anyone help me with this? Also can you suggest a tool to check redirects? Cheers Oscar
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Redirects in site map
I have a site with the ace/sef ( creates friendly URLS) in a large data base site. It creates a site map dynamically. Yet I realize one issue which I am trying to think through. I recently changed my urls to include an ID number example: homepage/houses/1134-big-blue-house The prior url was: homepage/houses/big-blue-house the original url above redirects to the new one with the ID like I want. However the site map has both URLS in it which go to same page I am not sure but it seems rather stupid to have the new URL and OLD redirected URL in the site map. Yet beside stupid I am wondering if this is duplicate content and will cause a penalty from the google bot. What is your opinion ?
Technical SEO | | aimiyo0 -
How is this site doing this?
http://www.meccabingo.com It shows a splash / promotion page yet you check the cache and it's the real homepage, they are doing this so they don't lose rankings but how are they redirecting users to that but Google is caching the real homepage? is it friendly? thanks!!
Technical SEO | | AdiRste0 -
Google Custom Site Search
I am an admin on a google custom site search account. I am also the owner of a verified webmaster tools account for the same site. The Custom Search control panel will not let me add URL's or a Site map for on demand indexing, but says "you must submit a sitemap of your own verified sites". Has anyone else has this issue? Does the Owner of the custom search account have to be the owner of the webmaster account, or can the logged in admin be? Thanks
Technical SEO | | SEMPassion0 -
Canonical Issues with Wordpress
Hi all, I have just started using Wordpress SEO by Yoast and still having a hard time correcting my Canonical issues for all posts with a .html at the end. The pluggin allows you to add a '/' to the end for canonical issues, but just for pages, not posts. How best in Wordpress to make my post change from .html/ to .html. I really don't want to go to the hassle to make each URL a new 301 redirect in my .htaccess. I hate the .html, but if they are going to stay, how can I make sure I get the .html/ link juice back to them. Many thanks!
Technical SEO | | RunningInTheRain0 -
Is there any value to a home page URL adding the /index.html ?
For proper SEO, which version would you prefer? A. www.abccompany.com B. www.abccompany.com/index.html Is there any value or difference with either home page URL??
Technical SEO | | theideapeople0 -
How do I set up a site review for a password protected site?
We need to conduct a SEO analysis for a website that is on a private, password protected development site -- is there anyway for SEOMoz tools to access and analyze a PW protected site? Thank you, Sara Merten
Technical SEO | | kev110