How do i redirect www.domain.com/ to www.domain.com/index.php
-
I keep getting in my analytics www.domain.com/ and www.domain.com/index.php how do i make it consistently redirect to one version and not to both.
I know about htaccess redirect and am already using this so am puzzle to which is the best one to use.
below is the example .htaccess file im using.
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.co.uk [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.co.uk/index.php$1 [r=301,nc]which is better for SEO should i forward to www.domain.com/ or www.domain.com/index.php
-
I'd actually do it the other way - redirect "index.php" to the root ("/") version - Google seems to prefer that and many of your inbound links will be to the root domain (people naturally default to it). Make sure your internal links point to that ("/") as well. See this post that expands on that and gives some .htaccess examples:
http://www.searchmasters.co.nz/articles/78/redirecting-indexphp-to-root-using-htaccess/
You can add the canonical tag to help sweep up the problem, but I think it's best to have a solid 301-redirect in place here, especially if both versions are showing up in analytics.
-
use the rel="canonical" tag I believe http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
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
-
Google only indexing the top 2/3 of my page?
HI, I have a page that is about 5000 lines of code total. I was having difficulty figuring out why the addition of a lot of targeted, quality content to the bottom of the pages was not helping with rankings. Then, when fetching as Google, I noticed that only about 3300 lines were getting indexed for some reason. So naturally, that content wasn't going to have any effect if Google in not seeing it. Has anyone seen this before? Thoughts on what may be happening? I'm not seeing any errors begin thrown by the page....and I'm not aware of a limit of lines of code Google will crawl. Pages load under 5 seconds so loading speed shouldn't be the issue. Thanks, Kevin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yandl1 -
Which is better /section/ or section/index.php?
I have noticed that Google has started to simply link to /section/ as opposed to /section/index.php and I haven't changed any canonical tags etc. I have looked at my pages moz authority for the two /section/ = 28/100
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TimHolmes
/section/index.php = 42/100 How would I go about transferring the authority to /section/ from /section/index.php to hopefully help me in my organic serp positions etc. Any insight would be great 🐵0 -
Redirecting non www site
Hello Ladies and Gentlemen. I 100% agree with the redirecting of the non www domain name. After all we see so many times, especially in MOZ how the two different domains contain different links, different DA and of course different PA. So I have posed the question to our IT company, "How would we go about redirecting our non www domain to the www version?", "Where would we do that?", " we cant do the redirect on our webserver because the website is listed as an IP address, not a domain name, so would we do the redirect somewhere at GoDaddy?" who is currently maintain our DNS record So here is the response from IT: " I would setup a CNAME record in DNS (GoDaddy), such that no matter if you go to the bare domain, or the www, you end up in the same place. As for SEO, having a 301 redirect for your bare domain isn't necessary, because both the bare domain and the www are the same domain. 301 is a redirect for "permanently moved" and is common when you change domain names. Using the bare domain or the www are NOT DIFFERENT DOMAINS, so the 301 would not be accurate, and you'd be telling engines you've moved, when you haven't - which may negatively impact your rank. It sounds to me that IT is NOT recommending the redirect. How can this be? Or are we talking about two different things? Will the redirect cause the melt down as the IT company suggests? Or do they nut understand SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davenport-Tractor0 -
Primary Domain or Redirect?
We are starting a new travel guide for a resort town. I have bought an expired domain with decent related links and PR (which seems to have survived the transfer (4 months ago). Beofre we launch the new site I am trying to decide if we should use this expired domain as the primary URL for the new site or just do a permanent redirect and buy a new domain that better matches the theme of the site. I am obviously concerned with starting from scatch with a new domain. I am confident we can build some good rellevant links in a short time but this space is very competetive. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Locals0 -
Sub Domain or New Domain?
Hi All, We have a client that has a business with three different services. 2 of these services compliment each other in a really obvious way, but the 3rd, while related is not such a obvious complimentary service. For this reason, service 3 kind of weakens the content of the website SEO wise for the two main services. Also, internally at the business it is run by an entirely different team so it feels culturally somewhat different. So, the client wants to pull all the content about service 3 and put it on a different website. Which would you chose as a domain for this new site: service3.existingdomain.co.uk or www.service3+brandname.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoisyLittleMonkey0 -
Few questions regarding wordpress and indexing/no follow.
I'm using Yoast's Wordpress SEO plugin on my wordpress site which allows you to quickly set up nofollow / no index on specific taxonomies. I wanted to see what you guys thought was the best practice in setting up my various taxonomies. Would you noidex, but follow all of these, none of these, or just some of these: Categories, tags, media, author archives ( (My blog is mainly a single author blog (me) but my wife does sometimes write posts. So I didn't know how this effected everything. Also I could simply make the blog a single user blog and just have her posts be guest posts, but I'd rather leave her as a user.), and date archives. The example I read on line only no-index's the date archives. Just curious what you guys thought. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoahsDad0 -
Merging several domains into one, a redirection question
Hi, We have a client who recently acquired a bunch of domains in all kinds of niches, each domain has a WordPress site on it, with content and backlinks. Clients wants to "merge" all these domains into categories in his "main website", moving content and "moving" backlinks as well. The syntax we came up with is the following: (sample domains of course)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MandLoys
potatomixers.com will be updated with .htaccess 301 redirect:
Redirect 301 /fastpotatomixer.htm http://www.mainwebsite.com/home-appliances/fastpotatomixer 1.) I'm not sure about the domain's root though. Where would I redirect potatomixers.com, to mainwebsite.com/home-appliances? Won't that be a problem that the new one is a "larger" category that has other posts as well, not only potatomixers? 2.) If this gets into the .htaccess (with several other lines for the other content as well of course), won't the first line "override" all the other ones? Redirect 301 / http://www.mainwebsite.com/home-appliances/
Redirect 301 /fastpotatomixer.htm http://www.mainwebsite.com/home-appliances/fastpotatomixer
Redirect 301 /easypotatomixer.htm http://www.mainwebsite.com/home-appliances/easypotatomixer etc. Thanks!0 -
Query / Discussion on Subdomain and Root domain passing authority etc
I've seen Rands video on subdomains and best pratices at
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James77
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-microsite-mistake
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites I have a question/theory though and it is related to an issue I am having. We have built our website, and now we are looking at adding 3rd party forums and blogs etc (all part of one CMS). The problem is these need to to be on a seperate subdomain to work correctly (I won't go into the specific IT details but this is what I have been advised by my IT guru's). So I can have something like:
http://cms.mysite.com/forum/ Obviously after reading Rands post and other stuff this is far from ideal. However I have another Idea - run the CMS from root and the main website from the www. subdomain. EG
www.mysite.com
mysite.com/blog Now my theory is that because so many website (possibly the majority - especially smaller sites) don't use 301 redirects between root and www. that search engines may make an exception in this case and treat them both as the same domain, so it could possibly be a way of getting round the issue. This is just a theory of mine, based solely on my thoughts that there are so many websites out there that don't 301 root to www. or vice versa, that possibly it would be in the SE's self interest to make an exception and count these as one domain, not 2. What are your thoughts on this and has there been any tests done to see if this is the case or not? Thanks0