Duplicate content problem from an index.php file

[ocelot]

Hi

One of my sites is flagging a duplicate content problem which is affecting the search rankings.

The duplicate problem is caused by http://www.mydomain.com/index.php which has a page rank of 26

How can I sort the duplicate content problem, as the main page should just be

http://www.mydomain.com which has a page rank of 42 and is the stronger page with stronger links etc

Many Thanks

[ocelot]

Hi Steven

On the index.php file I have included

http://www.mydomain.com />

Is this correct?

[StevenMapes]

Yes just use the canonical tag on the index.php file to reference the page as the domain, that'll be the easiest way.

Using an actual redirect could cause you to spiral into a loop

[ocelot]

Thanks Malcolm

Can it be done using the canonical URL tag or another means rather than the .htaccess file?

I have access to the .htaccess but I am unsure of what I would need to add in there to solve my problem?

[MoosaHemani]

Its simple…

Redirect 301 http://www.mydomain.com/index.php to http://www.mydomain.com and all your link juice value and traffic will move to the index page you want and duplicate content issues will be resolved!

Hope this helps!

[MalcolmGibb]

You need to add a redirect preferably in the .htaccess file so that index.php automatically redirects to the root. This should fix the problem as Google will currently see www.yourdomain.com/index.php and www.yourdomain.com/ and www.yourdomain.com asa 3 separate pages thus why your page authority is different. Google will also think they are duplicate content which is obviously bad!

This fix will work if mod_rewrite is enabled, but is usually enabled on most apache servers. http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/redirect-index-blog-root.html