Canonicalization of index.html - please help
-
I've read up on the subject but am new at this so I thought I would just put forth a simple question. We want our home page to be referred to as www.domain.com. We want the search engines to find and return this URl in search results. But the page has to have a name and the actual name is NOT to www.domain.com/index.html. This, I believe is what can cause duplicate cotnent issues (not really duplicate but perceived by the serach engines as duplicate content). Is it best to insert http://www.domain.com/" /> in the HEAD section of the index.html page or am I totally misunderstanding this concept?
-
When you do your 301 redirects as outlined by John don't forget to 301 redirect your non-www URL version to your www URL version (or visa-versa).
Here is an example of all the URLs that could be on your website.
http://www.domain.com
http://www.domain.com/index.html
http://domain.com
http://domain.com/index.html -
Hi Tag,
As John is suggesting, you could do a straight 301 but the problem is this will lead to an infinite loop and a page error. Your best bet is to use the technique here:http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/redirect-index-blog-root.html to avoid that. Happy hunting.
Hope this helps.
-
Yes, this does create a duplicate content issue. The best solution is to have /index.html 301 redirect to /. However, the canonical as you outlined above should also to fix the issue if you don't have access to your server configuration for redirects.
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
-
Why add .html to WordPress pages?
A site I may take over has a plugin that adds .html to the pages. I searched online but I’ve only found how to add it rather than why to add it. Is it needed? If I remove it, I’ll have to be careful with SEO / indexed pages and redirects. The site is running 3.x.x and 90% of the plugins have not been updated in over 5 years including this one. Before I update to 4.7.x, I am trying to understand the landscape (pros / cons) on why something could be used and if I need to find a suitable replacement for it.
Technical SEO | | acktivate2 -
Site not getting indexed by googlebot.
The following question is in regards to http://footeschool.org/. This site is not getting indexed with google(googlebot) This only happens when the user agent is set googlebot. This is a recent issue. We are using DNN as CMS. Are there any suggestion to help resolve this issue?
Technical SEO | | bcmull0 -
Having Problems to Index all URLs on Sitemap
Hi all again ! Thanks in advance ! My client's site is having problems to index all its pages. I even bought the full extension of XML Sitemaps and the number of urls increased, but we still have problems to index all of them. What are the reasons? The robots.txt is open for all robots, we only prohibit users and spiders to enter our Intranet. I've read that duplicate content and 404's can be the reason. Anything else?
Technical SEO | | Tintanus0 -
Need Help On Proper Steps to Take To De-Index Our Search Results Pages
So, I have finally decided to remove our Search Results pages from Google. This is a big dealio, but our traffic has consistently been declining since 2012 and it's the only thing I can think of. So, the reason they got indexed is back in 2012, we put linked tags on our product pages, but they linked to our search results pages. So, over time we had hundreds of thousands of search results pages indexed. By tag pages I mean: Keywords: Kittens, Doggies, Monkeys, Dog-Monkeys, Kitten-Doggies Each of these would be linked to our search results pages, i.e. http://oursite.com/Search.html?text=Kitten-Doggies So, I really think these pages being indexed are causing much of our traffic problems as there are many more Search Pages indexed than actual product pages. So, my question is... Should I go ahead and remove the links/tags on the product pages first? OR... If I remove those, will Google then not be able to re-crawl all of the search results pages that it has indexed? Or, if those links are gone will it notice that they are gone, and therefore remove the search results pages they were previously pointing to? So, Should I remove the links/tags from the product page (or at least decrease them down to the top 8 or so) as well as add the no-follow no-index to all the Search Results pages at the same time? OR, should I first no-index, no-follow ALL the search results pages and leave those tags on the product pages there to give Google a chance to go back and follow those tags to all of the Search Results pages so that it can get to all of those Search Results pages in order to noindex,. no follow them? Otherwise will Google not be able find these pages? Can someone comment on what might be the best, safest, or fastest route? Thanks so much for any help you might offer me!! Craig So, I wanted to see if you have a suggestion on the best way to handle it? Should I remove the links/tags from the product page (or at least decrease them down to the top 8 or so) as well as add the no-follow no-index to all the Search Results pages at the same time? OR, should I first no-index, no-follow ALL the search results pages and leave those tags on the product pages there to give Google a chance to go back and follow those tags to all of the Search Results pages so that it can get to all of those Search Results pages in order to noindex,. no follow them? Otherwise will Google not be able find these pages? Can you tell me which would be the best, fastest and safest routes?
Technical SEO | | TheCraig0 -
No google traffic for this site? Help?
Hi We have not done this web site http://climateacs.co.uk but have now picked it up and its getting no traffic what so ever from google do you think its been blacklisted? I have added it to my webmaster tools and there are no manual actions on it and most of the backlinks on google webmaster tools are from yell.com. However when I run it on opensiteexplorer I am seeing some chinese type links?? It is not really showing many search queries at all when you view them in webmaster tools under United Kingdom. I was going to start citation building for the address to help support the google places entry but just wanted to see what other peoples opinion was really on this site? Thanks Tracy
Technical SEO | | dashesndots0 -
Index inactive mobile site?
Hi, I have a question wrt Mobile version of a site. Previously, we had a mobile site which is no longer active and there are possibilities of resurrecting it in future, so we have a 302 redirect which points to the homepage (desktop version). Currently, the mobile site is indexed by the search engines. To avoid the duplicate content issue, is it recommended to use robots.txt and block the spiders from mobile content or apply 301 redirect until the mobile site is up and running, OR continue with the 302 redirect. Any suggestions will be helpful. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | RaksG0 -
Does Having Links on this blog Hurt or Help?
Hello, I created a wordpress blog a while back, http://plastic-bins.com/ If you go into one of the pages on the blog (for example: http://plastic-bins.com/plastic-shelf-bins/ ) you will notice a link after the text/content telling you where you can purchase the stuff that is talked about on that page. There is one link back to the e-commerce site on every category page on the blog. Does anyone know if these links will help me or hurt me in terms of ranking in the SERPS? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Wrong page version in the index
Hi, my site is currently accessible through URL with and without www. The Version with www has 10 times more Backlinks (PA 45 vs 38) but is not listet into the google Index. As far as I know there was never made a google Webmaster account or declared otherwise the version without www to be 'cannonical'. Basically I think that for SEO reasons it would be much better to declare the with www version to be cannonical and redirect the without www version to it. My questions are: Do you have an idea why the with www version is not indexed?
Technical SEO | | Naturalmente
How long does Google usually take to change the version in the index?
Do I risk my site to be thrown out of the index for some days untill the change is made? Thanks in advance.0