Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?

    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.

    Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?

    Technical SEO
    3
    4
    1872
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • inlinear
      inlinear last edited by

      Dear all,

      starting with my .htaccess file:

      RewriteEngine On
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
      RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L]

      RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html 
      RewriteRule ^(.
      )index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L]

      1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
      2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/"

      My questions are:

      A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php"

      B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right?

      C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**"

      Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ?

      Thanks for all replies! 🙂
      Holger

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • CleverPhD
        CleverPhD @inlinear last edited by

        I think you have it correct there.  I always like to end in a slash for index pages

        http://inlinear.com/ - this is your home index page

        http://inlinear.com/products/ - this is your index page for the /products/ folder/group

        http://inlinear.com/products/page.php - this is a page within the /products/folder/group.

        Hardly anyone ever sets up index web pages like index.php or index.htm anymore, they are really not needed as they just make the URL longer. End in the slash and make sure that you are consistent with ending with that slash (vs dropping it off) when you link to your index pages.

        You would need to test the script you mention that rewrites the URL.  It looks like it is making sure that the index page ends in a slash, but I could be wrong.

        Side story -  I have had a CMS that uses  http://inlinear.com/products as the index page for  http://inlinear.com/products/ and this creates all kinds of issues

        1. Most people are used to not having an index page and the URL simply ending in a slash.  So even if you had a non slashed version as your index page, people would link to the slash and then you have to setup 301s to fix that.  Otherwise you end up with all kinds of duplicate page issues.

        2. I know Google Analytics looks at the slashes to group your content into reports.

        So the example index page of  http://inlinear.com/products

        would NOT be included in reports with all the pages in the /products/ group

        e.g. http://inlinear.com/products/page.php

        http://inlinear.com/products/anotherpage.php

        as /products is not "within" /products/  You then have a report on /products/ that leaves out the index page and this is normally your most important page!

        Good luck!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • inlinear
          inlinear @rhutchings last edited by

          Thank you, but in practice how does it work without file-extension?

          As I understood its fine if I put the following link to link on my homepage-index:

          http://inlinear.com/     <--- without anything...

          As well when I link to the products page:

          http://inlinear.com/products/ <--- again without anything (index.php)

          But in case of a specific page for example in the products-folder:

          http://inlinear.com/products/my-product-1.php     <--- how can I live without extension?

          I googled and found this .htaccess code. Seems it takes away .php and ads a "/"... is this the best practice?:

          Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews

          Turn mod_rewrite on

          RewriteEngine On
          RewriteBase /

          Adding a trailing slash

          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$
          RewriteRule . %{REQUEST_URI}/ [L,R=301]

          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
          RewriteRule ^(.*?)/?$ /$1.php [L]

          Is this what you mean?

          CleverPhD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • rhutchings
            rhutchings last edited by

            Best practice for all three cases is to never use the file extensions.  You should never link to the file extension names, and make sure in your htaccess file that you dont use the file extensions for any reason moving forward.  Why?

            1. Lets say you decide to re-do your site and it goes from PHP to another language like ASP or something.  You would have to redirect your entire site with file extensions and would shoot yourself in the foot with SEO, traffic and anything else.  By not using file extensions, you give yourself the flexibility down the road and you can maintain a constant url structure.

            2. Indexing may or may not use the file extensions depending on your htaccess/server settings.  You would then essentially be running into duplicate content pages and issues, and thereby negatively affecting your site.  Plus, it will dilute your individual page authority.

            As a side note, just be consistent with your internal linking.  Whether you use relative links or not - some discussion can be had around that.  But pick a route and go with it, just as long as you dont use the file extensions 🙂

            inlinear 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • mollykathariner_ms

              Forwarding a .org domain to a .com domain: any negative impact to consider?

              Hello! I have a question I've been unable to find a clear answer to. My client's primary domain is a .com with a satisfactorily high DA. My client owns the .org version of its domain (which has a very low DA, I suppose due to inactivity) but has never forwarded it on. For branding/visibility/traffic reasons, I'd like to recommend they set up the .org domain to forward to the .com domain, but I wanted to ask a few questions first: 1. Does forwarding low-value DA domains to high-value DA domains have any negative authority/SEO impact? 2. If the .org domain was to be forwarded, am I correct that an SSL cert is not necessary for it if the .com domain has an SSL cert? Thanks in advance!

              Technical SEO | | mollykathariner_ms
              1
            • DGAU

              Can I use a 301 redirect to pass 'back link' juice to a different domain?

              Hi, I have a backlink from a high DA/PA Government Website pointing to www.domainA.com which I own and can setup 301 redirects on if necessary. However my www.domainA.com is not used and has no active website (but has hosting available which can 301 redirect). www.domainA.com is also contextually irrelevant to the backlink. I want the Government Website link to go to www.domainB.com - which is both the relevant site and which also should be benefiting from from the seo juice from the backlink. So far I have had no luck to get the Government Website's administrators to change the URL on the link to point to www.domainB.com. Q1: If i use a 301 redirect on www.domainA.com to redirect to www.domainB.com will most of the backlink's SEO juice still be passed on to www.domainB.com? Q2: If the answer to the above is yes -  would there be benefit to taking this a step further and redirect www.domainA.com to a deeper directory on www.domianB.com which is even more relevant?
              ie. redirect www.domainA.com to www.domainB.com/categoryB - passing the link juice deeper.

              Technical SEO | | DGAU
              0
            • jgresalfi

              If I'm using a compressed sitemap (sitemap.xml.gz) that's the URL that gets submitted to webmaster tools, correct?

              I just want to verify that if a compressed sitemap file is being used, then the URL that gets submitted to Google, Bing, etc and the URL that's used in the robots.txt indicates that it's a compressed file. For example, "sitemap.xml.gz" -- thanks!

              Technical SEO | | jgresalfi
              0
            • UnbounceVan

              How can I stop a tracking link from being indexed while still passing link equity?

              I have a marketing campaign landing page and it uses a tracking URL to track clicks. The tracking links look something like this: http://this-is-the-origin-url.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com/ The problem is that Google is indexing these links as pages in the SERPs. Of course when they get indexed and then clicked, they show a 400 error because the /clkn/ link doesn't represent an actual page with content on it. The tracking link is set up to instantly 301 redirect to http://destination-url.com. Right now my dev team has blocked these links from crawlers by adding   Disallow: /clkn/   in the robots.txt file, however, this blocks the flow of link equity to the destination page. How can I stop these links from being indexed without blocking the flow of link equity to the destination URL?

              Technical SEO | | UnbounceVan
              0
            • everestagency

              Strange URL's for client's site

              We just picked up a new client and I've been doing some digging around on their site. They have quite the wide variety of URL's that make for a rather confusing experience. One of the milder examples is their "About" page. Normally I would expect something along the lines of: www.website.com/about I see: www.website.com/default.asp?Page=About I'm typically a graphic designer and know basically nothing about code, but I just assume this has something funky to do with how their website was constructed. I'm assuming this isn't particularly SEO friendly, but it doesn't seem too bad. Until I got to another section of their site. It's a section that logically should look like: www.website.com/training/public-seminars It's: www.website.com/default.asp?Page=MT&Area=Seminars&Sub=MRM Now that's nonsensical to me! Normally if a client has terrible URL's, I'd say let's do some redirects, but I guess I'm a little intimidated by these. Do the URL's have to be structured like this for some reason? Am I missing some important area of coding here? However, the most bizarre example is a link back to their website from yellowpages.com. Where normally I would expect it to lead to their homepage, I get this bizarre-looking thing: http://website1-px.rtrk.com/?utm_source=ReachLocal&utm_medium=PPC&utm_campaign=AssetManagement&reference_id=15&publisher=yellowpages&placement=ypwebsitemip&action_target=listing_website And as you browse through the site, that strange domain stays. For example the About page is now: http://website1-px.rtrk.com/default.asp?Page=About I would try to google this but I have no idea where to even start! What is going on with these links? Will we be able to fix them to something presentable without breaking their website?

              Technical SEO | | everestagency
              0
            • Santaur

              Best practices for controlling link juice with site structure

              I'm trying to do my best to control the link juice from my home page to the most important category landing pages on my client's e-commerce site. I have a couple questions regarding how to NOT pass link juice to insignificant pages and how best to pass juice to my most important pages. INSIGNIFICANT PAGES: How do you tag links to not pass juice to unimportant pages. For example, my client has a "Contact" page off of there home page. Now we aren't trying to drive traffic to the contact page, so I'm worried about the link juice from the home page being passed to it. Would you tag the Contact link with a "no follow" tag, so it doesn't pass the juice, but then include it in a sitemap so it gets indexed? Are there best practices for this sort of stuff?

              Technical SEO | | Santaur
              0
            • gossi74

              Merging several sites into one - best practice

              I had 2 sites on the web (www.physicseditor.de, www.texutrepacker.com) and decided to move them all under one single domain (www.codeandweb.com) Both sites were ranking very good for several keywords. I not redirected the most important pages from the old domains with a 301 redirect to the new subpages (www.texturepacker.com => www.codeandweb.com/texturepacker) Google still delivers the old domains but the redirect take people directly to the new content. I've already submitted the new site map to google webmaster tools. Pages are already in the index but do not really show up in the search results. How long does it take until google accepts the new domain and delivers the new content in the search results? Was it ok what I did? Or is there some room for improvement? SeoMoz will of course not find any information about the new page since it is not yet directly linked in google. But I can't get ranking information for the "old" pages since SeoMoz tells me that it can't crawl the old domains....

              Technical SEO | | gossi74
              0
            • fthead9

              What is the best method to block a sub-domain, e.g. staging.domain.com/ from getting indexed?

              Now that Google considers subdomains as part of the TLD I'm a little leery of testing robots.txt with something like: staging.domain.com
              User-agent: *
              Disallow: / in fear it might get the www.domain.com blocked as well. Has anyone had any success using robots.txt to block sub-domains? I know I could add a meta robots tag to the staging.domain.com pages but that would require a lot more work.

              Technical SEO | | fthead9
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.