Index.html vs. default.html
-
Hi,
I have a website that is about 7 years old. I had been using index.html as the home page. When I redesigned my site about 3 months ago I changed it to default.html. The old index.html page was still on my server. I just realized my mistake. All of my links to the home page lead to the new default.html.
However, people are still landing on the old index.html. I have change the old index.html to the new design but that means i have 2 "home" pages out there. Should i delete one? Should I leave them both there but use the canonical tag for one so it is not considered duplicate content?
What is best for my rankings?
-
Thank you.
If that was my site, I would redirect your /index.html and /default.html pages to http://www.normas9000.com/.
I would then update your canonical as well. Lastly, there is no reason to have both the default and index.html pages so I would remove one of them.
-
Thanks for your help, http://www.normas9000.com
-
Can you share your domain name? It would make this a bit easier with specific examples.
The question I have for you is, when I type in www.yourdomain.com, what is the URL that appears in the browser? Is that URL www.yourdomain.com? or www.yourdomain.com/index.html? Also, take a look and see is you have any ReWrite's happening in your htaccess file.
In short, I recommend you 301 www.yourdomain.com/default.html to www.yourdomain.com IF you have any links (internal or external) to the default.html file. You would only make this redirect if your home page actually is www.yourdomain.com. If it is actually www.yourdomain.com/index.html then you can use that instead.
It gets confusing speaking in general terms and trying to address all the possibilities.
-
I agree with Ryan. 301-redirects to mydomain.com would be the best solution since index.html is the default file on your web server and visitors prefer remembering mydomain.com in stead of mydomain.com/default.html. Besides, unless "default" is a keyword, "default.html" doesn't have any seo value. In fact, it's recommended to use folders in stead of file names.
You can change the default page in your web server's apache configuration however.
-
If I type in mydomain.com, it brings me to the index.html version of my home page. So, I can 301 the default.html version to go to index.html and then make all my internal links go to index.html
Am I understanding you correctly? Thanks!
-
I would recommend friendly URLs which avoids this entire issue.
More specifically, I am suggesting your home page URL be something like www.mydomain.com, not www.mydomain.com/index.html nor www.mydomain.com/default.html
Whatever you decide, the best solution would be to 301 your old home page(s) to your new home page. You would also want to update any internal site links to your current home page. If you have control or influence to update any external links, do that as well.
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 won't index my website because "certain conditions" weren't met
I found the answer on this -- interestingly, I had changed registrars and they didn't pull over the DNS information correctly. This caused the above issues. Once I identified this, I updated the DNS correctly -- at registrar and server -- and things worked fine.
Content Development | | newbyguy0 -
If my blog is on Wordpress, and I've installed the AMP plug-in, what do I need to do to get Google to start indexing all my posts as AMP pages?
If I add /amp to the end of any of my posts, I can see that the plug-in is working. It's been months since I installed it, though, and Google hasn't indexed any of the AMP pages. Am I missing a step?
Content Development | | DeanRamadan0 -
Sitemap - 200 out of 2100 pages indexed
I submitted the .xml sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools and only 200 out of 2100 pages were indexed.
Content Development | | Madlena
Why is that and what can I do ?0 -
Sitemaps XML or the HTML?
Which type of sitemap is better for search engines the .XML or the HTML?
Content Development | | Madlena0 -
In Index but not in Serps
Hi, I have a situation with a client site which is quite frustrating. Basically, most "recent" (by that I mean for the last couple of months) blog posts are failing to reach the SERPS (actually, one has and a couple have from the early days but it's taken months for them to arrive). Previously the blog posts were indexed very quickly - often instantly. Now, I've checked WMT etc and I've submitted each post manually but still nothing. The Sitemap is valid etc. However, pages (not blog posts) seem to be getting into the serps very quickly. Another complication is that if I search: site:www.domainname.com and set the date filter to a month I can see some of the earlier blog posts in that result set. However, if I scrape a bit of unique content from one of those posts and search - nothing in the SERPS. And my Moz report tells me that the page is not to be found in the top 50 either (so I'm confident these pages are not in the SERPS). Any ideas why this would happen to just blog posts? Is it something to do with the parent blog landing perhaps being too strong in the rankings? Any ideas appreciated. Thanks.
Content Development | | KMUK0 -
Sub directory vs sub domain for company blog
My company's blog is currently a sub directory - www.site/blog.com but for technical ease we are considering changing it to a sub domain - www.blog.site.com. What are the SEO ramifications of each? Thank you! Best, Sara
Content Development | | theLotter0 -
Our blog is indexed by "google web" but does not show up in "google blogs". Why not and how can I fix this?
We have a pretty simple blog http://www.aviawest.com/blog I've noticed our articles arn't showing up in Google blogs on "web", we've submitted to http://blogsearch.google.com/ping a month ago. Anyone have some insight here?
Content Development | | Aviawest0