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
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • 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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • 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.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • 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.

      • 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. On-Page Optimization
    4. Correct .htaccess settings for canonical url?

    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 .htaccess settings for canonical url?

    On-Page Optimization
    2
    5
    864
    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.
    • webbutler13
      webbutler13 last edited by

      I want to forward all urls to http:www.mysite.com but am a little confuse because I am getting duplicate content error:

      Pages with Duplicate Page Content

      as of Jan 15http://titanappliancerepair.com/ 1 duplicatehttp://titanappliancerepair.com 1 duplicatehttp://titanappliancerepair.com/index.html 1 duplicate*****************************************************************What should I put ion htaccess file so I can forwardhttp://titanappliancerepair.com/index.htmlhttp://titanappliancerepair.comhttp://titanappliancerepair.com/to  http://www.titanappliancerepair.comor what is the correct way to do it?I'm confused because when I enter http://titanappliancerepair.com/ in browser it showshttp://titanappliancerepair.com so how can it be considered duplicate content?.Can someone help?I have godaddy and they have gave me this code to put RewriteEngine on
      rewritecond %{http_host} ^coolexample.com [nc]
      rewriterule ^(.
      )$ http://www.coolexample.com/$1 [r=301,nc]What is correct?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • MickEdwards
        MickEdwards @webbutler13 last edited by

        your directories have duplication.  For example: http://www.titanappliancerepair.com/about-us.html and http://www.titanappliancerepair.com/about-us

        You may also need   RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ /$1 [R=301**,**L]

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • webbutler13
          webbutler13 last edited by

          Ok I have added this to htaccess file and everything seems to be redirecting in browser ok but is it good enough for google?

          Can someone check and tell me if it is correct , if not can you help with code? Thanks in advance!

          RewriteEngine on
          rewritecond %{http_host} ^titanappliancerepair.com [nc]
          rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.titanappliancerepair.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

          RewriteEngine on
          rewritecond %{http_host} ^titanappliancerepair.com/ [nc]
          rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.titanappliancerepair.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

          RewriteEngine on
          rewritecond %{http_host} ^titanappliancerepair.com/index.html [nc]
          rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.titanappliancerepair.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

          RewriteEngine on
          RewriteBase /

          redirect html pages to the root domain

          rewriterule ^index.html$ / [r=301,nc]

          MickEdwards 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • MickEdwards
            MickEdwards last edited by

            It looks like you are redirecting any URL back to itself.

            You want something like this which will remove index.html and enforce a trailing slash-

            RewriteRule ^(.*)/index.html$ /$1/ [R=301,L]

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • webbutler13
              webbutler13 last edited by

              This is what I have so far in htaccess file

              RewriteEngine on
              rewritecond %{http_host} ^titanappliancerepair.com [nc]
              rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.titanappliancerepair.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

              RewriteEngine on
              rewritecond %{http_host} ^coolexample.com/ [nc]
              rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.titanappliancerepair.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

              RewriteEngine on
              rewritecond %{http_host} ^coolexample.com/index.html [nc]
              rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.titanappliancerepair.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

              RewriteEngine on
              rewritecond %{http_host} ^www.titanappliancerepair.com/index.html [nc]
              rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.titanappliancerepair.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

              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

              • chuck-layton

                NoIndex or Rel=Canonical Pagination

                Hello, I had a question about noindex and Rel=Canonical on category page pagination. On my site, the category page the meta="robots" has "Index,Follow" tags and the rel="canonical" is the main category page, but when a user sorts the page the meta="robots" changes to "NoIndex, Follow." My question is should the sorted page be name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" /> since the  rel="canonical" is pointing to the main page?? Or does it matter that it is NoIndex?? Any thoughts on this topic would be awesome. Thanks. Main Category Page
                https://www.site.com/category/
                name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" />
                rel="canonical" href="https://www.site.com/category/"/> Name Sorted Page
                https://www.site.com/category/?dir=asc&order=name
                name="robots" content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW" />
                rel="canonical" href="https://www.site.com/category/">

                On-Page Optimization | | chuck-layton
                0
              • bloomletsgrow

                URL keyword separator best practice

                Hello. Wanted to reach out see what the consensus is re-keyword separators So just taken on a new client and all their urls are structured like /buybbqpacks rather than buy-bbq-packs - my understanding is that it comes down to readability, which influences click through, rather than search impact on the keyword. So we usually advise on a hyphen, but the guy's going to have to change ALLOT of pages & setup redirects to change it all wasn't sure if it was worth it? Thanks! Stu

                On-Page Optimization | | bloomletsgrow
                0
              • Matthew_smart

                Home page keyword in url

                I have been looking into SEO for a few weeks now trying to perfect a homepage. Going through various sources on MOZ, and other examples out there on the internet, I keep seeing that you should have your keyword in the URL of the page. The homepage is the page most people want to rank the highest in google searches, however, you cannot put the keyword in the URL as most home page URLs are simply /. Should I actually make the home like this: www.example.com/key-word-example? I would imagine this would not be the normal for many users and would seem like it's not the home page.

                On-Page Optimization | | Matthew_smart
                0
              • stephanwb

                Canonical URL, cornerstone page and categories

                If I want to have a cornerstone "page", can I substitute an actual page with a category archive of posts "page" (that contains many posts containing the target key phrase)? This way, if I make blog posts about a certain topic/ key phrase (example "beach weddings") and add a canonical URL of the category archive page to the individual posts, am I right then to assume google will see the archive page as the cornerstone page (and thereby won't see the individual posts with the same key phrase as competing)?

                On-Page Optimization | | stephanwb
                0
              • SeoMartin1

                URLs and folder structure for an E-commerce

                Hi there !-) I´m helping a friend who has a e-commerce about nail polish in Brazil. I´m a little in doubt about the urls and folder structure. Two questions: 1. There are 10 products per category and 50 categories. Should I put them all in the root folder or creat 2 major categories ( 25 sub-categories each one)? 2. Whats the better product page url ( the store has around 500) nailpolish.com/IMPORT/BRAND/NAME-OF-THE-PRODUCT OR nailpolish.com/COMPLETE-NAME-OF-THE-PRODUCT Whats the best recomandation?

                On-Page Optimization | | SeoMartin1
                0
              • Ferguson

                URL for location pages

                Hello all We would like to create clean, easy URLs for our large list of Location pages. If there are a few URLs for each of the pages, am I right when I'm saying we would like this to be the canonical? Right now we would like the URL to be: For example
                Domain.com/locations/Columbus I have found some instances where there might be 2,3 or more locations in the same city,zip. My conclusion for these would be: adding their Branch id's on to the URL
                Domain.com/locations/Columbus/0304 Is this an okay approach? We are unsure if the URL should have city,State,zip for SEO purposes?
                The pages will have all of this info in it's content
                BUT what would be best for SEO and ranking for a given location? Thank you for any info!

                On-Page Optimization | | Ferguson
                0
              • CommercePundit

                How to Define Best URL Structure for Product Pages?

                I am working on my website to edit structure with help of Google's search engine optimization starter guide. There is really good instruction to define URL structure which help us to perform well over Google's organic search. I have resolved issues regarding category pages but, I have confusion to define best URL structure for product pages. My website's product page URL structure is as follow. http://www.vistastores.com/marketumbrellas-californiaumbrella-slpt758-f13-red.html http://www.vistastores.com/homefurniture-winsomewood-93630.html URL structure is constructed with following terms. 1. Root Category Name (Market Umbrellas or Home Furniture or ....) 2. Brand Name 3. Manufacturer Part Number I am not happy with this structure and also not performing well over Google's organic search. I am thinking to include product name or title tag in URL after root domain. But, it may create very long URL and create issues in organic search display. Does it really matter to perform well over Google's organic search? How can I define best URL structure for product pages?

                On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit
                0
              • JesseCWalker

                How long is too long for domain URL length?

                I noticed one of the negatively correlated ranking factors was length of URL.  I'm building a page from scratch, we are trying to rank for 'Minneapolis Fitness' and 'Minneapolis Massage'. Is www.minnnepolismassageandfitness.com  just ridiculously long?  Or does the exact match outweigh the penalty for URL length?

                On-Page Optimization | | JesseCWalker
                2

              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
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation 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.