Duplicate content issue. Delete index.html and replace with www.?
-
I have a duplicate content issue. On my site the home button goes to the index.html and not the www. If I change it to the www will it impact my SERPS? I don't think anyone links to the index.html.
-
When you say "delete", do you mean delete it from the home button (and just use the root version), or delete the page? Keep in mind that the "index.html" page also drives the root version of the site ("www.example.com/"), so you definitely don't want to delete that file.
Whether you use 301-redirects or canonical tags (either should be ok, but it sounds like the canonical tag would be easier for you to implement), it is important to use a consistent path. So, you do need to change the button link to match the canonical version of the URL. Don't do this until after you've got either the 301 or canonical tag in place.
-
Remember, if you put this in the PHP code, it has to be conditional - you don't want to redirect your canonical version unnecessarily. Since your home-page is just one template, you'd be firing a 301 for every situation.
-
Well the canonical will be different for every page...so if your page is:
www.jeremygower.com/contact/index.php
your canonical would be:
Basically, what that says is..."hey google, it doesn't matter what URL you think you're at, make sure that the only one in your search engine is the one in the canonical tag"...therefore, be very careful with it as well. If you simply put www.jeremygower.com as the canonical for every page, google would de-index every other page of your site.
Anywhere in the head is good.
IMO, unlimited ends up being a bad thing...the way those things work is that godaddy (or whoever) puts a ton of websites on the same server, so think about the 500 or so other sites with 'unlimited' bandwidth using your server. It makes it slow...for instance there's about 400 domains on the same server as my domain, and yes, it's slow a lot of the time...the cheap plan on a small orange I'm sure is similar but I'd expect better quality than godaddy. (they dont have unlimited)
-
I use dream weaver as my HTML editor, I templated out my site so I wonder if I can just put the code at the top of the template and have it update every page on my site. Now where in the head do I put the code? At the very beginning? Also I know yahoo, godaddy and others promote unlimited bandwidth and storage while others have a tiered plan. Isn't it better to have unlimited? I'm just asking since there is an up charge if you go over the bandwidth or storage on the other hosting plans. Thank you for your help.
-
header ('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
header ('Location: http://www.whatever.com/whatever.php');
-------- As far as I know there's no difference...to Google a 301 is a 301 no matter where you tell it. Would still be a pain in the butt, though - and I'm not sure 100% efficient....the best thing (i think) would be to have a canonical on every single page, then that will take care of it from the search engine standpoint. However, I'd still go somewhere that allows rewrites...that's just crazy. Even my godaddy shared hosting allows htaccess. Dont go to Godaddy shared hosting - it's awful. Not sure where to get cheap hosting with htaccess, but I'd venture to say that most hosts support it. I'd look into a small orange, it's offered as a pro perk through SEOmoz for 3 months at half price and it looks like they offer $20/mo plans for business - or if you wanna try it $35/yr plan as well. From my experience, as long as you do it correctly, changing hosts will not affect your SERPs. We actually moved in January and saw nothing change.
-
Also is using a php code a real 301 redirect or no? Do you have a sample php code that I could use? I'm still in learning mode.
-
Which hosting company do you prefer? Which one is best for seo purposes? And how do I transfer without impacting my SERPS or does it have no impact?
-
Well, 301 would be best...but I suppose in that situation what I'd do is use the canonical tags...but that's a pain as you'd need to do it for like every page...
In short, that's just whack...I'd find a new host.
Edit: P.S. Why can't yahoo just die already?
-
I should put the code in the head right? Thank you.
-
Thank you, I am trying to figure out how to do the 301 redirect but when i asked yahoo they say that the php code is not a real 301 redirect when I asked them. And they only do the 301 redirect on the ecommerce hosting plans which I have no need for. Any insight? Thanks for your answer.
-
Just to follow up on this. the meta tag for this is
-
You should have a 301 redirect setup so that everything goes to one address, ie. www.jeremygower.com....so that no matter if they type index.html or www.jeremygower.com/ or jeremygower.com it all goes to the same place. Other than that, an easier method (and you should probably do both...just put a canonical tag on that page, then no matter what the main page will get the link juice.
And yes, it probably will - either way, you should fix it.
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
-
Internal link is creating duplicate content issues and generating 404s from website crawl.
Not sure what the best way to describe it but the site is built with Elementor page builder. We are finding out that a feature that is included with a pop modal window renders an HTML code as so: Click So when crawled I think the crawling is linking itself for some reason so the crawl returns something like this: xyz.com/builder/listing/ - what we want what we don't want xyz.com/builder/listing/ xyz.com/builder/listing/%23elementor-action%3Aaction%3Dpopup%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6Ijc2MCIsInRvZ2dsZSI6ZmFsc2V9/ xyz.com/builder/listing/%23elementor-action%3Aaction%3Dpopup%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6Ijc2MCIsInRvZ2dsZSI6ZmFsc2V9//%23elementor-action%3Aaction%3Dpopup%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6Ijc2MCIsInRvZ2dsZSI6ZmFsc2V9/ so you'll notice how that string in the HREF is appended each time and it loops a couple times. Could I 301 this issue, what's the best way to go about handling something like this? It's causing duplicate meta descriptions/content errors for some listing pages we have. I did add a rel='nofollow' to the anchor tag with JavaScript but not sure if that'll help.
Technical SEO | | JoseG-LP0 -
Alternatives 301? Issues redirection of index.html page with Adobe Business Catalyst
Hi Moz community, As for now we have two different versions of a client's homepage that’s dividing our traffic. One of the urls is the index.html version of the other url. We are using Adobe Business Catalyst for one of our clients and they told us they can’t 301 redirect. Adobe Business Catalyst does 301 redirects, but not to itself like an .htaccess rewrite. Doing a 301 redirect using BC from index.html to / creates an infinite loop and break the page. Are there alternatives to a 301 or any suggestions how to solve this? Thanks for all your answers and thoughts in advance,
Technical SEO | | Anna_Hoesl
Anna0 -
Car Dealership website - Duplicate Page Content Issues
Hi, I am currently working on a large car dealership website. I have just had a Moz crawl through and its flagging a lot of duplicate page content issues, these are mostly for used car pages. How can I get round this as the site stocks many of the same car, model, colour, age, millage etc. Only unique thing about them is the reg plate. How do I get past this duplicate issue if all the info is relatively the same? Anyone experienced this issue when working on a car dealership website? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | karl621 -
Duplicate Content within Site
I'm very new here... been reading a lot about Panda and duplicate content. I have a main website and a mobile site (same domain - m.domain.com). I've copied the same text over to those other web pages. Is that okay? Or is that considered duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | CalicoKitty20000 -
Removed .html - Now Get Duplicate Content
Hi there, I run a wordpress website and have removed the .html from my links. Moz has done a crawl and now a bunch of duplicated are coming up. Is there anything I need to do in perhaps my htaccess to help it along? Google appears to still be indexing the .html versions of my links
Technical SEO | | MrPenguin0 -
How different does content need to be to avoid a duplicate content penalty?
I'm implementing landing pages that are optimized for specific keywords. Some of them are substantially the same as another page (perhaps 10-15 words different). Are the landing pages likely to be identified by search engines as duplicate content? How different do two pages need to be to avoid the duplicate penalty?
Technical SEO | | WayneBlankenbeckler0 -
Index.php duplicate content
Hi, new here. Im looking for some help with htaccess file. index.php is showing duplicate content errors with: mysite.com/index.php mysite.com/ mysite.com ive managed to use the following code to remove the www part of the url: IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Technical SEO | | klsdnflksdnvl
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] but how can i redirect the mysite.com/index.php and mysite.com/ to mysite.com. Please help0 -
Squarespace Duplicate Content Issues
My site is built through squarespace and when I ran the campaign in SEOmoz...its come up with all these errors saying duplicate content and duplicate page title for my blog portion. I've heard that canonical tags help with this but with squarespace its hard to add code to page level...only site wide is possible. Was curious if there's someone experienced in squarespace and SEO out there that can give some suggestions on how to resolve this problem? thanks
Technical SEO | | cmjolley0