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.
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
-
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 -
New sister site VS site redesign and dangers of SEO dilution??
Hi I’ve got a site that is ranking #2 in my area for my chosen keyword but the site is in need of an expansion and overhaul its only one page at the moment and to rank for more keywords its need to be expanded. Or another option is I do own another domain and I was thinking of maybe instead of overhauling the new site launching that as a sister company aimed more at the corporate market, as my first site is a bit more alternative in domain name and content. The thing is i'm not sure how this will affect my SEO they will be on the same CBlock and be offering similar services.
Content Development | | genkee0 -
Global Blogs vs Regionalised blogs
Im in the process of launching a blog. The blog will be for global audience. If I wanted to target a more specific region in the future example UK would it be advisable to launch a separate blog for the UK market or how could I regionalise the posts if I kept blogging on the Global blog.
Content Development | | Clickatell20 -
One story stands out for not getting indexed?
We have all our stories published today ( 20-Jun-2013 ) got indexed by google except this ( http://coed.com/2013/06/20/heres-a-video-of-kate-upton-topless-on-a-horse/ ). Do anyone out there have any clue about that? Thanks in advance
Content Development | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
Rel=publisher vs G+ badge without
I've read that I should only have a rel="publisher" once on my site (on the home page) in a link that points back to the corporate G+ page. Cool. But, if I want to have a link to the corporate G+ page in the footer of every other page on the site then I assume it's okay as long as I omit the rel="publisher" part, correct? Second question: For blog postings, I assume it's good to include a rel="author" tag in the link to the author's G+ page, right? Even though there is a link to the corporate G+ page in the footer of the same page.
Content Development | | scanlin0 -
How to make new content Indexed faster by google
I would like to know what can I do. Normally it takes google around 3 days to index my content. I got a site map, swiched the crawling rate to the fastest in my webmaster tools. I also tried crawling my homepage as google bot and sending it to the index with all linked pages but even if I do so my content takes around 3 days if not more to get indexed. I publish around 20 posts a week. My SEOmoz page authority is 48. Some sites of my competition seem to be getting their content indexed in the same day. What else can be done?
Content Development | | sebastiankoch0 -
Moving a html site into Wordpress
I'm getting ready to move a site into Wordpress. The current or old site is built with static html pages. My question is, how should I handle Google with these old pages. Should I 301 redirect from each old page to the new? Or is there a better way to handle it?
Content Development | | brandco0 -
Indexing of PDF files
Hey all, I understand the functionality of PDF files being indexed and how to remove them if required so in this post I'm not requiring any advice on 'how to' as such, but i just wanted to get a general opinion/consensus of if you deliberately allow PDF files to be crawled/indexed.
Content Development | | Daylan
Whether or not you guys optimise the files for search.
If you do disallow them from being crawled and indexed, why?
Generally the pro's and con's you may have found about have searchable PDF files as part of your indexed content.1