Duplicate Content

[simodal]

Hello All, my first web crawl has come back with a duplicate content warning for

www.simodal.com

and

www.simodal.com/index.htm

slightly mystified!

thanks

paul

[KeriMorgret]

If you're still in contact with a web developer, that would be great. If you're not, a note to everyone else on this thread that the website in question is using IIS 6.0, so apache info isn't going to help in this case.

[RuiCataoAlves]

Just a 301 from 7index to /

[Sebes]

Hi Cesar,

there is no drawback. technically www.simodal.com and www.simodal.com/ are different pages just like www.simodal.com/randompage and www.simodal.com/randompage/ would be considered different. Most people would consider /randompage a page and /randompage/ a directory. But from a SEO perspective .com and .com/ are equally good.

What you should do is to decide whether you want to use a trailing slash or not and stick to it. if you dedide not to use / on your sites root page use it consistently everywhere.

Generally speaking there are 3 often seen ways: use .html for pages and / for directorys vs.  no suffix for pages (domain.tld/page ) and / for directorys vs. / for all pages and directories (wordpress uses / AFAIK). It doesnt realy matter much, take one and stick to it.

[abbath]

which is the drawback of the 301 redirect without the "/"?

[PH292]

Hi Paul

I can fully identify with your frustrations - been there!

A simple question may help you.  Did you have a web developer, and are you still in relationship with him/her.   If so, get them to do a 301 redirect from the www.simodal.com/index.htm to your chosen version.  Most seem to do www.simodal.com/  - but with a trailing forward slash at the end.  Someone else might like to comment on that.

Also as Aaron says also do it for the version without the www's  ie: http://simodal.com/  and do a 301 to exactly the same URL as the above.

If you haven't got a developer there is some info around telling you exactly how to do it.

Hope this helps

[Sebes]

Hey Paul,

here is the explanation:

www.simodal.com and www.simodal.com/index.htm are considered separate pages by google, although both are your sites "starting point". Some Content Management Systems (CMS) make thiis mistake, i.e. delivering the same page and not distinguishing between simodal.com/ and simodal.com/index.htm.

As said before, you should decide whether all your pages should be www.simodal oder just simodal.com. There is a great Whiteboard-Friday Video by Rand on this toppic. Then you should rewrite your URLs to either version.

Additionally you might want to add a rel canonical to your page, maybe just to your starting page. a

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.simodal.com/" />

on your starting page would tell google to ignore the /index.htm and use /

But watch out, rel canonical is somewhat tricky...but there are good tutorials here.

To be honest: I know quiet a lot of pages, that make this mistake. Google should be able to correct this, so dont qorry about rankings. You should however do the redirect www. (or the opposite) as this will trigger googles DC filter. Also: if you plan to use SSL (https:// ) make sure that these pages are also not indexed, best by using rel canonical.

[seomasterbrasil]

Hello Paul!

Because the URL is different, the crawlers look them as different pages, but as you know, they're not! It's just two ways to get there!

To solve this, you have to redirect the /index page to the non-/index, using the 301 redirection code.

Tutorial here: http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm

Got it?

Hope it helps! =]

[simodal]

ThanksAaron, this is very new to me and you will have to forgive my DOH! moments.

Still don't get it. Can you point me in any direction so I can understand.

best

paul

[AaronSchinke]

It is indeed duplicate content! You might want to consider doing a redirect. I also noticed that you haven't done a redirect from the non www. domain either!