Duplicate Homepage In Google
-
Hi
Just found through my SEO dashboard, Google has two versions of the same homepage, the root page, plus the index.html page, causing duplicate content from both the pages.
what is the best option to ensure google only have 1 version of the homepage listed?
-
I'm not a big fan of doubling-up on canonicalization tactics, because there's no good way to tell what's working. The 301 is probably a tiny bit stronger (not much, in my experience), but the advantage of the canonical tag on the home-page is that one tag will sweep up any variants. If you 301 "index.html" to the root, and then someone comes along and uses the non-www version of your home-page or adds a tracking parameter ("index.html?track=1234"), etc., the 301 won't do anything - you'll have to create 301s for each situation. The canonical will prevent those problems, which are very common on home pages.
-
Correct - usually, it's all the same physical page (on the server), so you only need to put it in one place.
-
Hi
just found I have same issues on my own website. However bit confused how I would change this. When the website was developed they where php pages, we did a rewrite so these pages went to .html pages instead, see file below. However now with my website www.rfksolutions.co.uk and www.rfksolutions.co.uk/index.html seem to be duplicate?
see my current htaccess file
any ideas?
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^index.html$ index.php [L]
RewriteRule ^about-us.html$ about-us.php [L]
RewriteRule ^portfolio.html$ portfolio.php [L]
RewriteRule ^partners.html$ partners.php [L]
RewriteRule ^logo-design-portfolio.html$ logo-design-portfolio.php [L]
RewriteRule ^graphic-design-portfolio.html$ graphic-design-portfolio.php [L]
RewriteRule ^graphic-design-portfolio2.html$ graphic-design-portfolio2.php [L]
RewriteRule ^testimonials.html$ testimonials.php [L]
RewriteRule ^portfolio/([0-9a-zA-Z_-]+).html$ portfolio_details.php?&title=$1 [L]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^rfksolutions.co.uk$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.rfksolutions.co.uk$
RewriteRule ^index.php$ "http://www.rfksolutions.co.uk" [R=301,L]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^falkirkwebdesign.co.uk$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.falkirkwebdesign.co.uk$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ "http://www.rfksolutions.co.uk/$1" [R=301,L]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^falkirkwebdesigners.co.uk$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.falkirkwebdesigners.co.uk$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ "http://www.rfksolutions.co.uk/$1" [R=301,L]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^webdesignfalkirk.co.uk$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.webdesignfalkirk.co.uk$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ "http://www.rfksolutions.co.uk/$1" [R=301,L] -
I am confused on when to use both 301 and rel=canonical at the same time and when to use each separately. I have received advice through other Q&As saying to use both for my homepage in this exact same scenario, but sometimes SEOs advise to use rel=canonical on every page to point to its same location.
If 301s pass along "most" of the link juice, then why use both? What's the disadvantage of just using a 301?
D
-
Good job, 301's are usually the reliable & trusted solution. Canonical tags are really useful for other redirecting purposes such as similar content issues. All the best
-
Hi
thanks for that, it was a 301 i was thinking about, that is what I would normally have done, if for instance an old page had some link juice I would 301 it to another page, but I hadnt done one for this reason
I have just setup a 301 now for the domain name
-
Hi There
There are a couple of options;
-
301 Redirect the index.html page to your root domain, e.g. http://example.com/index.html 301 redirected to http://example.com
-
Use a Canonical tag, pointing the index.html page to your root domain.
You'll find a really helpful Redirection Guide here on SEOmoz.
You can also find here on SEOmoz a useful guide to Canonical tags.
I'd almost always recommend for this particular scenario, opting for a 301 Redirect on the page index.html to your root domain. Chances are (for these two pages) your inbound links will tend to mainly point to your root domain rather than the index.html page.
I hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
-
-
thanks for your help, sorry just to confirm
if I wanted google to keep the www.mydomain.com instead of www.mydomain.com/index.html as the main homepage I would put the link rel= onto the index/html and put the www.mydomain.com in there?
-
Adding the canonical tag within your telling search engines which homepage to use - this seemed to work for us:
If you're having duplicate content throughout your site, I've read having your site admin do something with the htaccess file would do the trick.
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
-
How to replace a custom platform's homepage with another homepage from another platform domain?
I have a question regarding 301 permanent redirection. I currently have three websites, each hosted by different platform/CMS: one by Wix, another by WordPress, and a custom built CMS. I want to have all my three websites to be under the the custom build CMS's URL. What I am most concerned about is that I would like to have the home page of my Wix website to become my custom build CMS's new home page and the original content currently under my custom build CMS would be updated under new sub directories (in which I have access to the custom build CMS's source code). I have never done a 301 redirect before and I would like to know if there is any additional thing I need to do to my current custom build CMS besides assigning all my current content under my custom build CMS to new directories before executing 301 redirects?
Technical SEO | | sihanedutech0 -
Top Landing Page has disappeared from Google Search Console but still shows at the top of Google
Hi, One of the top landing pages in my website has disappeared from GSC Search Analytics results. But I do get a good traffic from that page until now. What might be the reason for GSC to stop showing it on the results?
Technical SEO | | eduapps0 -
Is this duplicate content?
All the pages have same information but content is little bit different, is this low quality and considered as duplicate content? I only trying to make services pages for each city, any other way for doing this. http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-pennsylvania/
Technical SEO | | JordanBrown
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-new-york/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-new-jersey/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-connecticut/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-maryland/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-massachusetts/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-philadelphia/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-new-york-city/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-baltimore/
http://www.progressivehealthofpa.com/brain-injury-rehabilitation-boston/0 -
Content Duplication - Zencart
Hi Guys !!! Based on crawler results, it shows that I have 188 duplicate content pages, out of which some are those in which I am not able to understand where the duplication is ??? The page created is unique. All the URL's are static, all titles, metat tags are unique. How do I remove this duplication !!! I am using Zencart as a platform. Thanks in advance for the help !!! 🙂
Technical SEO | | sidjain4you0 -
Duplication, pagination and the canonical
Hi all, and thank you in advance for your assistance. We have an issue of paginated pages being seen as duplicates by pro.moz crawlers. The paginated pages do have duplicated by content, but are not duplicates of each other. Rather they pull through a summary of the product descriptions from other landing pages on the site. I was planing to use rel=canonical to deal with them, however I am concerned as the paginated pages are not identical to each other, but do feature their own set of duplicate content! We have a similar issue with pages that are not paginated but feature tabs that alter the URL parameters like so: ?st=BlueWidgets ?st=RedSocks ?st=Offers These are being seen as duplicates of the main URL, and again all feature duplicate content pulled from elsewhere in the site, but are not duplicates of each other. Would a canonical tag be suitable here? Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | .egg0 -
Why are my Duplicated Pages not being updated?
I've recently changed a bunch of duplicated pages from our site. I did get a slightly minimized amount of duplicated pages, however, some of the pages that I've already fixed are still unfixed according to MOZ. Whenever I check the back-end of each of these pages, I see that they've already been changed and non of them are the same in terms of Meta Tag Title is concern. Can anyone provide any suggestions on what I should do to get a more accurate result? Is there a process that I'm missing?
Technical SEO | | ckroaster0 -
Duplicate titles- what quailfies??
What qulifies as a duplicate title? If I have one tile Kelowna Real estate Smith McLellan Group and another title Kelowna Condos Smith Mclellan Group Is that a dupilcate title??
Technical SEO | | Realtor1010 -
To get homepage to rank highly for a given term, do you only add the term(and variations) to the homepage?
If adding the term on all pages then won't the pages start competing with each other in the SERP? I'm building a site for a client who wants to rank highly for 'Southern California general contractors' and its not clear to me whether to fit these keywords (and variations) only into the homepage or if I should try to fit them into all pages.
Technical SEO | | kennysmith0