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.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • 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

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      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. Technical SEO
    4. How to force a trailing slash after the domain name

    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.

    How to force a trailing slash after the domain name

    Technical SEO
    2
    11
    5962
    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.
    • JollyBoy
      JollyBoy last edited by

      My campaign analysis is predictably listing domain.com and domain.com/ as repeated content. I've searched and searched but cannot find a way to force a trailing slash on the end of the domain name unless there's a file or directory after it..

      Is there a way to accomplish this using .htaccess

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • JollyBoy
        JollyBoy @JollyBoy last edited by

        I've gone with this .htaccess from your soulgorithm.com:

        Options +FollowSymlinks
        RewriteEngine on
        RewriteBase /
        RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain.co.uk [NC]
        RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]

        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.)/$
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
        RewriteRule (.
        )/$ $1.php [L]

        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
        RewriteRule .* %{REQUEST_FILENAME}/ [R=301,L]

        and I'm now getting the results I'm after. I'm getting similar behaviour to you in Firefox and IE, which explains a lot. I really appreciate the length you've gone to to help me here, so big thank you!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • BailHotline
          BailHotline @JollyBoy last edited by

          Test Site: soulgorithm.com

          In the .htaccess file for this site:

          Options +FollowSymlinks
          RewriteEngine on
          RewriteBase /
          RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.soulgorithm.com [NC]
          RewriteRule (.*) http://soulgorithm.com/$1 [L,R=301]

          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.)/$
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
          RewriteRule (.
          )/$ $1.html [L]

          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.)/$
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
          RewriteRule (.
          )/$ $1.php [L]

          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f [OR]
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
          RewriteRule .* %{REQUEST_FILENAME}/ [R=301,L]

          Which has the following effect:

          soulgorithm.com > soulgorithm.com/

          (slash is added, but only shows in IE and looks

          likes its being stripped by Firefox but page

          still loads fine)

          soulgorithm.com/ > soulgorithm.com/
             
              (loads fine, but only shows in IE and looks

          likes its being stripped by Firefox but page

          still loads fine)

          soulgorithm.com/test > soulgorithm.com/test/

          (loads fine, slash even shows in FF)

          soulgorithm.com/test/ > soulgorithm.com.com/test/

          (loads fine)

          soulgorithm.com/testdir > soulgorithm.com/testdir/

          (loads fine, slash even shows in FF)

          soulgorithm.com/testdir/ > soulgorithm.com.com/testdir/

          (loads fine, slash even shows in FF)

          Let me know if this is what you see. I feel likes its getting close to working.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • JollyBoy
            JollyBoy @JollyBoy last edited by

            Thanks for sticking with this. Rather than me share the domain, do you know of any example sites using your code (or similar) which add a trailing slash after the domain name? I'd like to rule out my browser stripping it out.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • BailHotline
              BailHotline @JollyBoy last edited by

              Man, my mind is blown right now. I'm not giving up and hopefully someone else can chime in on this discussion and shed some light on this issue.

              The code provided should have worked. Let me look into it some more. Also, if you don't mind what is the actual domain name?

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • JollyBoy
                JollyBoy @JollyBoy last edited by

                That's right - nothing in there but the code you supplied.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • BailHotline
                  BailHotline @JollyBoy last edited by

                  Is this the only thing you have in your htaccess file?

                  if not, I would remove everything in the file and only have what i posted above, and let me know if it works.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • JollyBoy
                    JollyBoy @JollyBoy last edited by

                    Nope. Still no trailing slashes being added.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • BailHotline
                      BailHotline @JollyBoy last edited by

                      Try just the following:

                      Let me know if this works for you.

                      RewriteEngine On
                      RewriteBase /
                      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !index.php
                      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
                      RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1/ [L,R=301]
                      
                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • JollyBoy
                        JollyBoy @BailHotline last edited by

                        Thanks for the reply, but this looks like all the other examples I've found. My .htaccess file looks like this :

                        DirectoryIndex index.php

                        RewriteEngine On
                        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
                        RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L,QSA]

                        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$
                        RewriteRule ^(.
                        )$ http://domain.co.uk/$1/ [L,R=301]

                        But I get the following redirects going on:

                        domain.co.uk > domain.co.uk (ie nothing happens)

                        domain.co.uk/ > domain.co.uk (ie slash is removed)

                        domain.co.uk/page2 > domain.co.uk/page2 (ie nothing happens, but page loads)

                        domain.co.uk/page2/ > Internal server error

                        Any ideas?

                        BailHotline JollyBoy 8 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • BailHotline
                          BailHotline last edited by

                          Hi Clive.

                          Yes, you can easily do this with an .htaccess file, here is the code:

                          RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1/ [L,R=301]

                          Just replace "domain.com" with your proper url for your site. This should be all that is needed.

                          Hope this helps!

                          JollyBoy 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

                          • SO_UK

                            Company name ranking

                            Hi all, I hope somebody can share their thoughts on the below. A web designer launched my client's new website and I have been tasked with the SEO. I was approached with an immediate problem, www.clientswebsite.co.uk was ranking 9th for their company name after being indexed by Google. The search results above www.clientswebsite.co.uk were related to my client but not all, for example a direct competitor was also ranking. I have been working on the SEO for 2-3 weeks and I just managed to get to 3rd position for the company name, and then www.clientswebsite.co.uk disappeared from page 1! And now instead, an irelevant sub page is now ranking for the company name on page 2 (a contact page). I have checked and the home page is still indexed (did a site: check). The only problem software picks up is a redirect chain (http://homepage -> http://www.homepage  -> https://homepage) the web developers said it wouldn't impact rankings (when I asked them to edit the htaccess file to fix it) I've listed below the SEO tasks I completed whilst attempting to rank the company name: I set up analytics and webmaster tools, in which I set up preferred domain (www) Added a sitemap Edited meta data making sure company name was included I contacted the websites above www.clientswebsite.co.uk that were relevant and asked them to place a link linking to their new website, I was successful with a couple of these. I placed www.clientswebsite.co.uk on all of their social media profiles I reformatted headers on their home page, making sure the H1 included my client's company name I found 2 extra versions of my client's home page (not exact copies, but very similar content) that had been published, so I decided to 301 redirect these to the correct home page Activated SSL and forced to HTTPS I would really appreciate it if anyone could share their thoughts here, whether it be explanations or possible solutions Adam

                            Technical SEO | | SO_UK
                            0
                          • coolhandluc

                            English and French under the same domain

                            A friend of mine runs a B&B and asked me to check his freshly built website to see if it was <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> compliant. 
                            The B&B is based in France and he's targeting a UK and French audience. To do so, he built content in english and french under the same domain:
                            https://www.la-besace.fr/ When I run a crawl through screamingfrog only the French content based URLs seem to come up and I am not sure why. Can anyone enlighten me please? To maximise his business local visibility my recommendation would be to build two different websites (1 FR and 1 .co.uk) , build content in the respective language version sites and do all the link building work in respective country sites. Do you think this is the best approach or should he stick with his current solution? Many thanks

                            Technical SEO | | coolhandluc
                            1
                          • SushiUK

                            WooCommerce category naming conventions

                            I am managing a woocommerce store selling prescription glasses/spectacles. We have a lot of categories with similar names and I want to adopt the best possible naming convention to get the best from search. So we have a number of similar categories for both Men's and women's glasses. Currently they are named as follows: Women's Glasses-Women's Rimless Glasses
                            -Women's Semi Rimless Glasses
                            -Women's Plastic Glasses
                            -Women's Metal Glasses
                            -Women's Retro Glasses Currently, this results in the following URL structure for sub categories: https://www.glassesonspec.co.uk/product-category/womens-glasses-2/womens-rimless-glasses/ (For some reason WooCommerce is adding -2 to the end of the primary category name, it will not let me change it for some reason, this is the subject of a further investigation!) So first question, is there too much duplication of the word glasses on the sub items? for example, should they read; Women's Glasses
                            -Rimless
                            -Semi Rimless
                            -Plastic
                            -Metal
                            -Retro Hence giving this URL structure: https://www.glassesonspec.co.uk/product-category/womens-glasses-2/rimless/ OR, should we change the top level category name to just Women's and let the sub categories complete the picture?: Women's
                            -Rimless Glasses
                            -Semi Rimless Glasses
                            -Plastic Glasses
                            -Metal Glasses
                            -Retro Glasses Giving this example URL structure: https://www.xxxxxxxxxxxxx.co.uk/product-category/womens/rimless-glasses/ This would solve my hyphenation problem, however my fear is the top level category on it's own is not descriptive enough when viewed as stand alone: https://www.xxxxxxxxxxxxx.co.uk/product-category/womens/ The second part of my question relates to how to deal with the change in URL structure. I am using Yoast Premium, so will that pick up the changes and automatically redirect to the new one as it does when done manually? Or will I need to take a different approach using HTACCESS commands? I hope the above makes sense, Many thanks, Bob

                            Technical SEO | | SushiUK
                            0
                          • usDragons

                            Spammers created bad links to old hacked domain, now redirected to our new domain. Advice?

                            My client had an old site hacked (let's call it "myolddomain.com") and the hackers created many links in other hacked sites with links such as http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html The old myolddomain.com site was redirected to a different new site since then, but we still see over a thousand spam links showing up in the new site's Search Console 404 crawl errors report. Also, using the links: operator in google search, we see many results of spam links. Should we be worried about these bad links pointing to our old site and redirecting to 404s on the new site? What is the best recommendation to clean them up? Ignore? 410s? Other? I'm seeing conflicting advice out there. The old site is hosted by the client's previous web developer who doesn't want to clean anything up on their end without an ongoing hosting contract. So beyond turning redirects on or off, the client doesn't want to pay for any additional hosting. So we don't have much control over anything related to "myolddomain.com". 😞 Thanks in advance for any assistance!

                            Technical SEO | | usDragons
                            0
                          • kuchenchef

                            Redirect typo domains

                            Hi, What's the "correct" way of redirecting typo domains? DNS A record goes to the same ip address as the correct domain name Then 301 redirects for each typo domain in the .htaccess Subdomains on typo urls still redirect to www or should they redirect to the subdomain on the correct url in case the subdomain exists?

                            Technical SEO | | kuchenchef
                            0
                          • TP_Marketing

                            .ca and. com domains

                            Hello, currently the main site im working on is a .com, but have the .ca version purchased from register.com.  should i have this setup to redirect to the .com site. will google see these as dup content.  We have the .ca for our canadian customers but both sites are identical. Thank you

                            Technical SEO | | TP_Marketing
                            0
                          • upick-162391

                            Trailing Slashes In Url use Canonical Url or 301 Redirect?

                            I was thinking of using 301 redirects for trailing slahes to no trailing slashes for my urls. EG: www.url.com/page1/ 301 redirect to www.url.com/page1 Already got a redirect for non-www to www already. Just wondering in my case would it be best to continue using htacces for the trailing slash redirect or just go with Canonical URLs?

                            Technical SEO | | upick-162391
                            0
                          • DanHill

                            Outranking a competitor when their domain name is the keyword

                            Hi I'd just like to ask the opinion of my fellow members here : We are currently ranking second for a very important keyword and would obviously like the top spot on the SERP - the site that is ranking first has the domain name as the keyword phrase(along with a good amount of quality links from a variety of domains) - now I know it is possible to outrank them since I do remember reading about this in one of Rands posts(I think it was the whole white hat black hat one he posted recently) - bascially we have more domain authority, slightly less links but from double the amount of root domains and a higher page authority too! Does having the keyword as your domain make THAT much of a difference when we are(imo) quite close in terms of great content and link profiles(and all the onpage factors) ? Thanks!

                            Technical SEO | | DanHill
                            0

                          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.