Is it ok to point internal links to index.html home page rather than full www
-
I thought I saw this somewhere on SEOmoz before but I was so busy by the time I got around to work on my SEO on my site, I realized I have this happening and can't recall if it is a problem which takes away from my ranking.
If my www.website.com is ranking well but I have internal menu links pointing to www.website.com/index.html instead of www.website.com will that take away from my www.website.com rankings?
Should I change all my menu links that point to /index.html to the full website url path www.website.com ?
-
Awesome! By adding the following code to my .htaccess file, and placing it in my public directory it works. Didn't work from the root directory which I figured out later. I think related concerns are solved now. Now to see how the results show on the next crawl.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /index.html?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.html?$ "/$1" [NC,R=301,NE,L] -
Try this - of course take what you need from it - source is here - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6059920/removing-index-html-from-url-and-adding-www-with-one-single-301-redirect Options +FollowSymlinks -MultiViews RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(./)index.html$ [NC] RewriteRule . http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%1 [R=301,NE,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC] RewriteRule . http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [NE,R=301,L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(./)index.html$ [NC] RewriteRule . %1 [R=301,NE,L]
-
Thanks. I was trying a mobile version of the website also at some point. I will just delete that one for now.
I can try your idea but is forwarding from the page itself still good for SEO?
-
Well, I tried taking out the 2nd instance of RewriteEngine on but i Just get a 500 error now. I put it back how it was for now.
Any other ideas?
-
could it not be working because you used rewriteengine twice?
-
The 301-redirect that Mark and Nakul discuss is probably your best bet here, but if that's causing you implementation problems, you could use the canonical tag on your home-page (in the section):
That will help sweep up any duplicates. It is best to link consistently to the root version, though (without the "index.htm"). FYI, you've got another weird duplicate in Google's index:
-
Thanks. Sorry I meant to say index.htm. Thanks you both for making this very clear. I've already created a .htaccess file to fix my twin domain issue, now I just have to modify the .htaccess file to include this code.
The code unfortunately doesn't seem to work when I upload it. meaning, when I type in my website address including index.htm the display still says index.htm rather than removing that part. Am I doing something wrong? Here's what I have currently in my htaccess file.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www|blog|askdaniel).
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.htm?\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(.)index.htm?$ "/$1" [R=301,L]
-
Hi Daniel,
I was a bit confused by this - index.html on your site returns a 404 error. I changed the url to index.htm and then it returns the correct information as a 200.
Basically, I'm not saying to delete the page index.htm - that is in fact your default page and what the server will show as your homepage. Nakul and I have just been saying to configure the server to strip out the index.htm from the URL and just show twinbytes.ca. Since your site is in fact on an Apache server, you should be able to use the htaccess info that Nakul gave you. But be careful when changing an htaccess file - you can really mess up your site if you don't do it properly. Be sure to make a backup of the file before making any changes or additions to it.
Even though your file is index.htm, the line in Nakul's code should have you covered due to the regular expression.
Mark
-
Thanks. You answered my main question. One other question then from that. How can I remove the index.html file from the website but still have the main website load? I believe the index.html file has to be located somewhere for the main page to know where to look. Right? I believe if you go to www.twinbytes.ca which is my website, it really looks at www.twinbytes.ca/index.html anyway to get the information to display. Would I be correct in saying so? I understand 90% of this, but this whole index.html for the home page thing is a bit confusing.
-
Yes, that's right. Thanks Mark for specifying that .htaccess will only work if you are Apache based.
-
Nakul didn't specify, but the code he gave you is if your site is running on an apache server. Make sure to work with your developers to deal with these issues, and don't try changing your htaccess file on your own - you make major problems for your site very easily.
-
Ideally, it's best not to have the index.html showing up as well - could be a problem of duplicate content. So I would recommend correcting your internal links to point to www.website.com without the index.html. Generally, you should set up the server so that it strips out the index.html and 301 redirects to the clean domain. However, if you need to keep the index.html live and can't redirect it, at the very least I'd make sure to use a canonical tag on the page pointing to the clean version of the page, www.website.com.
Let me know if you need me to elaborate further.
Mark
-
Yes, you definitely should and when you do that, make sure you do a redirect from www.website.com/index.html to www.website.com You could do that via .htaccess RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html?\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(.)index.html?$ "/$1" [R=301,L]
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
-
Will Google Count Links Loaded from JavaScript Files After the Page Loads
Hi, I have a simple question. If I want to put an image with a link to another site like a banner ad on my page, but do not want it counted by Google. Can I simply load the link and banner using jQuery onload from a separate .js file? The ideal result would be for Google to index a script tag instead of a link.
On-Page Optimization | | CopBlaster.com1 -
Is it OK to put a Blog Post and a Page within the same folder on a Wordpress hosted website?
Our education company website (hosted on wordpress) has evolved into having content on key topics distributed across both blog posts and pages. For example, "top-pharmaceutical-companies" lends itself to being published as a page. However other content "top-pharmaceutical-companies-usa-2016" lends itself to being published as a blog post as it's more temporal in nature. Now we'd like to establish topical domain relevance for the root keyword "pharmaceutical companies" and build a folder www./ourcompany/pharmaceutical-companies/ But when we look through our blog content, we notice we have "Blog Posts" that would be an excellent fit for certain folders within our "Page" url structure. So would it be OK to amend these blogs post urls addresses to place them within the folder structure of the pages.
On-Page Optimization | | GetReskilled0 -
Schema Review Not Showing Up For The Home Page
I have a schema review for an attorney website. The schema shows up in the SERPs for all the inner pages of the sites but never for the homepage. Is there a reason for that?
On-Page Optimization | | Armen-SEO0 -
How would you target alternative names for your product with the use of internal/landing pages?
Recently, there has been some new industry names that have emerged for the type of software we provide and we want to make sure that we rank for those terms (of course!). The 3 names combined are too long for a title tag and would look odd to incl all 3 in the homepage. Any suggestions (or examples) of how this could done without looking spammy? I also don't really know where to put this within our website. e.g. enterprise portal, enterprise information portal (EIP) or corporate portal Any suggestions would be most welcome
On-Page Optimization | | alexpeps0 -
Do footer links apply too many on-page links?
We tend to put a a lot of links in the footers of some of our websites (e.g. www.AlohaWhistler.com). Our CAMPAIGNS report is showing that several pages on such sites have "too many on-page links". We understand the logic that having more than 100 links per page is "too much". Does this also apply to footer links?
On-Page Optimization | | RoyMcClean0 -
Internal Linking
Okay, if I write 10 different articles on my site that are related to one of my products. Can I safely have a link in every article to my product?
On-Page Optimization | | azguy0 -
My nofollow link is showing as a 302\. Is this OK?
My nofollow link is showing as a 302. Is this OK? Not looking to pass any juice along but don't want to be penalized either. Thanks Buhrly
On-Page Optimization | | Buhrly0 -
SEO Value of Within-Page Links vs. Separate Pages
Title says it all. Assuming that you're talking about similar content (let's say, widgets), which is better: using within-page links for variations or using separate pages? I.e., do we have a widget page and then do in-page links to describe green, blue, and red widgets, or separate pages for each type of widget? In-page pro: more content on a single page, thus more keywords, key phrases, and general appearance of real content. In-page con: Jakob Neilsen says they're confusing. Also, for SEO, you only get one page title, rather than a separate page title for each. My personal bias is for in-page, since I hate creating dozens of short pages for what could be on one page, but my suspicion is that separate pages are better for SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | maxkennerly0