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
-
Google index new data from my website page
Hi All, We have pages which are created few weeks before hand for Movie reviews in those pages we add value with adding the Movie cast and crew info and what ever info possible before the movie releases. The the movie releases we watch the movies and write reviews which is 500+ words. Now the issue is the pages are indexed a week before... How can i have these review pages scanned immediately when i have the complete review as the review content is not indexed for 3 to 5 days and the first day or 2 is when its important for the reviews to be seen in Google. Regards
On-Page Optimization | | AlexisWithers0 -
Does anyone use No Sweat WP Internal Links Lite?
Would you recommend it? Are there any other plugins that you'd recommend instead?
On-Page Optimization | | --Chantal--0 -
Www and non-www
I have a site that has used both www and non-www urls since inception years ago. Moz is saying that I have 183 pages of duplicate content, and it is all because each internal link has both versions. Both versions have high PR and links going back to them...should I still 301 redirect to one of them or should I leave them be? Thanks Brad
On-Page Optimization | | bradleymiller1480 -
Is there any decent web browser that still displays the full page title at the top of the page?
I just updated to the latest version of Firefox on my Mac and saw that they now hide most of the page title in the browser tab, like Chrome and Safari. I like to be able to see the full page title at all times (for reasons I'm sure you all understand) and that's pretty much the only reason I stuck with Firefox all these years. Now I'm looking for an alternative – any suggestions?
On-Page Optimization | | matt-145671 -
Will Google Custom Search results on my home page kill it's ranking?
This is probably a dumb question, but here goes anyway. 🙂 On a site I have it would be very useful to the reader to offer a search box that uses a Google Custom Search that I have optimized to search websites that are closely on-topic with my site. I know it sounds bad that I would send people to other sites, but just assume that the reasons are valid for this discussion. My question is, if the search results are set to display on the same page (the home page) as the search box, will the links in the search results to external sites just bleed my page rank to death? I assume it would, but thought I'd check just in case I'm missing something. I have to option to place the results on separate page of my site, and noindex it, but it won't be as powerful as it would be on the home page.
On-Page Optimization | | bizzer0 -
Unable to see internal link numbers on Opensiteexplorer - Need help
I'm Anuj, a regular user of SEOMOZ. I need some SEO guidance from SEO experts. I'm trying to optimize a webstore for few keywords. I am facing some issues on SEO I was using https all over the webstore and was advised by the community members to not have https through out the site (Due to various reasons). The internal links were not showing up in opensiteexplorer & Google Webmaster Tools too when the site was with https (They were just showing 1 or 2). After changing the pages from https to http, I'm now able to see all the internal links of my website on GWT. Unfortunately, the internal link count on opensiteexplorer shows a very small fraction when compared to the # of internal links shown on GWT. The link update from Opensiteexplorer was on 27th FEB 2013. I had done the https to http (for all pages) somewhere between 17-24th of JANUARY 2013. I wanted to know if I have missed something as I am unable to see those numbers on Opensiteexplorer or will it take time for opensiteexplorer to show the internal link numbers ?
On-Page Optimization | | Pepperjet0 -
Internal linking structure
howdy SEO moz people, I had a quick question about internal linking. I am using the WP platform for my website and on one of the widgets I have a category widget that shows all the pages, (on every page). I wanted to know that when if i make a new post or page does it matter if the internal anchor texts are on the content itself or is it suffice to have it on the side bar within the widget? Basically what im asking is does it matter if i have anchor text links on the content itself or is it ok to have it anywhere on the page. and if it does matter to have it on the content, please help out on any suggestions on where to place them. thanks
On-Page Optimization | | david3050 -
Prevent link juice to flow on low-value pages
Hello there! Most of the websites have links to low-value pages in their main navigation (header or footer)... thus, available through every other pages. I especially think about "Conditions of Use" or "Privacy Notice" pages, which have no value for SEO. What I would like, is to prevent link juice to flow into those pages... but still keep the links for visitors. What is the best way to achieve this? Put a rel="nofollow" attribute on those links? Put a "robots" meta tag containing "noindex,nofollow" on those pages? Put a "Disallow" for those pages in a "robots.txt" file? Use efficient Javascript links? (that crawlers won't be able to follow)
On-Page Optimization | | jonigunneweg0