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
-
Redirect chains error on the home page URL
Hello Everyone, I'm getting redirect chains error on the home page URL:
On-Page Optimization | | Nikhil_Falcon
http://ebitdacatalyst.com in Wordpress. I've checked my redirection list in the plugin, and haven't found any redirections on http://ebitdacatalyst.com. Can anyone please help me in solving this issue? I don't know where from it's coming.0 -
Why home Page is not showing showing in search results?
The USA Glitz I search the exact title & keyword but still its not showing though there is no related websites in this term. What can i do ? What kind of strategy needs to follow ? Kindly help me out . Thanks 😢
On-Page Optimization | | henrichjrr4201 -
To NoFollow or to NoIndex internal links
I all, I have recently taken over a fairly large e-commerce site that I am trying to "fix" and have come across something that I need a second opinion on. A Semrush audit has revealed that there are a heck of a lot of internal nofollow links (over 90 000) that point to predominantly 4 pages from the Header of each page in the site, these are change currency pages to show clients different currencies and a members login page. The pages are: /?action=changecurrency¤cy=EUR /?action=changecurrency¤cy=USD /?action=changecurrency¤cy=GBP /members/ My opinion is that these pages should just be no index pages and they should be followed. instead of being indexed and no followed? Any thoughts on this out there?
On-Page Optimization | | cradut0 -
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 -
Links to Paywall from Content Pages
Hi, My site is funded by subscriptions. We offer lengthy excerpts, and then direct people to a single paywall page, something like domain.com/subscribe/ This means that most pages on the site links to /subscribe, including all of the high value pages that bring people in from Google. This is a page with an understandably high bounce rate, as most users are not interested in paying for content on the web. My question is are we being penalized in Google for having so many internal links to a page with a very high bounce rate? If anyone has worked with paywall sites before and knows the best practices for this, I'd be really grateful to learn more.
On-Page Optimization | | enotes0 -
Please review page for on page SEO
I'm working on an adult dating site review blog and am hoping to build links to the category pages. It's a wordpress blog so the posts are categorised by topics. However can you tell me if there is enough content on the page for google to identify what the page is about? The problem is that the content of each category pages is pulled from the posts. What I think is needed is some static text on the page 2-300 words that use the keyword. Here's an example of a page targeting the keywords 'online dating'. http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com/category/online-dating/
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK
[editor's note -- thumbnails on site may not be appropriate for some workplaces] Will the page rank like this if there are a good amount of authorative links or does the page itself need work?0 -
Internal Linking - Same page
Is there any benefit in internally linking back to the same page? I have no other relevant pages in the site I can link to so wondering if it's worthwhile to use anchor text to link back to the same page?
On-Page Optimization | | Will_Craig0 -
Getting pages indexed by Google
Hi SEOMoz, I relaunched a site back in February of this year (www.uniquip.com) with about 1 million URL's. Right now I'm seeing that Google is not going past 110k indexed URL's (based on sitemaps). Do you have any tips on what I can do to make the site more likeable by Google and get more indexed URL's? All the the part pages can be browsed to by going to: http://www.uniquip.com/product-line-card/suppliers/sw-a/p-1 I've tried to make the content as unique as possible by adding random testimonials and random "related part numbers" see here: http://www.uniquip.com/id/246172/electronic-components/infineon/microcontrollers-mcu/sabc161pilfca Do I need to wait more time and be more patient with Google? It just seems like I'm only getting a few thousand URL's per day at the most. Would it help me if I implemented a breadcrumb on all part pages? Thanks, -Carlos
On-Page Optimization | | caneja0