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.
Two home pages?
-
One of my campaigns shows duplicate page content for domain xxx and xxx/index. There is only one index (home) page, so why does it report on two?
-
I have replied to you inbox message.
-
PM me the site if you want and I'll take a look as it's difficult to say if without seeing it
-
Guys
I'm sorry. I'm probably either being a little dense here or I have not explained my predicament properly. I'm no techie, so excuse me and the following long explanation.
I've looked up 301 redirect and it suggests creating a .htaccess file with a line that points the old URL and file path to a new one. I don't have an actual file to point from or to other than the domain/index.html file.
I still don't understand why SEOMoz says I have duplicate content on TWO pages - xxx.co.uk and xxx.co.uk/index.html when I only have xxx.co.uk/index.html. I do not have any other home page for the website.
So, I guess I have a couple of questions:
1 - what line of code should be in my .htaccess file when I only have one file, not two.
2 - if I type xxx.co.uk into my browser's address bar, how does the browser know to take me to xxx.co.uk/index?
-
The campaign crawler will detect urls regardless of whether they are indexed of not, you should do as EssEEmily says and set up a 301 to the version with the most links if you haven't done already.
Oh and don't think just because one version isn't indexed now, it can still cause you problems down the road especially when linking is involved.
Also when setting up your redirects if you have a small number of links set it up regardless to the xxx/ version as this is the one most likely to be linked to.
-
Thanks very much. I'll take a look.
-
I'm sure someone on here can tell you the technical reason why index pages are created (I have just kind of accepted that they exist), I can tell you how to fix the problem. You will need to set up a 301 redirect from either xxx/index to xxx or xxx to xxx/index. I'd point the redirect to the page with more backlinks.
That should fix your duplicate content problem.
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 fix non-crawlable pages affected by CSS modals?
I stumbled across something new when doing a site audit in SEMRUSH today ---> Modals. The case: Several pages could not be crawled because of (modal:) in the URL. What I know: "A modal is a dialog box/popup window that is displayed on top of the current page" based on CSS and JS. What I don't know: How to prevent crawlers from finding them.
Web Design | | Dan-Louis0 -
Is having a site map page necessary?
Hello all! So I know having a sitemap XML file is important to include in your robots.txt file. I also know it is important to submit your XML sitemap to Google and Bing. However, I am wondering if it is beneficial for your site's SEO value to have a sitemap page displayed on your website? Or is this just a redundant action if you have already done the above two actions with your XML sitemap? Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | Myles920 -
Should i be using shortcodes for my my page content.
Hello, I have a question. Sorry if this is been answered before. Recently I decided to do a little face lift to my main website pages. I wanted to make my testimonials more pretty. Found this great plugin for testimonials which creates shortcodes. I love how it looks like, but just realised that when I use images in shortcodes, these are not picked up by search engines 😞 only text is. Image search ability is pretty important for me and I'm not sure if I should stick with my plain design and upload images manually with all alt tags and title tags or there is a way to adjust shortcode so it shows images to search engines. You can see example here. https://a-fotografy.co.uk/maternity-photographer-edinburgh/ Let me know your thoughts guys. Regards, Armands
Web Design | | A_Fotografy1 -
2 Menu links to same page. Is this a problem?
One of my clients wants to link to the same page from several places in the navigation menu. Does this create any crawl issues or indexing problems? It's the same page (same url) so there is no duplicate content problems. Since the page is promotional, the client wants the page accessible from different places in the nav bar. Thanks, Dino
Web Design | | Dino640 -
Website Home page suddenly disappeared after changing Hosting
HI All, My site was ranking very well and was in 1st page of google for most of my keywords. Last week we did some update to the site and moved it to new hosting and from then onwards I dont see my site home page in Google ranking . My Website Name is : royalevents.com.au. We used to be in 1st of Google for keywords like wedding Mandaps, Indian Wedding Mandaps etc, Would be great if some one helps us to figure out whats gone wrong .. I also did Webmaster Fetch as Google but nothing happened. Thanks
Web Design | | Verve-Innovation0 -
ECWID How to fix Duplicate page content and external link issue
I am working on a site that has a HUGE number of duplicate pages due to ECWID ecommerce platform. The site is built with Joomla! How can I rectify this situation? The pages also show up as "external " links on crawls... Is it the ECWID platform? I have never worked on a site that uses this. Here is an example of a page with the issue (there are 6280 issues) URL: http://www.metroboltmi.com/shop-spare-parts?Itemid=218&option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&ecwid_category_id=3560081
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Mobile Site Pages: Word Count Help
Hi there I am doing a mobile website for a client and they asked me what the dieal word count would be per page. They are SEO conciosu but we are not doing SEO on this site. I would just like to know a general rule of thumb. Regards Stef
Web Design | | stefanok0 -
Site-wide footer links or single "website credits" page?
I see that you have already answered this question before back in 2007 (http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/2163), but wanted to ask your current opinion on the same question: Should I add a site-wide footer link to my client websites pointing to my website, or should I create a "website credits" page on my clients site, add this to the footer and then link from within this page out to my website?
Web Design | | eseyo0