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.
Should I 301 Redirect The index.html Page?
-
Hello,
As an experiment I am trying to work with an SBI site but am noticing index.html is being forced on me as the homepage.
As I understand it's good practice to 301 redirect the index.html page to the to the actual home page. Can someone please confirm that I am right in thinking this?
Here is an example:
http://www.anguilla-beaches.com/index.html
http://www.anguilla-beaches.com/According to yahoo 773 links are pointing to the index.html page and 771 links are pointing to the / page.
I'm sure Google knows that these are the same pages and does not consider them as duplicate but surely the index.html page should be redirected right? am I going mad here?
Now if we look at this site:
http://www.jugglenow.com the homepage has 198 links according to yahoo
http://www.jugglenow.com/index.html this page also has 198 links? now I am confused, are these 2 the same page?On this page:
http://www.jugglenow.com/juggling-balls.html notice how there is no link to the actual homepage but there is a link to the index.html page.
Am I missing something here because I can't figure it out, surely there should be just 1 homepage without a index.html page.
Any help would be appreciated
-
The most important factor is to ensure only one URL is available for each page. You should not present the same page through both the /index.html and / URLs. Pick one.
My strong preference is to use the simple / URL as "index.html" does not offer any value to users nor search engines. It just makes the URL longer and more cluttered.
I'm sure Google knows that these are the same pages and does not consider them as duplicate ...
Not true. On your site you may choose to offer the same content via /index.html and /, but another site could choose to present completely different content on those pages. You are offering two unique URLs, your content is duplicated and that can cause multiple issues. Duplicate content is an issue and a division of your links is another issue.
The simple fix is to design your site from the beginning to only offer a / page and not a index.html page. If you have an existing site where this is an issue, use the 301 redirect to fix the problem.
-
Go ahead nad 301, SE see it as a canonical as index,html is not always the default page. make sure you dont have any internal links point t the .html, of you will leak link juice though the 301 un-necessary.
doing a 301 should consolidate you link juice.
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
-
slug Link redirect to subdomain?
Hi !
Link Building | | Leviiii
Im Levi new here and new in the world of SEO, please dont judge if my questions are silly. Back on the days when the site was built we thought it is a good ideea to have subdomains that together with the domain name represent our main keywords.
ex. https://stansted.tonorwich.uk, https://heathrow.tonorwich.uk, https://luton.tonorwich.uk, https://gatwick.tonorwich.uk. There is content on this subdomains, would it make any difference from SEO perspective if we create slugs that redirect to these subdomains? for example creating https://tonorwich.uk/taxi-minibus-vip-tesla-norwich-to-stansted that redirects to https://stansted.tonorwich.uk ? Or better create these slugs with slightly different content?
Any ideeas would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!0 -
Spammy links redirecting to homepage of site -
Hey guys, I'm auditing a website at the moment and Moz is showing a few spammy links linking to it. The problem is these domains are all 301 redirecting to the domain I'm auditing. Let's say I'm auditing Site A. Site B is been flagged in Moz OSE with 12 spam flags. When I try to open Site B in a browser, it redirects back to Site A. What's the best thing to do, here? Disavowing domains redirecting to the site is surely a bad idea? Cheers.
Link Building | | BrianYork-AIM0 -
Impact of distribution of backlinks across multiple pages
Community, I would be interested to see if anyone has been seeing any experiments, experience documentation, or other data that would give context around the impact of pointing backlinks not just to your money page / home page but distribute it across pages. When doing competitive research I often run into competition which has lower domain strength and page rank but a link profile that is more spread out across their domain; these competitors often outrank my site despite their individual page properties being weaker. Any reference to existing documented experiments, personal experience or guidance is welcome.
Link Building | | italiansoc0 -
Homepage Vs. Inner Page Backlink Building?
If I'm trying to rank multiple inner pages, when does strengthening the homepage become more productive than strengthening the inner pages themselves? Is there a strategy to this? For example, maybe you build up a few dozen backlinks to each inner page, and then focus all your efforts on the homepage? Because, from my understanding, strengthening the homepage will go a long way towards helping your inner pages rank. Is that correct?
Link Building | | JABacchetta0 -
Does Google index a content in iframe?
Hello guys, I´ve done a infografic and i want to share it with some bloggers. But, i want to share an iframe, not an image (beacuse there is some links on it). My question: Can Google consider the links inside an iframe (for link building)? Thank you 🙂
Link Building | | seomobly0 -
Value of Link Redirect from Google News
Some sites are linking to us with the URL from Google News instead of using a direct link. For example: "http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=ghjgjhggjhgkjghjg&url=http://www.oursite.com/awesome-news-010123/" Does this pass the same value as a normal link? I asked the publisher to replace the link with a normal link but they pushed back saying that the news URL is better.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Two Links, Same Anchor Text, To Same Page. Is There A Point?
Hey guys, My question is this. Let's say I have an article, "How To Golf". I post this article onto my blog. Then I write a complementary article to the first article called "Introduction To Golf". My plan is to submit this new article to various directories to build backlinks for the article on my blog. So here lies my question. Say I am allowed two links from my new article to the one on my blog. The anchor text I am using is "golf". Is there a point to including two links with the same anchor text (golf) in the new article pointing back to my blog article? When Google spiders the complementary article will it consider the links two separate links with the anchor text "golf" or will it just count the two links as one link. After all, the two links have the same anchor text and are both pointing to the same page.
Link Building | | lawrenceyu11130
