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
-
Should I target two pages for the same keyword, but two different intents?
When people type in a certain keywords in my industry space (animated video), they usually have one of two intents: some want to see videos (for inspiration or entertainment or whatever) and some want to hire a company. We have pages that meet each intent. Some "Best of..." blog posts for the crowd that want to see videos (that might be top-of-the-funnel prospects, potentially) and a landing page for the buying-intent people. I'm seeing each ranking page as essentially two, kept in proper balance to meet search intent by click-throughs. So I'm betting that my landing page won't cannibalize the "best of..." page. Is that the right way to see it, or not?
Link Building | | Wagster0 -
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 -
Any Instant Indexeing social Bookmarking sites available on search engine or not?
I want to that my backlinks are instant indexed, so is any social bokkmarking sites availble when backlinks can instant indexed then please answer me.
Link Building | | renukishor0 -
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 -
Why is my Page Rank 0.
Hi, I am trying to understand why my Page Rank is 0. Many forums say that it is because my site has been blocked by google. Any help with this would be much appreciated. http://davincidrivers.com
Link Building | | MariaPerrone0 -
Finding pages with a high Page Authority
Hi, Whats the quickest way to find pages with a high authority using SEOMoz? Cheers Mik
Link Building | | increation0 -
Hubpages and Page authority
Hi, I've created a Hubpage awhile back and I see the url has a page authority over 50. How much does Domain authority influence page authority? The url has only 3 (registered) backlinks, so I cannot see an obvious explanation why. I understand that Hubpages was one of the sites that "took a hit" with the Panda update, but it has a domain authority of 84...
Link Building | | vibelingo0 -
Backlink booster - boosts and helps to index links?
Hello all, We are using a tool called backlink booster that works in the following way: you view a page with a backlink to your site click on a boost link saved in favourites the link is pinged to rss directories and web 2.0 sites The idea is to get your links indexed faster. Has anyone used this or something like this and had any benefit from it? Thanks Shehzad.
Link Building | | Gareth_Cartman0