Slash vs no slash?
-
Why does SeoMoz tell me I have duplicate content issues and show me these two URLs?
What does the slash matter and why is that considered duplicate content?
-
On the homepage it does not matter, as no redirect is made to the slash, both return a 200 code
but on deeper pages it is a problem as it leads to canonical issues.
I prefer no slash because when people link to you by hand, they rarely add the slash on the end.Wordpress makes a mess of this, i have to say, i dont use wordpress so i dont know if its wordp[ress of a plugin, but almost all wordpress sites have un-neecessary redirects. That is internal links that go thought a 301 to get to the internal link, each 301 is a link juice leak, so why would you do this when the link is internal. Wordpress sites often use a 301 redirect to send you to a url with a slash, when the link should point to the slash or none slash, and there for not leak ling juice.
The first think i do when i build a site, is setup my redirects, to ensure a canonical domain, none slash( or slash one of the other), and make sure all urls are lowercase. These things are a nightmare to fix later.
-
Hmm... Wordpress has a built in fix. Just add or remove the trailing slash from your permalink structure. For the home page, you can just specify what the home page should be. Joomla, from what I can tell, requires some modification to the htaccess file... I'm not much of a Joomla fan and my Wordpress information could be incomplete, so if anyone has any corrections feel free to chime in.
-
Do you know of any plugin suitable for Joomla or Wordpress
-
The slash is minor, but it can create some issues... Search engines can figure out pretty easily which URL you mean but users can't. If users come to the site and decide to link back to you, the link can point to either mysite.com or mysite.com/. The PageRank is essentially split to what really amounts to two separate pages.
You should redirect one to the other. It isn't a huge deal and won't cause too many problems, but why leave something to chance with the algorithm?
If your site runs Drupal, I suggest downloading the Global Redirect plugin for easy across the board decisions about trailing slashes and other duplicate content URL issues.
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
-
Does blogging with a wysiwyg negatively affect SEO (vs. hand coding)?
Many bloggers use a wysiwyg editor to write posts. Are there any drawbacks to wysiwyg vs plain text? When I write blogs I prefer to hand code my text to be sure everything is optimized. My feeling is that wysiwyg leads to code bloat and generally fewer optimization opportunities. I have no real evidence. Is there any reason not to use the wysiwyg editor?
On-Page Optimization | | Jason-Rogers0 -
Listing all services on one page vs separate pages per service
My company offers several generalized categories with more specific services underneath each category. Currently the way it's structured is if you click "Voice" you get a full description of each voice service we offer. I have a feeling this is shooting us in the foot. Would it be better to have a general overview of the services we offer on the "Voice" page that then links to the specified service? The blurb about the service on the overview page would be unique, not taken from the actual specific service's page.
On-Page Optimization | | AMATechTel0 -
Title Tag: Phrases vs. Keywords Separated by "|"
Hello, One of my client's old sites has all category titles of the form (for example) running shoes | running shoe | walking shoes | walking shoe including many that perform well with over 60 characters. I'm in the process of rewriting the titles into something like Running and Walking Shoes, A quality shoe at OurShoes.com The reason I'm rewriting them is for future google penalties, and to look better to possible guest post opportunities. Also to look better in the SERPS But the old style is performing very well. What are the real pros and cons of each? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Internal Linking - in content vs navigation menu
Would like to get some thoughts on whether navigation menus or in-content links are best for internal linking, from an SEO standpoint. A few thoughts to get started with: For sites with a lot of content, you can have a navigation menu linking to your higher-level pages, then in-content links to deeper pages on your site. For smaller sites, this is not an option, as the navigation menu will probably link to all your important pages. You could add in-content links, but Google only counts the first link on the page, so the in-content links would be ignored if you'd already linked yp the page in your top nav menu. I can think of several possible reasons navigation menu links could be less desirable than in content links from a Google perspective. (They are sitewide boilerplate content without context.) If you setup your navigation structure based on what is best for the user, small sites don't have much wiggle room to optimize internal link structure, as all their money pages will be linked to from the top nav menu. Do you think Google prefers in content links to navigation menu links? If so, how do you get around the fact that for many sites, all their money pages are being linked to from their main navigation menu?
On-Page Optimization | | AdamThompson0 -
Homepage vs. Product page competition
I think my homepage and basic product listing page may be competing.. We have a very old domain with lots of links w/ generic anchor text ( click here, etc. ) That page is http://mybrand.com which Google ranks for our "widgets" search term. We have a page http://ourbrand.com/widgets that lists the 5 or 6 basic widgets we sell. This page is indexed also, but doesn't have nearly as many links since it is new compared to the age of the domain. After reading this.. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization I I'm not really sure I can remove all "widgets" links from our homepage, since that's a core part of our site's menu / hierarchy. So maybe my best effort would be to reorganize the page so that the homepage focuses on Our Brand Name Widgets .. and let the product page focus on the widgets keyword. Is having those two pages serve to represent those two separate but similar keywords feasible? Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | minutiae0 -
How do I check how a competitor ranks in the UK vs. US?
In building my strategy I want to check how well my competitors rank in country specific searches, for example in Canada or the UK vs. the US. Can someone help me by pointing me in the right direction? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | jclubb0 -
Why does SEOmoz use /blog/content-title vs /category/content-title? Any difference?
Assume a brand new blog being designed and all other things equal. What are the pros & cons between using the url structure /blog/content-title vs. /category/content-title? Note:
On-Page Optimization | | JasonJackson
Both scenarios would be using categorical archiving.0 -
Top navigation bar vs. left side - site archetecture
we do eCommerce on BigCommerce platform, I'm using the top navigation menu for: home about policy faq and other standard informations all my products are list in the left navigation Categories menu. What is your advise about this? Should we have the products at the top? The top menu are web pages, not categories. Also, if you have a better ideas about our site archetecture, you are welcome to comment. domaine is: http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/ Thank you, BigBlaze
On-Page Optimization | | BigBlaze2050