Duplicate content issue. Delete index.html and replace with www.?
-
I have a duplicate content issue. On my site the home button goes to the index.html and not the www. If I change it to the www will it impact my SERPS? I don't think anyone links to the index.html.
-
When you say "delete", do you mean delete it from the home button (and just use the root version), or delete the page? Keep in mind that the "index.html" page also drives the root version of the site ("www.example.com/"), so you definitely don't want to delete that file.
Whether you use 301-redirects or canonical tags (either should be ok, but it sounds like the canonical tag would be easier for you to implement), it is important to use a consistent path. So, you do need to change the button link to match the canonical version of the URL. Don't do this until after you've got either the 301 or canonical tag in place.
-
Remember, if you put this in the PHP code, it has to be conditional - you don't want to redirect your canonical version unnecessarily. Since your home-page is just one template, you'd be firing a 301 for every situation.
-
Well the canonical will be different for every page...so if your page is:
www.jeremygower.com/contact/index.php
your canonical would be:
Basically, what that says is..."hey google, it doesn't matter what URL you think you're at, make sure that the only one in your search engine is the one in the canonical tag"...therefore, be very careful with it as well. If you simply put www.jeremygower.com as the canonical for every page, google would de-index every other page of your site.
Anywhere in the head is good.
IMO, unlimited ends up being a bad thing...the way those things work is that godaddy (or whoever) puts a ton of websites on the same server, so think about the 500 or so other sites with 'unlimited' bandwidth using your server. It makes it slow...for instance there's about 400 domains on the same server as my domain, and yes, it's slow a lot of the time...the cheap plan on a small orange I'm sure is similar but I'd expect better quality than godaddy. (they dont have unlimited)
-
I use dream weaver as my HTML editor, I templated out my site so I wonder if I can just put the code at the top of the template and have it update every page on my site. Now where in the head do I put the code? At the very beginning? Also I know yahoo, godaddy and others promote unlimited bandwidth and storage while others have a tiered plan. Isn't it better to have unlimited? I'm just asking since there is an up charge if you go over the bandwidth or storage on the other hosting plans. Thank you for your help.
-
header ('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
header ('Location: http://www.whatever.com/whatever.php');
-------- As far as I know there's no difference...to Google a 301 is a 301 no matter where you tell it. Would still be a pain in the butt, though - and I'm not sure 100% efficient....the best thing (i think) would be to have a canonical on every single page, then that will take care of it from the search engine standpoint. However, I'd still go somewhere that allows rewrites...that's just crazy. Even my godaddy shared hosting allows htaccess. Dont go to Godaddy shared hosting - it's awful. Not sure where to get cheap hosting with htaccess, but I'd venture to say that most hosts support it. I'd look into a small orange, it's offered as a pro perk through SEOmoz for 3 months at half price and it looks like they offer $20/mo plans for business - or if you wanna try it $35/yr plan as well. From my experience, as long as you do it correctly, changing hosts will not affect your SERPs. We actually moved in January and saw nothing change.
-
Also is using a php code a real 301 redirect or no? Do you have a sample php code that I could use? I'm still in learning mode.
-
Which hosting company do you prefer? Which one is best for seo purposes? And how do I transfer without impacting my SERPS or does it have no impact?
-
Well, 301 would be best...but I suppose in that situation what I'd do is use the canonical tags...but that's a pain as you'd need to do it for like every page...
In short, that's just whack...I'd find a new host.
Edit: P.S. Why can't yahoo just die already?
-
I should put the code in the head right? Thank you.
-
Thank you, I am trying to figure out how to do the 301 redirect but when i asked yahoo they say that the php code is not a real 301 redirect when I asked them. And they only do the 301 redirect on the ecommerce hosting plans which I have no need for. Any insight? Thanks for your answer.
-
Just to follow up on this. the meta tag for this is
-
You should have a 301 redirect setup so that everything goes to one address, ie. www.jeremygower.com....so that no matter if they type index.html or www.jeremygower.com/ or jeremygower.com it all goes to the same place. Other than that, an easier method (and you should probably do both...just put a canonical tag on that page, then no matter what the main page will get the link juice.
And yes, it probably will - either way, you should fix it.
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
-
Duplicate Content in Wordpress.com
Hi Mozers! I have a client with a blog on wordpress.com. http://newsfromtshirts.wordpress.com/ It just had a ranking drop because of a new Panda Update, and I know it's a Dupe Content problem. There are 3900 duplicate pages, basically because there is no use of noindex or canonical tag, so archives, categories pages are totally indexed by Google. If I could install my usual SEO plugin, that would be a piece of cake, but since Wordpress.com is a closed environment I can't. How can I put a noindex into all category, archive and author peges in wordpress.com? I think this could be done by writing a nice robot.txt, but I am not sure about the syntax I shoud use to achieve that. Thank you very much, DoMiSol Rossini
Technical SEO | | DoMiSoL0 -
Problem with duplicate content
Hi, My problem is this: SEOmoz tells me I have duplicate content because it is picking up my index page in three different ways: http://www.web-writer-articles.co.uk http://www.web-writer-articles.co.uk/ and http://www.web-writer-articles.co.uk/index.php Can someone give me some advice as to how I can deal with this issue? thank you for your time, louandel15
Technical SEO | | louandel150 -
Duplicate Content Issue: Google/Moz Crawler recognize Chinese?
Hi! I am using Wordpress multisite and my Chinese version of the website is in www.mysite.com/cn Problem: I keep getting duplicate content errors within www.mysite.com/cn (NOT between www.mysite.com and www.mysite.com/cn) I have downloaded and checked the SEOmoz report and duplicate_page_content list in CSV file. I have no idea why it says they have the same content., they have nothing in common in content . www.mysite.com is the English version of the website,and the structure is the same for www.mysite.com/cn *I don't have any duplicate content issues within www.mysite.com Question: Does google Crawler properly recognizes chinese content??
Technical SEO | | joony20080 -
Duplicate content error - same URL
Hi, One of my sites is reporting a duplicate content and page title error. But it is the same page? And the home page at that. The only difference in the error report is a trailing slash. www.{mysite}.co.uk www.{mysite}.co.uk/ Is this an easy htaccess fix? Many thanks TT
Technical SEO | | TheTub1 -
I am Posting an article on my site and another site has asked to use the same article - Is this a duplicate content issue with google if i am the creator of the content and will it penalize our sites - or one more than the other??
I operate an ecommerce site for outdoor gear and was invited to guest post on a popular blog (not my site) for a trip i had been on. I wrote the aritcle for them and i also will post this same article on my website. Is this a dup content problem with google? and or the other site? Any Help. Also if i wanted to post this same article to 1 or 2 other blogs as long as they link back to me as the author of the article
Technical SEO | | isle_surf0 -
Duplicate content by category name change
Hello friends, I have several problems with my website related with duplicate content. When we changed any family name, for example "biodiversidad" to "cajas nido y biodiversidad", it creates a duplicate content because: mydomain.com/biodiversidad and mydomain.com/cajas-nido-y-biodiversidad have the same content. This happens every tame I change the names of the categories or families. To avoid this, the first thing that comes to my mid is a 301 redirect from the old to the new url, but I wonder if this can be done more automatically otherwise, maybe a script? Any suggestion? Thank you
Technical SEO | | pasape0 -
Www or no www
right now our organization has the a robot text file set to block search engines from indexing the non-www version of our URL - example.com looks like this #Dynamically generated robots.txt file for example.com
Technical SEO | | dschreib_greenpeace.org
User-agent: * Disallow: / Of course, we do allow search engines to crawl the www. version Is this the best way to do this?0 -
Canonical Link for Duplicate Content
A client of ours uses some unique keyword tracking for their landing pages where they append certain metrics in a query string, and pulls that information out dynamically to learn more about their traffic (kind of like Google's UTM tracking). Non-the-less these query strings are now being indexed as separate pages in Google and Yahoo and are being flagged as duplicate content/title tags by the SEOmoz tools. For example: Base Page: www.domain.com/page.html
Technical SEO | | kchandler
Tracking: www.domain.com/page.html?keyword=keyword#source=source Now both of these are being indexed even though it is only one page. So i suggested placing an canonical link tag in the header point back to the base page to start discrediting the tracking URLs: But this means that the base pages will be pointing to themselves as well, would that be an issue? Is their a better way to solve this issue without removing the query tracking all togther? Thanks - Kyle Chandler0