Index page
-
To the SEO experts, this may well seem a silly question, so I apologies in advance as I try not to ask questions that I probably know the answer for already, but clarity is my goal
I have numerous sites ,as standard practice, through the .htaccess I will always set up non www to www, and redirect the index page to www.mysite.com.
All straight forward, have never questioned this practice, always been advised its the ebst practice to avoid duplicate content.
Now, today, I was looking at a CMS service for a customer for their website, the website is already built and its a static website, so the CMS integration was going to mean a full rewrite of the website.
Speaking to a friend on another forum, he told me about a service called simple CMS, had a look, looks perfect for the customer ...
Went to set it up on the clients site and here is the problem.
For the CMS software to work, it MUST access the index page, because my index page is redirected to www.mysite.com , it wont work as it cant find the index page (obviously)
I questioned this with the software company, they inform me that it must access the index page, I have explained that it wont be able to and why (cause I have my index page redirected to avoid duplicate content)
To my astonishment, the person there told me that duplicate content is a huge no no with Google (that's not the astonishing part) but its not relevant to the index and non index page of a website.
This goes against everything I thought I knew ... The person also reassured me that they have worked within the SEO area for 10 years.
As I am a subscriber to SEO MOZ and no one here has anything to gain but offering advice, is this true ?
Will it not be an issue for duplicate content to show both a index page and non index page ?, will search engines not view this as duplicate content ?
Or is this SEO expert talking bull, which I suspect, but cannot be sure.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, it would make my life a lot easier for the customer to use this CMS software, but I would do it at the risk of tarnishing the work they and I have done on their ranking status
Many thanks in advance
John
-
Thanks, I thought as much
-
It will be duplicate content because you will have two or more duplicate versions of a webpage appear on different URLs.
Quoting Dr. Pete:
"In Google’s eyes, it doesn’t matter whether the pages have extensions (“.php”), the home-page is at the root (“/”) or at index.php, or even if every page is being driven off of one physical template. There are four unique URLs, and that means there are four pages. If Google can crawl them all, they’ll all be indexed (usually)."
**Source: **http://www.seomoz.org/blog/which-page-is-canonical **Reference link: **http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization
I hope this helps.
-
Wow, just rereading that myslef, its rather a long winded way to ask a simple question
Put simply, is it ok to have both the www.mysite.com and the www,mysite.com/index.html page, will it be viewed as duplicate content by search engines
Thanks
John
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
-
Customer Reviews on Product Page / Pagination / Crawl 3 review pages only
Hi experts, I present customer feedback, reviews basically, on my website for the products that are sold. And with this comes the ability to read reviews and obviously with pagination to display the available reviews. Now I want users to be able to flick through and read the reviews to help them satisfy whatever curiosity they have. My only thinking is that the page that contains the reviews, with each click of the pagination will present roughly the same content. The only thing that changes is the title tags which will contain the number in the H1 to display the page number. I'm thinking this could be duplication but i have yet to be notified by Google in my Search console... Should i block crawlers from crawling beyond page 3 of reviews? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Train4Academy.co.uk0 -
Why does Google's search results display my home page instead of my target page?
Why does Google's search results display my home page instead of my target page?
Technical SEO | | h.hedayati6712365410 -
Sudden decrease in indexed AMP pages after 8/1/16 update
After the AMP update on 8/1/16, the number of AMP pages indexed suddenly dropped by about 50% and it's crushing our search traffic- I haven't been able to find any documentation on any changes to look out for and why we are getting a penalty- any advice or something I should look out for?
Technical SEO | | nystromandy0 -
Why Google ranks a page with Meta Robots: NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW?
Hi guys, I was playing with the new OSE when I found out a weird thing: if you Google "performing arts school london" you will see w w w . mountview . org. uk at the 3rd position. The point is that page has "Meta Robots: NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW", why Google indexed it? Here you can see the robots.txt allows Google to index the URL but not the content, in article they also say the meta robots tag will properly avoid Google from indexing the URL either. Apparently, in my case that page is the only one has the tag "NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW", but it's the home page. so I said to myself: OK, perhaps they have just changed that tag therefore Google needs time to re-crawl that page and de-index following the no index tag. How long do you think it will take to don't see that page indexed? Do you think it will effect the whole website, as I suppose if you have that tag on your home page (the root domain) you will lose a lot of links' juice - it's totally unnatural a backlinks profile without links to a root domain? Cheers, Pierpaolo
Technical SEO | | madcow780 -
"One Page With Two Links To Same Page; We Counted The First Link" Is this true?
I read this to day http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 I thought to myself, yep, thats what I been reading in Moz for years ( pitty Matt could not confirm that still the case for 2014) But reading though the comments Michael Martinez of http://www.seo-theory.com/ pointed out that Mat says "...the last time I checked, was 2009, and back then -- uh, we might, for example, only have selected one of the links from a given page."
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays
Which would imply that is does not not mean it always the first link. Michael goes on to say "Back in 2008 when Rand WRONGLY claimed that Google was only counting the first link (I shared results of a test where it passed anchor text from TWO links on the same page)" then goes on to say " In practice the search engine sometimes skipped over links and took anchor text from a second or third link down the page." For me this is significant. I know people that have had "SEO experts" recommend that they should have a blog attached to there e-commence site and post blog posts (with no real interest for readers) with anchor text links to you landing pages. I thought that posting blog post just for anchor text link was a waste of time if you are already linking to the landing page with in a main navigation as google would see that link first. But if Michael is correct then these type of blog posts anchor text link blog posts would have value But who is' right Rand or Michael?0 -
Targeting multiple keywords with index page
Quick keyword question.... I just started working with a client that is ranking fairly well for a number of keywords with his index page. Right now he has a bunch of duplicate titles, descriptions, etc across the entire site. There are 5 different keywords in the title of the index page alone. I am wondering if it OK to target 3 different keywords with the index page? Or, if I should cut it down to 1. Think blue widget, red widget, and widget making machines. I want each of the individual keywords to improve but don't want to lose what I have either. Any ideas? THANKS!!!!
Technical SEO | | SixTwoInteractive0 -
Has Google stopped rendering author snippets on SERP pages if the author's G+ page is not actively updated?
Working with a site that has multiple authors and author microformat enabled. The image is rendering for some authors on SERP page and not for others. Difference seems to be having an updated G+ page and not having a constantly updating G+ page. any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | irvingw0 -
What's the difference between a category page and a content page
Hello, Little confused on this matter. From a website architectural and content stand point, what is the difference between a category page and a content page? So lets say I was going to build a website around tea. My home page would be about tea. My category pages would be: White Tea, Black Tea, Oolong Team and British Tea correct? ( I Would write content for each of these topics on their respective category pages correct?) Then suppose I wrote articles on organic white tea, white tea recipes, how to brew white team etc...( Are these content pages?) Do I think link FROM my category page ( White Tea) to my ( Content pages ie; Organic White Tea, white tea receipes etc) or do I link from my content page to my category page? I hope this makes sense. Thanks, Bill
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0