Trailing slash and rel="canonical"
-
Our website is in a directory format:
http://www.website.com/website.asp
Our homepage display URL is http://www.website.com which currently matches our to eliminate the possibility of duplicate content.
However, I noticed that in the SERPs, google displays the homepage with a trailing slash http://www.website.com/
My question: should I change the rel="canonical" to have a trailing slash? I noticed one of our competitors uses the trailing slash in their rel="canonical"
Do potential benefits outweigh the risks?
I can PM further information if necessary.
Thanks for the assistance in advance...
-
Thanks for the help George and participating in the discussion. I like the ease of the syntax involved with the non-www version, but I think people's and browsers natural inclination towards the www version makes it the most practical at this juncture. Perhaps if you're building a new site the less traditional non-www might be used, but like yourself, I also prefer the www.
Thanks,
Marty
-
It's really up to you and your marketing team I suppose. Maybe ask which sounds better (e.g. "for the best jambalaya in town go to www.jambalaya.com!" vs. "for the best jambalaya in town go to jambalaya.com!").
I prefer www.example.com myself.
-
Yes, I realized my typo after I posted, thanks. We do use the www version consistently, so no problem there. That being said, what's your take on the www vs non-www preferred domain structure, I've noticed some popular site (mashable comes to mind) going away from the www preferred domain -- just like to hear differing opinions if/when you have the time.
Thanks,
Marty
-
Yes, I realized my typo after I posted, thanks. We do use the www version consistently, so no problem there. That being said, what's your take on the www vs non-www preferred domain structure, I've noticed some popular site (mashable comes to mind) going away from the www preferred domain -- just like to hear differing opinions if/when you have the time.
Thanks,
Marty
-
I don't think you will lose any link juice.
I also don't think it matters which URL you use for domain root. That said, it would matter if you were using http://www.domain.com versus http://domain.com. Otherwise, I don't think you need to worry.
-
Hello George, thank you for your helpful response. While I knew it was the case for absolute URLs and subdirectories, I was unsure whether it also pertained to the root domain. The link provided a helpful explanation, although SEO's have been, "reasonably sure that just about all search engines will be normalizing all those URLs to be the same," in the past only to have those certainties change unexpectedly. That being said, I think the forum made a good point in saying,"search engines generally don't want to deliberately add duplicates to their index."
With our canonical URL set to www.domain.com , do you believe there will be any loss of link juice with backlinks using both the domain.com and domain.com/ , or will it just be a better indicator to the search engines that both URLs are one in the same? Also do you think it matters that the domain root with the trailing slash is the one that shows up in the Google SERPs? --- to me that seems to indicate that Google prefers the root domain in directories to have a trailing slash
-
Hi Marty, there is really no difference between root domain URLs with or without trailing slashes.
Note, however, that this is not true for absolute URLs: http://www.example.com/page is not the same as http://www.example.com/page/. For absolute URLs that are not the root domain, you need to be pretty explicit about whether or not it has a trailing slash. Many content management systems (e.g. WordPress) will let you choose to have trailing slashes or not.
At this point, I don't think you need to do anything with your homepage canonical URL since it is the same as adding a trailing slash.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Use of "/" and using fractions in titles
We are a company that sells pipe and fittings. An example of a part that someone will search for is : 3/4" PVC Socket I am not sure how best to represent the fraction in the title of the page that has such a product. I am concerned that if I use the forward slash it will be misinterpreted by search engines (although it will be interpreted properly by users). A lot of folk search for the product by the fraction size and so it would be good to be able to represent it in the title, but I don't want to get "punished" by confusing search engines. I could replace the forward slash with a hyphen or pipe symbol, but then may look a bit weird to our users... Any recommendations? Bob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobBawden11 -
Can adding "noindex" help with quality penalizations?
Hello Moz fellows, I have another question about content quality and Panda related penalization. I was wondering this: If I have an entire section of my site that has been penalized due to thin content, can adding "noindex,follow" to all pages belonging to that section help de-penalizing the rest of the site in the short term, while we work to improve those penalized pages, which is going to take a long time? Can that be considered a "short term solution" to improve the overall site scoring on Google index while we work to improve those penalized pages, and, once ready, we remove the "noindex" tag? I am eager to know your thoughts on this possible strategy. Thank you in advance to everyone!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
When i search for my domain name - google asks "did you mean" - why?
Hi all, I just noticed something quite odd - if i do a search for my domain name (see: http://goo.gl/LBc1lz) google shows my domain as first result, but it also asks "did i mean" and names another website with very similar name. the other site has far lower PA/DA according to Moz, any ideas why google is doing this? and more inportantly how i could stop it? please advise James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | isntworkdull0 -
"Hot Desk" type office space to establish addresses in multiple locations
Hello Mozzers, I'm noticing increasing numbers of clients' competitors getting physical addresses and phone numbers in multiple locations, no doubt partly for SEO purposes. These are little more than ghost presences (in hot desk style office space) and the phone numbers are simply diverted. Do such physical addresses put them at an SEO advantage (over and above those who don't have hot desk style space and location phone numbers). Or does Google weed out hot desk type office spaces where they can? Your thoughts/experience would be very welcome! Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Do I eventually 301 a page on our site that "expires," to a page that's related, but never expires, just to utilize the inbound link juice?
Our company gets inbound links from news websites that write stories about upcoming sporting events. The links we get are pointing to our event / ticket inventory pages on our commerce site. Once the event has passed, that event page is basically a dead page that shows no ticket inventory, and has no content. Also, each “event” page on our site has a unique url, since it’s an event that will eventually expire, as the game gets played, or the event has passed. Example of a url that a news site would link to: mysite.com/tickets/soldier-field/t7493325/nfc-divisional-home-game-chicago bears-vs-tbd-tickets.aspx Would there be any negative ramifications if I set up a 301 from the dead event page to another page on our site, one that is still somewhat related to the product in question, a landing page with content related to the team that just played, or venue they play in all season. Example, I would 301 to: mysite.com/venue/soldier-field tickets.aspx (This would be a live page that never expires.) I don’t know if that’s manipulating things a bit too much.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ticket_King1 -
What our peoples list from from 1 to 10 the most important "on page" Factors
we are all at different stages in our SEO and all have different skills and experiences would like to see if people have the same list or similar with this question.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReSEOlve0 -
Merging blog post tags within static page - Rel = Canonical?
As a blogger, I use a combination of categories and tags in order to organize my content. I do index tags because they've been very powerful for SEO purposes, but there are certain keywords in which I'd like to be able to create an entirely separate static page with the tagged posts merged onto it. So in other words, this is what I'd like the landing page to be: www.website.com/keyword as opposed to www.website.com/tags/keyword Because of this, I'm uncertain what I need to do with that tag page. With this, I would assume that www.website.com/tags/keywords needs to be indexed, but what would be the wise thing to do? Do I place a rel=canonical on www.website.com/tags/keyword to the static page? Do I do a simple re-direct? Do I just leave it indexed? Will it dilute my desired landing page? Would appreciate all comments and thoughts. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | longview0 -
Why DBDResults.com is #1 on Google for "Internet Marketing Agency"?
They have a new site, no links, no content, their page isn't optimized for this keyword (it's not even one on the page or their page title)... They only have 5 incoming links with the keyword in it, but its competitors have way more. Can someone solve this mystery?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | elcrazyhorse0