How best to deal with www.home.com and www.home.com/index.html
-
Firstly, this is for an .asp site - and all my usual ways of fixing this (e.g. via htaccess) don't seem to work.
I'm working on a site which has www.home.com and www.home.com/index.html - both URL's resolve to the same page/content.
If I simply drop a rel canonical into the page, will this solve my dupe content woes?
The canonical tag would then appear in both www.home.com and www.home.com/index.html cases.
If the above is Ok, which version should I be going with?
- or -
Thanks in advance folks,
James @ Creatomatic -
It certainly does help, many thanks Paul - hugely appreciated.
-
In this situation, using a canonical to point to the primary is a workaround, but the correct way to handle it is with a 301 redirect. Canonicals are to be used when both versions of the page need to be indexed, but all the influence is to be directed to a single URL.
In this case, there is no functional reason why you would want both URLs to remain in the index and be reachable by the two different addresses because they are the exact same page. Therefore the correct solution is to 301 redirect the /index.html URL to the primary URL. (This will also be cleanest to maintain, will pass maximum amount of authority, and is best for usability)
ASP sites are hosted on Microsoft IIS servers. IIS does not use or recognize .htaccess files. Instead, you will need to use the URL Rewrite Module. It should be preinstalled on most IIS servers, or you can request that your host/server admin add it. (If the server's older than IIS 7, you'll need a 3rd part ISAPI Rewrite module instead of Microsoft's own module)
Here's a TechRepublic article on using the Rewrite Module to perform the same sorts of functions as .htaccess on Apache servers. http://ow.ly/fXSAB In many ways, its basics are easier than .htaccess.
Note you should also be redirecting the non-www version of the site to the fully qualified domain name as well if you haven't already
Hope this helps?
Paul
-
That's correct - they are the same page.
To better explain, this is all done old-school via FTP, so any edits or changes I make to the file/page "index.html" apply to the following URL's
Is there any harm in telling search engines that the Canonical version of a page IS the same page?
(Actually, there were LOADS more but I've got fixes in place for most of these)
-
Adam, unfortunately the method you link to won't work, because the two URLs in question here are actually the same page. If this were handled this way, you'd be creating an infinite redirect looping in on itself.
Paul
-
Hi James,
First, run a crawl on your site. Is the /index.html getting picked up in the crawl? If so then it is being linked to internally. Check the navigation bar(s) to see if the link to 'Home' is linking to /index.html. Once you have found all the internal links linking to /index.html, you will then need to change these to point to the home page without the filepath (e.g. http://www.example.com/).
The second step would be to implement a canonical tag on both pages that point to the home page without the filepath. So in your example that would be as follows:
That is one way of solving any duplicate content issues without using 301 redirects via .htaccess. However, I believe there is a way to do this via .asp but you would have to search around for this. I did a quick search and found this page that might be of help.
Hope that helps,
Adam.
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
-
Website indexing issues
My website is being indexed with both https - https with www. and no leader at all. example. https//www.example.com and https//example.com and example.com 3 different versions are being indexed. How would I begin resolving this? Hosting?
Technical SEO | | DigitalRipples0 -
WWW to Non-WWW = Less Indexing?
Hi all, About 10 months ago we changed all of our urls to redirect to a non-www vs. the www because it was creating both iterations and therefore duplicate content. We didn't change anything in Webmaster Tools and it looks like our indexing went down significantly. Is this a problem? How can I fix it? *It looks like GWT also went through an update at that time? klxJ7gl
Technical SEO | | Becky_Converge0 -
When i type site:jamalon.com to discover number of pages indexed it gives me different result from google web master tools
when i type site:jamalon.com to discover number of pages indexed it gives me different result from google web master tools
Technical SEO | | Jamalon0 -
What is the best practice to seperate different locations and languages in an URL? At the moment the URL is www.abc.com/ch/de. Is there a better way to structure the URL from an SEO perspective?
I am looking for a solution for using a new URL structure without using www.abc.com**/ch/de** in the URL to deliver the right languages in specific countries where more than one language are spoken commonly. I am looking forward to your ideas!
Technical SEO | | eviom0 -
Blog.furnacefilterscanada.com/ or furnacefilterscanada.com/blog/
My shopping cart does not allow to instal a WordPress blog on a sub-domain like: furnacefilterscanada.com/blog/ But I can host my blog on another server with a sub-domain like: blog.furnacefilterscanada.com In a SEO point of view is there a difference between the 2? Link juice? Page authority? Thank you, BigBlaze
Technical SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
Robots.txt to disallow /index.php/ path
Hi SEOmoz, I have a problem with my Joomla site (yeah - me too!). I get a large amount of /index.php/ urls despite using a program to handle these issues. The URLs cause indexation errors with google (404). Now, I fixed this issue once before, but the problem persist. So I thought, instead of wasting more time, couldnt I just disallow all paths containing /index.php/ ?. I don't use that extension, but would it cause me any problems from an SEO perspective? How do I disallow all index.php's? Is it a simple: Disallow: /index.php/
Technical SEO | | Mikkehl0 -
Video Sitemaps <video:content_loc>and<video:player_loc></video:player_loc></video:content_loc>
Hi guys, If I'm creating a video sitemap do I need to use both: video:content_locandvideo:player_loc</video:player_loc></video:content_loc> Or could I just use video:content_loc?</video:content_loc> Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tug-Agency0 -
Non-www home page indexed, but www for rest of site
Hi there, grateful for any ideas on why this is happening: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:www.vitispr.com vs http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:vitispr.com Google seems to be indexing and caching vitispr.com for our home page but the www. versions for everything else. As you can see the second query finds the home page. Any ideas why that might be? Other info that might be relevant: non-www etc. are all 301'd to www versions. moved domains/urls etc. around in March of this year and for a week or we were redirecting to the non-www version webmaster tools says 'www' preferred Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JaspalX0