Index.html vs. default.html

[bhsiao]

Hi,

I have a website that is about 7 years old. I had been using index.html as the home page. When I redesigned my site about 3 months ago I changed it to default.html. The old index.html page was still on my server. I just realized my mistake. All of my links to the home page lead to the new default.html.

However, people are still landing on the old index.html. I have change the old index.html to the new design  but that means i have 2 "home" pages out there. Should i delete one? Should I leave them both there but use the canonical tag for one so it is not considered duplicate content?

What is best for my rankings?

[RyanKent]

Thank you.

If that was my site, I would redirect your /index.html and /default.html pages to http://www.normas9000.com/.

I would then update your canonical as well. Lastly, there is no reason to have both the default and index.html pages so I would remove one of them.

[bhsiao]

Thanks for your help, http://www.normas9000.com

[RyanKent]

Can you share your domain name? It would make this a bit easier with specific examples.

The question I have for you is, when I type in www.yourdomain.com, what is the URL that appears in the browser? Is that URL www.yourdomain.com? or www.yourdomain.com/index.html? Also, take a look and see is you have any ReWrite's happening in your htaccess file.

In short, I recommend you 301 www.yourdomain.com/default.html to www.yourdomain.com IF you have any links (internal or external) to the default.html file. You would only make this redirect if your home page actually is www.yourdomain.com. If it is actually www.yourdomain.com/index.html then you can use that instead.

It gets confusing speaking in general terms and trying to address all the possibilities.

[Zitana]

I agree with Ryan. 301-redirects to mydomain.com would be the best solution since index.html is the default file on your web server and visitors prefer remembering mydomain.com in stead of mydomain.com/default.html. Besides, unless "default" is a keyword, "default.html" doesn't have any seo value. In fact, it's recommended to use folders in stead of file names.

You can change the default page in your web server's apache configuration however.

[bhsiao]

If I type in mydomain.com, it brings me to the index.html version of my home page. So, I can 301 the default.html version to go to index.html and then make all my internal links go to index.html

Am I understanding you correctly? Thanks!

[RyanKent]

I would recommend friendly URLs which avoids this entire issue.

More specifically, I am suggesting your home page URL be something like www.mydomain.com, not www.mydomain.com/index.html nor www.mydomain.com/default.html

Whatever you decide, the best solution would be to 301 your old home page(s) to your new home page. You would also want to update any internal site links to your current home page. If you have control or influence to update any external links, do that as well.