Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Why do some URLs for a specific client have "/index.shtml"?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Why do some URLs for a specific client have "/index.shtml"?

    Technical SEO
    3
    3
    763
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • FranFerrara
      FranFerrara last edited by

      Reviewing our client's URLs for a 301 redirect strategy, we have noticed that many URLs have "/index.shtml." The part we don'd understand is these URLs aren't the homepage and they have multiple folders followed by "/index.shtml" Does anyone happen to know why this may be occurring? Is there any SEO value in keeping the "/index.shtml" in the URL?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • customerparadigm.com
        customerparadigm.com last edited by

        SHTML is an old-school way to use SSI (server side includes) in what is otherwise a static HTML page.
        Stack Overflow talks about this in more detail here:
        http://stackoverflow.com/questions/519619/what-is-shtml

        Web servers know that if the page is .shtml, then it's okay to run inline php code, for example.

        My guess is that your .shtml files are older remnants of SSI files.

        I'm not a big fan of changing URLs just to clean up things, because if you change links you will need to use a 301 redirect, and that will keep about 85% of the SEO value of the original link.

        If you do want to use inline php code on .html pages, I agree with Travis, above. You can modify your .htaccess file with:

        addhandler x-httpd-php5-cgi .htm
        addhandler x-httpd-php5-cgi .html

        (This will allow you to run php in static HTML files, without having to change the file extension to .php)

        Hope this helps!

        • Jeff
        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Travis_Bailey
          Travis_Bailey last edited by

          It sounds like there's a problem with the .htaccess file. There's a lot of potential negatives to the situation. One of those is duplicate content.

          Find out if the potential duplicates are indexed. Perform a link audit for those pages and 301 or 410, depending upon value. I'm not a big fan of 'excessive' 301 redirects, so knowing nothing else about the situation I would err on the side of 410s.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • 1 / 1
          • First post
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          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.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • zasite

            Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google?

            Hi, we re-branded and launched a new website in February 2016. In June we saw a steep drop in the number of URLs indexed, and there have continued to be smaller dips since. We started an account with Moz and found several thousand high priority crawl errors for duplicate pages and have since fixed those with canonical tags. However, we are still seeing the number of URLs indexed drop. Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google? I can't seem to find a definitive answer on this. A good portion of our URLs have canonical tags because they are just events with different dates, but otherwise the content of the page is the same.

            Technical SEO | | zasite
            0
          • One2OneDigital

            My old URL's are still indexing when I have redirected all of them, why is this happening?

            I have built a new website and have redirected all my old URL's to their new ones but for some reason Google is still indexing the old URL's. Also, the page authority for all of my pages has dropped to 1 (apart from the homepage) but before they were between 12 to 15. Can anyone help me with this?

            Technical SEO | | One2OneDigital
            0
          • IvanC

            How can I Style Long "List Posts" in Wordpress?

            Hi All, I have been working on a list-post which spans over 100 items. Each item on the list has a quick blurb to explain it, an image and a few resource links. I am trying to find an attractive way to present this long list post in Wordpress. I have seen several sites with long list posts however; they place their items one on top of the other which yields a VERY long page and the end user has to do a lot of scrolling.  Others turn their lists into slideshows, but I have no data on how slides perform against 10-mile-long-lists which load in 1 page. I would like to do something similar to what List25.com does as they present about 5-10 items per page and they seem to have pagination. The pagination part I understand however; is there a shortcode plugin to format lists in an attractive way just like list25?

            Technical SEO | | IvanC
            0
          • melen

            Staging site and "live" site have both been indexed by Google

            While creating a site we forgot to password protect the staging site while it was being built.  Now that the site has been moved to the new domain, it has come to my attention that both the staging site (site.staging.com) and the "live" site (site.com) are both being indexed.  What is the best way to solve this problem?  I was thinking about adding a 301 redirect from the staging site to the live site via HTACCESS. Any recommendations?

            Technical SEO | | melen
            0
          • HMK-NL

            No indexing url including query string with Robots txt

            Dear all, how can I block url/pages with query strings like page.html?dir=asc&order=name with robots txt? Thanks!

            Technical SEO | | HMK-NL
            0
          • edantadis

            Is it a problem to have a homepage with a slug / URL ?

            Hi, We are designing a web site for one of our clients, and using a home made CMS. I don't know how this CMS has been built, but anyways, in the end the homepage has a URL format which looks like this : www.mydomain.com/my-custom-url.html. No www.mydomain.com. Is it dangerous for SEO to have a slug/URL directly on the homepage ? Do you have experiences, cases where it has impacted a site negatively ? The main problem I expect is duplicate content (with Google seeing both www.mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com/my-custom-url.html as being different pages) but apparently the CMS is doing a 302 redirect from the root domain to the URL (I told my colleague it should at least be a 301). Sorry if this question seems like basic SEO knowledge, but I really can't find a definitive answer on the subject. Thank you very much 🙂

            Technical SEO | | edantadis
            0
          • upick-162391

            Trailing Slashes In Url use Canonical Url or 301 Redirect?

            I was thinking of using 301 redirects for trailing slahes to no trailing slashes for my urls. EG: www.url.com/page1/ 301 redirect to www.url.com/page1 Already got a redirect for non-www to www already. Just wondering in my case would it be best to continue using htacces for the trailing slash redirect or just go with Canonical URLs?

            Technical SEO | | upick-162391
            0
          • ShaMenz

            Is "last modified" time in XML Sitemaps important?

            My Tech lead is concerned that his use of a script to generate XML sitemaps for some client sites may be causing negative issues for those sites. His concern centers around the fact that the script generates a sitemap which indicates that every URL page in the site was last modified at the exact same date and time. I have never heard anything to indicate that this might be a problem, but I do know that the sitemaps I generate for other client sites can choose server response or not. What is the best way to generate the sitemap? Last mod from actual time modified, or all set at one date and time?

            Technical SEO | | ShaMenz
            0

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Digital Marketers
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • Local Citation Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter

          Access all your tools in one place. Whether you're tracking progress or analyzing data, everything you need is at your fingertips.

          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.