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. Canonical homepage link uses trailing slash while default homepage uses no trailing slash, will this be an issue?

    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.

    Canonical homepage link uses trailing slash while default homepage uses no trailing slash, will this be an issue?

    Technical SEO
    2
    3
    1847
    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.
    • Deacyde
      Deacyde last edited by

      Hello, 1st off, let me explain my client in this case uses BigCommerce, and I don't have access to the backend like most other situations. So I have to rely on BG to handle certain issues.

      I'm curious if there is much of a difference using domain.com/ as the canonical url while BG currently is redirecting our domain to domain.com.

      I've been using domain.com/ consistently for the last 6 months, and since we switches stores on Friday, this issue has popped up and has me a bit worried that we'll loose somehow via link juice or overall indexing since this could confuse crawlers.

      Now some say that the domain url is fine using / or not, as per - https://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-and-rel-canonical But I also wanted to see what you all felt about this.

      What says you?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Deacyde
        Deacyde @GlobeRunner last edited by

        The url without a slash seems to be the default now, while url with a slash redirects to one without, only for homepage. all other subpages have slashes as preferred and no matter what result in trailing slash, which is a major thing I wanted.

        Thank you, am looking into things further via a Bigcommerce post on their forums, however I'm not holding my breath as some responses can take a good bit, since there is a ocean of users seeking responses as well.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • GlobeRunner
          GlobeRunner last edited by

          It really shouldn't be an issue, as most sites will use a 301 to redirect pages without a / to a URL with a slash and vice versa. It depends on your particular CMS, though, on how it deals with it. I know that on certain sites that I am familiar with do redirect the pages without a / to pages with a slash, so linking internally to a page without a slash does a 301 redirect to a URL with the slash.

          When it comes to Google, however, I believe Google treats both at the same, so http://www.domain.com is the same as http://www.domain.com/

          The only concern I would have is whether or not the URL without the slash redirects properly to the URL with the slash.

          Deacyde 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

          • ghesta

            In writing the url, it is better to use the language used by the people of my country or English?

            We speak Persian and all people search in Persian on Google. But I read in some sources that the url should be in English. Please tell me which language to use for url writing?
            For example, I brought down two models: 1fb0e134-10dc-4737-904f-bfdf07143a98-image.png https://ghesta.ir/blog/how-to-become-rich/
            2)https://ghesta.ir/blog/چگونه-پولدار-شویم/

            Technical SEO | | ghesta
            0
          • GhillC

            Broken canonical link errors

            Hello, Several tools I'm using are returning errors due to "broken canonical links". However, I'm not too sure why is that. Eg.
            Page URL: domain.com/page.html?xxxx
            Canonical link URL: domain.com/page.html
            Returns an error. Any idea why? Am I doing it wrong? Thanks,
            G

            Technical SEO | | GhillC
            1
          • amastone

            Canonical tag use for ecommerce product page detail

            Hi, I have a category page I want to rank. This page has 24 different products quite similar but not exactly the same.
            I want to use canonical tag in any product to the parent category. 
            Is this a right use of the canonical? 
            Category page I'm talking about is : Finger bits If I understand how to use canonical tags I can improve all my category pages. thanks marco

            Technical SEO | | amastone
            0
          • Uber_

            Add trailing slash after removing .html extention

            My website is non www ,it has wordpress in subdirectory and some static webpages in the root and other subdirectory 1. i want to remove .html extention from the webpages in the root and
            the others static webpages in subdirectory.
            2. add slash at the end.
            3. 301 redirect from non slash to url with slash. so it should be http://ghadaalsaman.com/articles.html to http://ghadaalsaman.com/articles/ and http://ghadaalsaman.com/en/poem-list.html to http://ghadaalsaman.com/en/poem-list/ the below code 1. working with non slash at the end **2. **redirect 301 url with slash to non here's my .htaccess <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews RewriteEngine On
            RewriteBase /</ifmodule> #removing trailing slash
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d     
            RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ $1 [R=301,L] #www to non
            RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(([a-z0-9_]+.)?domain.com)$ [NC]
            RewriteRule .? http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] #html
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
            RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L] #index redirect
            RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/
            RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://ghadaalsaman.com/ [R=301,L]
            RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} .html
            RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ /$1 [R=301,L] PS everything is ok with the wordpress , the problems with static pages only. Thanks in advanced

            Technical SEO | | Uber_
            0
          • james-tb

            How to force Wordpress to remove trailing slashes?

            I've searched around quite a bit for a solution here, but I can't find anything. I apologize if this is too technical for the forum. I have a Wordpress site hosted on Nginx by WP Engine. Currently it resolves requests to URLs either with or without a trailing slash. So, both of these URLs are functional: <code>mysite.com/single-post</code> and <code>mysite.com/single-post/</code> I would like to remove the trailing slash from all posts, forcing mysite.com/single-post/ to redirect to mysite.com/single-post. I created a redirect rule on the server: ^/(.*)/$ -> /$1 and this worked well for end-users, but rendered the admin panel inaccessible. Somewhere, Wordpress is adding a trailing slash back on to the URL mysite.com/wp-admin, resulting in a redirect loop. I can't see anything obvious in .htaccess. Where is this rule adding a trailing slash to 'wp-admin' established? Thanks very much

            Technical SEO | | james-tb
            0
          • inlinear

            Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?

            Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
            RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
            RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html 
            RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
            2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
            Holger

            Technical SEO | | inlinear
            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
          • glennfriesen

            Does the Referral Traffic from a Link Influence the SEO Value of that Link?

            If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO? Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic? Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links? 5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg

            Technical SEO | | glennfriesen
            1

          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
          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.