Removing the Trailing Slash in Magento

[brandonegroup]

Hi guys,

We have noticed trailing slash vs non-trailing slash duplication on one of our sites.

Example:
Duplicate: https://www.example.com.au/living/
Preferred: https://www.example.com.au/living

So, SEO-wise, we suggested placing a canonical tag on all trailing slash pointing to non-trailing slash.

However, devs have advised against removing the trailing slash from some URLs with a blanket rule, as this may break functionality in Magento that depends on the trailing slash. The full site would need to be tested after implementing a blanket rewrite rule.

Is any other way to address this trailing slash duplication issue without breaking anything in Magento?

Keen to hear from you guys.

Cheers,

[effectdigital]

You could always force trailing slashes instead of removing all trailing slashes.

What you really want to establish, is which structure has been linked to more often (internally and externally). A 301 redirect, even a deeper more complex rule - is seldom the answer in isolation. What are you going to do (for example) when you implement this, then you realise most of the internal links use the opposite structure to the one which you picked, and then all your internal redirects get pushed through 301s and your page-speed scores go down?

What you have to do is crawl the site now, in advance - and work out the internal structure. Spend a lot of time on it, days if you have to, get to grips with the nuts and bolts of it. Figure out which structure most internal/external links utilise and then support it

Likely you will need a more complex rule than 'force all' or 'strip all' trailing slashes. It may be the case that most pages contain child URLs or sub-pages, so you decide to force the railing slash (as traditionally that denotes further layers underneath). But then you'll realise you have embedded images in some pages with URLs ending in ".jpg" or ".png". With those, they're files (hence the file extension at the end of the URL) so with those you'd usually want to strip the slash instead of forcing it

At that point you'd have to write something that said, force trailing slash unless the URL ends with a file extension, in which case always remove the slash (or similar)

Picking the right structural format for any site usually takes a while and involves quite a bit of research. It's a variable answer, depending upon the build of the site in question - and how it has been linked to externally, from across the web

I certainly think, that too many people use the canonical tag as a 'cop out' for not creating a unified, strong, powerful on-site architecture. I would say do stick with the 301s and consolidate your site architecture, but do some crawling and backlink audits - really do it properly, instead of just taking someone's 'one-liner' answer online. Here at Moz Q&A, there are a lot of people who really know their stuff! But there's no substitute for your own research and data

If you're aiming for a specific architecture and have been told it could break the site, ask why. Try and get exceptions worked into your recommendations which flip the opposite way -  i.e: "always strip the trailing slash, except in X situation where it would break the site. In X situation always force the trailing slash instead"

Your ultimate aim is to make each page accessible from just one URL (except where parameters come into play, that's another kettle of fish to be handled separately). You don't have to have EVERYTHING on the site one way or the other in 'absolute' terms. If some URLs have to force trailing slash whilst others remove it, fine. The point is to get them all locked down to one accessible format, but you can have varied controlled architectures inside of one website