Duplicate content on homepage?

[idv]

Hi

I have just created a new campaign and it states that I have duplicate page content which would affect search rankings.

Basically it is counting my site www.mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com/index.php as two seperate pages.

How can I make it so that only www.mydomain.com is visible reducing the duplicate content issue?

Many Thanks

[Alex-Harford]

Yes, not forgetting the quotes around the URL. I would still add one, but there are others who wouldn't. More information here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/complete-guide-to-rel-canonical-how-to-and-why-not (note it's a year old)

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday

[idv]

Thanks

So in the header on the page if I include

<link <span>rel="canonical" href=http://www.mydomain.com/></link <span>

This will tell Google, Bing etc that my preferred option is http://www.mydomain.com over http://www.mydomain.com/index.php

And this can be used in conjunction with the .htaccess file which I have already added under the web root as per Firsts advice.

Or is this not required if I have already uploaded a .htaccess file?

Thanks guys for all your advice

[Alex-Harford]

Add  rel="canonical" href="http://www.mydomain.com" /> or <link <span>rel="canonical" href="http://www.mydomain.com/" /> (depending on your preferred version - those would be considered two separate pages too) between the head tags of your homepage. This will let Google know of your change and combine the page authority of any stray index.php's left over.</link <span>

You should be careful about uploading a new .htaccess page as you might be writing over something important that already exists, so make sure this isn't the case.

P.S. This is in addition to what First says about changing the links, and if you use IIS you can set rewrite rules in there without having to mess with a .htaccess file.

[First]

Yes, it does go under the root.

Yes, just open notepad

Yes, change the .html to .php

[idv]

I have access to the FTP root but cant locate a .htaccess file - does this go under the root and do you just open notepad enter (I have replaced .html with .php is this correct as I am not using .html suffix)

RewriteEngine on 
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php\ HTTP/ 
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://www.domain.com/ [R=301,L] 

and save as .htaccess under the web root ?

[First]

The best way is to do both but if you dont have access to the .htaccess file than just  remove ALL of the link back to www.mydomain.com/index.php and replace with www.mydomain.com

[idv]

Is there a way of achieving this without using the .htaccess file?

[First]

To avoid this, you can use the following ModRewrite rules in your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on 
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html\ HTTP/ 
RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.domain.com/ [R=301,L] 

Also make sure that all your links back to the home page (both in your navigation and your internal links) are www.mydomain.com and not  www.mydomain.com/index.php