Index.html vs. default.html
-
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?
-
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.
-
Thanks for your help, http://www.normas9000.com
-
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.
-
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.
-
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!
-
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.
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.
Related Questions
-
Website is not getting indexed
Hi,
Content Development | | Aman0022
Hope you all are doing great!
I have created a dog blog a few weeks back which talks about all things about dogs (http://pawspulse.com/). I am publishing couple of articles everyday which are more than 5k words long with proper keyword research but still Google is not indexing my content. My content is systematically categorized in proper categories related to dog guides, nutrition, accessories, dog breeds etc.
Can anyone help me how to get the website index faster fully. Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks0 -
Google won't index my website because "certain conditions" weren't met
I found the answer on this -- interestingly, I had changed registrars and they didn't pull over the DNS information correctly. This caused the above issues. Once I identified this, I updated the DNS correctly -- at registrar and server -- and things worked fine.
Content Development | | newbyguy0 -
If my blog is on Wordpress, and I've installed the AMP plug-in, what do I need to do to get Google to start indexing all my posts as AMP pages?
If I add /amp to the end of any of my posts, I can see that the plug-in is working. It's been months since I installed it, though, and Google hasn't indexed any of the AMP pages. Am I missing a step?
Content Development | | DeanRamadan0 -
Blog.site.com vs site.com/blog
Which is better for SEO: blog.site.com or site.com/blog. In other words, is it better to have the blog running in a subdomain or as a director within the main site? Right now we are running as a subdomain, but want to be sure Google isn't considering that a separate site. The blog shows up separately on Google Analytics, which makes me think site.com/blog is better if for no other reason, it would give our domain greater traffic. Not sure if this matters, but some site info: our site is a sharing economy tool for renting your stuff we are running the blog on Wordpress blog traffic is about 5% of total traffic
Content Development | | TapGoods0 -
Sitemap - 200 out of 2100 pages indexed
I submitted the .xml sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools and only 200 out of 2100 pages were indexed.
Content Development | | Madlena
Why is that and what can I do ?0 -
One story stands out for not getting indexed?
We have all our stories published today ( 20-Jun-2013 ) got indexed by google except this ( http://coed.com/2013/06/20/heres-a-video-of-kate-upton-topless-on-a-horse/ ). Do anyone out there have any clue about that? Thanks in advance
Content Development | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
Word Press Page vs Post
Hello, I have a site that is dedicated to real estate. I designed it in dreamweaver. I also attached a blog to it with wordpress. Its self hosted. My question is what is the best way to increase my search rankings with wordpress? Page vs Post? Any tips?
Content Development | | bronxpad0 -
Tweetmeme vs Twitter Button
So I am curious as to what benefits to each of these plugins would outweigh one or the other. I began using the Tweetmeme plugin for our main blog because it offered the option to use our own bit.ly pro short code. +1 for branding. Plus I think there is some value in having your site and link on tweetmeme, but I overheard that Twitter's own Tweet Button for blogs offers better SEO than the Tweetmeme for blogs. I am out of my area of expertise. Any thoughts?
Content Development | | Thos0030