• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        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.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • 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
        • My Q&A
        • 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. Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?

        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.

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

        Technical SEO
        3
        4
        1886
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • inlinear
          inlinear last edited by

          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

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • CleverPhD
            CleverPhD @inlinear last edited by

            I think you have it correct there.  I always like to end in a slash for index pages

            http://inlinear.com/ - this is your home index page

            http://inlinear.com/products/ - this is your index page for the /products/ folder/group

            http://inlinear.com/products/page.php - this is a page within the /products/folder/group.

            Hardly anyone ever sets up index web pages like index.php or index.htm anymore, they are really not needed as they just make the URL longer. End in the slash and make sure that you are consistent with ending with that slash (vs dropping it off) when you link to your index pages.

            You would need to test the script you mention that rewrites the URL.  It looks like it is making sure that the index page ends in a slash, but I could be wrong.

            Side story -  I have had a CMS that uses  http://inlinear.com/products as the index page for  http://inlinear.com/products/ and this creates all kinds of issues

            1. Most people are used to not having an index page and the URL simply ending in a slash.  So even if you had a non slashed version as your index page, people would link to the slash and then you have to setup 301s to fix that.  Otherwise you end up with all kinds of duplicate page issues.

            2. I know Google Analytics looks at the slashes to group your content into reports.

            So the example index page of  http://inlinear.com/products

            would NOT be included in reports with all the pages in the /products/ group

            e.g. http://inlinear.com/products/page.php

            http://inlinear.com/products/anotherpage.php

            as /products is not "within" /products/  You then have a report on /products/ that leaves out the index page and this is normally your most important page!

            Good luck!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • inlinear
              inlinear @rhutchings last edited by

              Thank you, but in practice how does it work without file-extension?

              As I understood its fine if I put the following link to link on my homepage-index:

              http://inlinear.com/     <--- without anything...

              As well when I link to the products page:

              http://inlinear.com/products/ <--- again without anything (index.php)

              But in case of a specific page for example in the products-folder:

              http://inlinear.com/products/my-product-1.php     <--- how can I live without extension?

              I googled and found this .htaccess code. Seems it takes away .php and ads a "/"... is this the best practice?:

              Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews

              Turn mod_rewrite on

              RewriteEngine On
              RewriteBase /

              Adding a trailing slash

              RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
              RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$
              RewriteRule . %{REQUEST_URI}/ [L,R=301]

              RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
              RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
              RewriteRule ^(.*?)/?$ /$1.php [L]

              Is this what you mean?

              CleverPhD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • rhutchings
                rhutchings last edited by

                Best practice for all three cases is to never use the file extensions.  You should never link to the file extension names, and make sure in your htaccess file that you dont use the file extensions for any reason moving forward.  Why?

                1. Lets say you decide to re-do your site and it goes from PHP to another language like ASP or something.  You would have to redirect your entire site with file extensions and would shoot yourself in the foot with SEO, traffic and anything else.  By not using file extensions, you give yourself the flexibility down the road and you can maintain a constant url structure.

                2. Indexing may or may not use the file extensions depending on your htaccess/server settings.  You would then essentially be running into duplicate content pages and issues, and thereby negatively affecting your site.  Plus, it will dilute your individual page authority.

                As a side note, just be consistent with your internal linking.  Whether you use relative links or not - some discussion can be had around that.  But pick a route and go with it, just as long as you dont use the file extensions 🙂

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

                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

                • znotes

                  What's the best way to test Angular JS heavy page for SEO?

                  Hi Moz community, Our tech team has recently decided to try switching our product pages to be JavaScript dependent, this includes links, product descriptions and things like breadcrumbs in JS. Given my concerns, they will create a proof of concept with a few product pages in a QA environment so I can test the SEO implications of these changes. They are planning to use Angular 5 client side rendering without any prerendering. I suggested universal but they said the lift was too great, so we're testing to see if this works. I've read a lot of the articles in this guide to all things SEO and JS and am fairly confident in understanding when a site uses JS and how to troubleshoot to make sure everything is getting crawled and indexed. https://sitebulb.com/resources/guides/javascript-seo-resources/ However, I am not sure I'll be able to test the QA pages since they aren't indexable and lives behind a login. I will be able to crawl the page using Screaming Frog but that's generally regarded as what a crawler should be able to crawl and not really what Googlebot will actually be able to crawl and index. Any thoughts on this, is this concern valid? Thanks!

                  Technical SEO | | znotes
                  0
                • RichHamilton_qcs

                  Best practices for types of pages not to index

                  Trying to better understand best practices for when and when not use a content="noindex".  Are there certain types of pages that we shouldn't want Google to index?  Contact form pages, privacy policy pages, internal search pages, archive pages (using wordpress).  Any thoughts would be appreciated.

                  Technical SEO | | RichHamilton_qcs
                  0
                • everestagency

                  Strange URL's for client's site

                  We just picked up a new client and I've been doing some digging around on their site. They have quite the wide variety of URL's that make for a rather confusing experience. One of the milder examples is their "About" page. Normally I would expect something along the lines of: www.website.com/about I see: www.website.com/default.asp?Page=About I'm typically a graphic designer and know basically nothing about code, but I just assume this has something funky to do with how their website was constructed. I'm assuming this isn't particularly SEO friendly, but it doesn't seem too bad. Until I got to another section of their site. It's a section that logically should look like: www.website.com/training/public-seminars It's: www.website.com/default.asp?Page=MT&Area=Seminars&Sub=MRM Now that's nonsensical to me! Normally if a client has terrible URL's, I'd say let's do some redirects, but I guess I'm a little intimidated by these. Do the URL's have to be structured like this for some reason? Am I missing some important area of coding here? However, the most bizarre example is a link back to their website from yellowpages.com. Where normally I would expect it to lead to their homepage, I get this bizarre-looking thing: http://website1-px.rtrk.com/?utm_source=ReachLocal&utm_medium=PPC&utm_campaign=AssetManagement&reference_id=15&publisher=yellowpages&placement=ypwebsitemip&action_target=listing_website And as you browse through the site, that strange domain stays. For example the About page is now: http://website1-px.rtrk.com/default.asp?Page=About I would try to google this but I have no idea where to even start! What is going on with these links? Will we be able to fix them to something presentable without breaking their website?

                  Technical SEO | | everestagency
                  0
                • Nanook1

                  Is it better to use XXX.com or XXX.com/index.html as canonical page

                  Is it better to use 301 redirects or canonical page? I suspect canonical is easier. The question is, which is the best canonical page, YYY.com or YYY.com/indexhtml? I assume YYY.com, since there will be many other pages such as YYY.com/info.html, YYY.com/services.html, etc.

                  Technical SEO | | Nanook1
                  0
                • RoxBrock

                  Is it good practice to still pay for Best of the Web Directory (BOTW) and other similar one's you have to pay for?

                  I know that paid for links are hit by Google, but in the past these directories were okay. What about now? Thank you.

                  Technical SEO | | RoxBrock
                  0
                • pugh

                  Mobile site ranking instead of/as well as desktop site in desktop SERPS

                  I have just noticed that the mobile version of my site is sometimes ranking in the desktop serps either instead of as well as the desktop site. It is not something that I have noticed in the past as it doesn't happen with the keywords that I track, which are highly competitive. It is happening for results that include our brand name, e.g '[brand name][search term]'. The mobile site is served with mobile optimised content from another URL. e.g wwww.domain.com/productpage redirects to m.domain.com/productpage for mobile. Sometimes I am only seen the mobile URL in the desktop SERPS, other times I am seeing both the desktop and mobile URL for the same product. My understanding is that the mobile URL should not be ranking at all in desktop SERPS, could we be being penalised for either bad redirects or duplicate content? Any ideas as to how I could further diagnose and solve the problem if you do believe that it could be harming rankings?

                  Technical SEO | | pugh
                  0
                • Mikkehl

                  Robots.txt to disallow /index.php/ path

                  Hi SEOmoz, I have a problem with my Joomla site (yeah - me too!). I get a large amount of /index.php/ urls despite using a program to handle these issues. The URLs cause indexation errors with google (404). Now, I fixed this issue once before, but the problem persist. So I thought, instead of wasting more time, couldnt I just disallow all paths containing /index.php/ ?. I don't use that extension, but would it cause me any problems from an SEO perspective? How do I disallow all index.php's? Is it a simple: Disallow: /index.php/

                  Technical SEO | | Mikkehl
                  0
                • seekjobs

                  Best Practices for adding Dynamic URL's to XML Sitemap

                  Hi Guys, I'm working on an ecommerce website with all the product pages using dynamic URL's (we also have a few static pages but there is no issue with them). The products are updated on the site every couple of hours (because we sell out or the special offer expires) and as a result I keep seeing heaps of 404 errors in Google Webmaster tools and am trying to avoid this (if possible). I have already created an XML sitemap for the static pages and am now looking at incorporating the dynamic product pages but am not sure what is the best approach. The URL structure for the products are as follows: http://www.xyz.com/products/product1-is-really-cool
                  http://www.xyz.com/products/product2-is-even-cooler
                  http://www.xyz.com/products/product3-is-the-coolest Here are 2 approaches I was considering: 1. To just include the dynamic product URLS within the same sitemap as the static URLs using just the following http://www.xyz.com/products/ - This is so spiders have access to the folder the products are in and I don't have to create an automated sitemap for all product OR 2. Create a separate automated sitemap that updates when ever a product is updated and include the change frequency to be hourly - This is so spiders always have as close to be up to date sitemap when they crawl the sitemap I look forward to hearing your thoughts, opinions, suggestions and/or previous experiences with this. Thanks heaps, LW

                  Technical SEO | | seekjobs
                  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
                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.