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.
How do I get rel='canonical' to eliminate the trailing slash on my home page??
-
I have been searching high and low. Please help if you can, and thank you if you spend the time reading this. I think this issue may be affecting most pages.
SUMMARY: I want to eliminate the trailing slash that is appended to my website.
SPECIFIC ISSUE: I want www.threewaystoharems.com to showing up to users and search engines without the trailing slash but try as I might it shows up like www.threewaystoharems.com/ which is the canonical link.
WHY? and I'm concerned my back-links to the link without the trailing slash will not be recognized but most people are going to backlink me without a trailing slash. I don't want to loose linkjuice from the people and the search engines not being in consensus about what my page address is.
THINGS I"VE TRIED:
(1) I've gone in my wordpress settings under permalinks and tried to specify no trailing slash. I can do this here but not for the home page.
(2) I've tried using the SEO by yoast to set the canonical page. This would work if I had a static front page, but my front page is of blog posts and so there is no advanced page settings to set the canonical tag.
(3) I'd like to just find the source code of the home page, but because it is CSS, I don't know where to find the reference. I have gone into the css files of my wordpress theme looking in header and index and everywhere else looking for a specification of what the canonical page is. I am not able to find it. I'm thinking it is actually specified in the .htaccess file.
(4) Went into cpanel file manager looking for files that contain Canonical. I only found a file called canonical.php . the only thing that seemed like it was worth changing was changing line 139 from $redirect_url = home_url('/'); to $redirect_url = home_url(''); nothing happened. I'm thinking it is actually specified in the .htaccess file.
(5) I have gone through the .htaccess file and put thes 4 lines at the top (didn't redirect or create the proper canonical link) and then at the bottom of the file (also didn't redirect or create the proper canonical link) : RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([a-z.]+)?threewaystoharems.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteRule .? http://www.%1threewaystoharems.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]Please help friends.
-
Having a canonical link pointing to that same url as in the address bar has no affect as far as search engines are concern, the reason a-moz.groupbuyseo.org gives for doing this is that if some one scrapes your site, the canonical will point back to the original.
The whole idea of canonical tags and 301's is to do with requests, you want the all requests showing the same content to appear the same page to the search engine.
With normal pages a slash means a different request that without, and to fix it you need to create a 301 that requests again to the correct url. in the process you have lost a bit of link juice.
but when requesting the home page with or without the "/", the request is the same. there is no need to fix it.
press F12 in your browser and test it yourself using the network tab, you can see that entering the url with or without the "/" on the homepage results in the same request.
-
Thank you for your response Alan.
If what you say is true why wouldn't google webmaster tools specifically say that in their article on Canonical links? and why would high pr sites like a-moz.groupbuyseo.org feel the need to specify the correct link with a canonical link on their homepage. Just because the browsers read the homepage as the same does not suggest to me that it does not matter if one specifies which is the correct one. The question at hand is not whether it can be read but whether it can be back-linked to properly.
-
If you have a trailing slash, on a url like domain.com/mypage/ then that is a different url to domain.com/mypage
If you fix this with a 301 you lose a bit of link juice in the redirect.
but if you are talking about a homepage url such as domain.com and domain.com/ these are not treated as different urls, there is no redirect between them. there is no problem here, don't worry about it
-
Philip,
You are the man. That totally worked.
I do believe that google is smart enough to see them as the same, I also think it would make sense that they are trying to weed out most people that don't know what they are doing by giving priority rank to websites that backlinks that are consistent with their canonical specification. They say in their support articles that they see the trailing slash and no trailing slash sites as 2 separate sites and that webmasters will be spreading their link juice if they don't specify which one to use. It seems to logically follow that if your web users are linking to the "wrong" page, google is not going to give priority because it signifies that the developer is not properly branding his site and/or hasn't created the user experience to cause it to happen properly. Here are 2 sources where google talks about their stance on canonical links: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en and https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en&ref_topic=2371375 . I'd like to hear any more thoughts on my hypothesis.
-
Dillon,
Thanks for the additional explanation. I do see the canonical tag in your code and see that it is being placed by Yoast's WordPress SEO plugin.
Honestly, you should not worry about the trailing slash. Google and Bing are intelligent enough to understand that .com and .com/ are the same website. You are receiving credit for your backlinks regardless of whether or not the trailing slash exists on the link.
Having said that, here's how you can remove the trailing slash if you still really want to.....
Login to your WordPress backend as an administrator and look for "Plugins" on the left menu and go to "Editor" within the plugins menu. From there, find the dropdown menu near the top right and go to "WordPress SEO". On the list of files that display on the right side, find "wordpress-seo/frontend/class-frontend.php".
In that file, use CTRL + F to find this line of code: $canonical = home_url( '/' );
Remove the / within the ' '
Click on "Update File". Refresh your homepage and you will see that the trailing slash is gone from the canonical tag. Keep in mind, this is a hack. When you update WordPress SEO, this will most likely be overwritten and you'll have to do it again.
-
Hi Philip,
Thank you for your response. I am definitely obsessing, although I'm pretty sure it is not over nothing, and, I would be happy to be proven wrong (it would save me some time) lol.
It is my understanding that a lot of browsers, like Chrome, will remove the slash from their url but just in the graphical user interface because it looks better, while in fact they reading it with the trailing slash at the end. Browser SEAMONKEY does accurately show the trailing slash. The real way to know from the coding is that the page source still shows <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://www.threewaystoharems.com/" /> , when I really want it to show as <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://www.threewaystoharems.com" /> (trailing slash omitted). If I were to speculate on what is really going on behind the scenes, is that google knows that most websites are going to default to using a trailing slash and most users are going to link without the trailing slash. It seems to me that google is trying to separate the SEO professionals from the amateurs by seeing these as two different sites and making the professionals have to figure out how to get the trailing slash off of their home pages in order to get their backlinks. If you notice, a-moz.groupbuyseo.org 's page source shows no trailing slash on their link rel="canonical" .
Am I crazy? I'm pretty sure I need to figure this out to get my backlinks to link properly.
-
Where are you seeing the trailing slash? If I go to threewaystoharems.com in my browser, there is no trailing slash. I do see a trailing slash if I do a Google search for "site:threewaystoharems.com" but that is normal. Every website will show that trailing slash.
I think you might be obsessing over a non-issue
Let me know if i am misunderstanding.
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
-
Should you 'noindex' Checkout Pages?
Today I was reviewing my Moz analytics and suddenly noticed 1,000 issues with pages without a meta description. I reviewed the list and learned it is 1,000 checkout pages. That's because my website has thousands of agency pages from which you can buy a product, and it reflects that difference on each version of the checkout. So, I was thinking about no-indexing (but continuing to 'follow') these checkout pages, but wondering if it has any knock-on effects I may be unaware of? Any assistance is much appreciated. Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Luke_Proctor0 -
Should I switch from trailing slash to no trailing slash?
I have a website which has had trailing slashes added to the URLs by 301 redirects for over 3 years. However, the custom CMS does not allow navigation links to have trailing slashes. This is resulting in 301s every time a user clicks a navigation link. The site ranks fairy well for some moderately competitive keywords. If you were in my shoes, would you remove the forced trailing slash redirect in the .htaccess and replace it with a trailing slash removal redirect, or would you leave it like it is? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ICON_Malta
James p.s. the CMS also doesn't allow canonicals.0 -
Is a 404, then a meta refresh 301 to the home page OK for SEO?
Hi Mozzers I have a client that had a lot of soft 404s that we wanted to tidy up. Basically everything was going to the homepage. I recommended they implement proper 404s with a custom 404 page, and 301 any that really should be redirected to another page. What they have actually done is implemented a 404 (without the custom 404 page) and then after a short delay 301 redirected to the homepage. I understand why they want to do this as they don't want to lose the traffic, but is this a problem with SEO and the index? Or will Google treat as a hard 404 anyway? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy0 -
When is it recommended to use a self referencing rel "canonical"?
In what type of a situation is it the best type of practice to use a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? Are there particular practices to be cautious of when using a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? I see this practice used mainly with larger websites but I can't find any information that really explains when is a good time to make use of this practice for SEO purposes. Appreciate all feedback. Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO_Promenade0 -
Two Pages with the Same Name Different URL's
I was hoping someone could give me some insight into a perplexing issue that I am having with my website. I run an 20K product ecommerce website and I am finding it necessary to have two pages for my content: 1 for content category pages about wigets one for shop pages for wigets 1st page would be .com/shop/wiget/ 2nd page would be .com/content/wiget/ The 1st page would be a catalogue of all the products with filters for the customer to narrow down wigets. So ultimately the URL for the shop page could look like this when the customer filters down... .com/shop/wiget/color/shape/ The second page would be content all about the Wigets. This would be types of wigets colors of wigets, how wigets are used, links to articles about wigets etc. Here are my questions. 1. Is it bad to have two pages about wigets on the site, one for shopping and one for information. The issue here is when I combine my content wiget with my shop wiget page, no one buys anything. But I want to be able to provide Google the best experience for rankings. What is the best approach for Google and the customer? 2. Should I rel canonical all of my .com/shop/wiget/ + .com/wiget/color/ etc. pages to the .com/content/wiget/ page? Or, Should I be canonicalizing all of my .com/shop/wiget/color/etc pages to .com/shop/wiget/ page? 3. Ranking issues. As it is right now, I rank #1 for wiget color. This page on my site would be .com/shop/wiget/color/ . If I rel canonicalize all of my pages to .com/content/wiget/ I am going to loose my rankings because all of my shop/wiget/xxx/xxx/ pages will then point to .com/content/wiget/ page. I am just finding with these massive ecommerce sites that there is WAY to much potential for duplicate content, not enough room to allow Google the ability to rank long tail phrases all the while making it completely complicated to offer people pages that promote buying. As I said before, when I combine my content + shop pages together into one page, my sales hit the floor (like 0 - 15 dollars a day), when i just make a shop page my sales are like (1k+ a day). But I have noticed that ever since Penguin and Panda my rankings have fallen from #1 across the board to #15 and lower for a lot of my phrase with the exception of the one mentioned above. This is why I want to make an information page about wigets and a shop page for people to buy wigets. Please advise if you would. Thanks so much for any insight you can give me!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SKP0 -
Why does my home page show up in search results instead of my target page for a specific keyword?
I am using Wordpress and am targeting a specific keyword..and am using Yoast SEO if that question comes up.. and I am at 100% as far as what they recommend for on page optimization. The target html page is a "POST" and not a "Page" using Wordpress definitions. Also, I am using this Pinterest style theme here http://pinclone.net/demo/ - which makes the post a sort of "pop-up" - but I started with a different theme and the results below were always the case..so I don't know if that is a factor or not. (I promise .. this is not a clever spammy attempt to promote their theme - in fact parts of it don't even work for me yet so I would not recommend it just yet...) I DO show up on the first page for my keyword.. however.. instead of Google showing the page www.mywebsite.com/this-is-my-targeted-keyword-page.htm Google shows www.mywebsite.com in the results instead. The problem being - if the traffic goes only to my home page.. they will be less likely to stay if they dont find what they want immediately and have to search for it.. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chunkyvittles0 -
How to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content
I've attempted to follow advice from the Q&A section. Currently on the site www.cherrycreekspine.com, I've edited the .htaccess file to help with 301s - all pages redirect to www.cherrycreekspine.com. Secondly, I'd added the canonical statement in the header of the web pages. I have cut the Duplicate Page Content in half ... now I have a remaining 40 pages to fix up. This is my practice site to try and understand what SEOmoz can do for me. I've looked at some of your videos on Youtube ... I feel like I'm scrambling around to the Q&A and the internet to understand this product. I'm reading the beginners guide.... any other resources would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deskstudio0 -
Trailing Slash: Lost in Redirection?
Question here, but first the lead in. As you all know, 301 redirects don't pass on 100% of link juice. I've set up my site using htaccess to redirect all non-ww to www and redirect all URLs to have a trailing slash. FYI, the preferred domain is selected in WMT and canonical URLs appear in the head section of all pages. So now what happens when sites that link to mine don't include either the www or the trailing slash, which is actually quite common? Of course, asking the site own to correct the link is ideal, but that's not always possible. So if thousands of links on external sites are linking to http://www.site.com instead of http://www.site.com/, won't lots of link juice get lost in redirection? I can't think of anything more I can do to the URLs to reduce duplicate content and juice dilution. Thoughts? Kevin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kwoolf0