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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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
    • 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. How to force a trailing slash after the domain name

    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 to force a trailing slash after the domain name

    Technical SEO
    2
    11
    5859
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • JollyBoy
      JollyBoy last edited by

      My campaign analysis is predictably listing domain.com and domain.com/ as repeated content. I've searched and searched but cannot find a way to force a trailing slash on the end of the domain name unless there's a file or directory after it..

      Is there a way to accomplish this using .htaccess

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • JollyBoy
        JollyBoy @JollyBoy last edited by

        I've gone with this .htaccess from your soulgorithm.com:

        Options +FollowSymlinks
        RewriteEngine on
        RewriteBase /
        RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain.co.uk [NC]
        RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]

        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.)/$
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
        RewriteRule (.
        )/$ $1.php [L]

        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
        RewriteRule .* %{REQUEST_FILENAME}/ [R=301,L]

        and I'm now getting the results I'm after. I'm getting similar behaviour to you in Firefox and IE, which explains a lot. I really appreciate the length you've gone to to help me here, so big thank you!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • BailHotline
          BailHotline @JollyBoy last edited by

          Test Site: soulgorithm.com

          In the .htaccess file for this site:

          Options +FollowSymlinks
          RewriteEngine on
          RewriteBase /
          RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.soulgorithm.com [NC]
          RewriteRule (.*) http://soulgorithm.com/$1 [L,R=301]

          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.)/$
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
          RewriteRule (.
          )/$ $1.html [L]

          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.)/$
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
          RewriteRule (.
          )/$ $1.php [L]

          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f [OR]
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
          RewriteRule .* %{REQUEST_FILENAME}/ [R=301,L]

          Which has the following effect:

          soulgorithm.com > soulgorithm.com/

          (slash is added, but only shows in IE and looks

          likes its being stripped by Firefox but page

          still loads fine)

          soulgorithm.com/ > soulgorithm.com/
             
              (loads fine, but only shows in IE and looks

          likes its being stripped by Firefox but page

          still loads fine)

          soulgorithm.com/test > soulgorithm.com/test/

          (loads fine, slash even shows in FF)

          soulgorithm.com/test/ > soulgorithm.com.com/test/

          (loads fine)

          soulgorithm.com/testdir > soulgorithm.com/testdir/

          (loads fine, slash even shows in FF)

          soulgorithm.com/testdir/ > soulgorithm.com.com/testdir/

          (loads fine, slash even shows in FF)

          Let me know if this is what you see. I feel likes its getting close to working.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • JollyBoy
            JollyBoy @JollyBoy last edited by

            Thanks for sticking with this. Rather than me share the domain, do you know of any example sites using your code (or similar) which add a trailing slash after the domain name? I'd like to rule out my browser stripping it out.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • BailHotline
              BailHotline @JollyBoy last edited by

              Man, my mind is blown right now. I'm not giving up and hopefully someone else can chime in on this discussion and shed some light on this issue.

              The code provided should have worked. Let me look into it some more. Also, if you don't mind what is the actual domain name?

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • JollyBoy
                JollyBoy @JollyBoy last edited by

                That's right - nothing in there but the code you supplied.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • BailHotline
                  BailHotline @JollyBoy last edited by

                  Is this the only thing you have in your htaccess file?

                  if not, I would remove everything in the file and only have what i posted above, and let me know if it works.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • JollyBoy
                    JollyBoy @JollyBoy last edited by

                    Nope. Still no trailing slashes being added.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • BailHotline
                      BailHotline @JollyBoy last edited by

                      Try just the following:

                      Let me know if this works for you.

                      RewriteEngine On
                      RewriteBase /
                      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !index.php
                      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
                      RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1/ [L,R=301]
                      
                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • JollyBoy
                        JollyBoy @BailHotline last edited by

                        Thanks for the reply, but this looks like all the other examples I've found. My .htaccess file looks like this :

                        DirectoryIndex index.php

                        RewriteEngine On
                        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
                        RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L,QSA]

                        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$
                        RewriteRule ^(.
                        )$ http://domain.co.uk/$1/ [L,R=301]

                        But I get the following redirects going on:

                        domain.co.uk > domain.co.uk (ie nothing happens)

                        domain.co.uk/ > domain.co.uk (ie slash is removed)

                        domain.co.uk/page2 > domain.co.uk/page2 (ie nothing happens, but page loads)

                        domain.co.uk/page2/ > Internal server error

                        Any ideas?

                        BailHotline JollyBoy 8 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • BailHotline
                          BailHotline last edited by

                          Hi Clive.

                          Yes, you can easily do this with an .htaccess file, here is the code:

                          RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1/ [L,R=301]

                          Just replace "domain.com" with your proper url for your site. This should be all that is needed.

                          Hope this helps!

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

                          Got a burning SEO question?

                          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                          Start my free trial


                          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

                          • SO_UK

                            Company name ranking

                            Hi all, I hope somebody can share their thoughts on the below. A web designer launched my client's new website and I have been tasked with the SEO. I was approached with an immediate problem, www.clientswebsite.co.uk was ranking 9th for their company name after being indexed by Google. The search results above www.clientswebsite.co.uk were related to my client but not all, for example a direct competitor was also ranking. I have been working on the SEO for 2-3 weeks and I just managed to get to 3rd position for the company name, and then www.clientswebsite.co.uk disappeared from page 1! And now instead, an irelevant sub page is now ranking for the company name on page 2 (a contact page). I have checked and the home page is still indexed (did a site: check). The only problem software picks up is a redirect chain (http://homepage -> http://www.homepage  -> https://homepage) the web developers said it wouldn't impact rankings (when I asked them to edit the htaccess file to fix it) I've listed below the SEO tasks I completed whilst attempting to rank the company name: I set up analytics and webmaster tools, in which I set up preferred domain (www) Added a sitemap Edited meta data making sure company name was included I contacted the websites above www.clientswebsite.co.uk that were relevant and asked them to place a link linking to their new website, I was successful with a couple of these. I placed www.clientswebsite.co.uk on all of their social media profiles I reformatted headers on their home page, making sure the H1 included my client's company name I found 2 extra versions of my client's home page (not exact copies, but very similar content) that had been published, so I decided to 301 redirect these to the correct home page Activated SSL and forced to HTTPS I would really appreciate it if anyone could share their thoughts here, whether it be explanations or possible solutions Adam

                            Technical SEO | | SO_UK
                            0
                          • kuchenchef

                            Redirect typo domains

                            Hi, What's the "correct" way of redirecting typo domains? DNS A record goes to the same ip address as the correct domain name Then 301 redirects for each typo domain in the .htaccess Subdomains on typo urls still redirect to www or should they redirect to the subdomain on the correct url in case the subdomain exists?

                            Technical SEO | | kuchenchef
                            0
                          • timfrick

                            Tool to Generate All the URLs on a Domain

                            Hi all, I've been using xml-sitemaps.com for a while to generate a list of all the URLs that exist on a domain. However, this tool only works for websites with under 500 URLs on a domain. The paid tool doesn't offer what we are looking for either. I'm hoping someone can help with a recommendation. We're looking for a tool that can: Crawl, and list, all the indexed URLs on a domain, including .pdf and .doc files (ideally in a .xls or .txt file) Crawl multiple domains with unlimited URLs (we have 5 websites with 500+ URLs on them) Seems pretty simple, but we haven't been able to find something that isn't tailored toward management of a single domain or that can crawl a huge volume of content.

                            Technical SEO | | timfrick
                            0
                          • Amr-Haffar

                            Will removing the trailing slash impact my SEO?

                            Hi there, We have a company website based on Wordpress. I just noticed that under Settings > Permalinks I can configure the look of the URLs and even remove the trailing slash. We have about 2-300 pages online. If I remove the trailing slash now, will that negatively impact our SEO in anyway for existing pages? Thanks!

                            Technical SEO | | Amr-Haffar
                            0
                          • zeepartner

                            Block Domain in robots.txt

                            Hi. We had some URLs that were indexed in Google from a www1-subdomain. We have now disabled the URLs (returning a 404 - for other reasons we cannot do a redirect from www1 to www) and blocked via robots.txt. But the amount of indexed pages keeps increasing (for 2 weeks now). Unfortunately, I cannot install Webmaster Tools for this subdomain to tell Google to back off... Any ideas why this could be and whether it's normal? I can send you more domain infos by personal message if you want to have a look at it.

                            Technical SEO | | zeepartner
                            0
                          • eventurerob

                            Trailing Slashes on Home Pages

                            I do not think I have a problem here, but a second opinion would be welcomed... I have a site which has a the rel=canonical tag with the trailing slash displayed. ie www.example.com/ The sitemap has it without the trailing slash. www.example.com Google has it's cached copy with the trailing slash but the browser displays it without. I want to say it's perfectly fine (for the home page) as I tend to think they are treated (with/without trailing slashes) as the same canonical URL.

                            Technical SEO | | eventurerob
                            0
                          • bThere

                            Subdomain and Domain Rankings

                            I have read here that domain names with keywords might add a boost to your search rank For instance using a completely inane example monkey-fights.com might get a boost compared to mfl.com (monkey fighting league)  when searching for "monkey fights" There seems to be a hot debate as to how much bonus the first domain might get over the second, but leaving that aside for the moment. Question 1. Would monkey-fights.mfl.com get the same kind of bonus as a root domain bonus? Question 2. If the answer to 1 above was yes would a 301 redirect from the suddomain URL to root domain URL retain that bonus I was just thinking on how hard it is to get root domains these days that are not either being squatted on etc. and if this might be a way to get the same bonus, or maybe subdomains are less bonus prone and so it would be a waste of time Thanks

                            Technical SEO | | bThere
                            0
                          • wcksmith

                            Keywords in file names vs folder names

                            We understand the value of a keyword phrase included in the URL.  Is there more value to having that phrase in the folder name of the URL or the file name or does it matter? Example: http://www.biztoolsone.com/website-design.php or http://www.biztoolsone.com/website-design/ Which is best? Thanks,  Wick Smith

                            Technical SEO | | wcksmith
                            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.