My website is saying I have duplicate page content and page title. How do I fix it?

[bcarp88]

Hi,

I created a website on webstarts.com. After I launched it then ran a scan through SEO it says I have duplicate page content and page title. The 2 pages it is reading are technically the same page. www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com and www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com/index . I am unsure how to get rid of on of these as it keeps saying this is an error in the SEO scan. Could someone please advise me of what to do from here.

Thanks!

[SEOKeith]

Bryan, you need to redirect the page http://www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com/index.html and point it at http://www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com

To do this create a 301 redirect using a .htaccess file.

Connect to your server and look in the root of your web server for a file called .htaccess - if it does not exist then create one (make sure it's called .htaccess).

Add the following line to the .htaccess file:

301 redirect /index.html http://www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com

This will fix the duplicate content problem on your home page.

[cprodigy29]

Just wondering is it better to use a rewrite instead of a redirect in the .htaccess file?

i.e.

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/]+/)*index.(html?|php)\ HTTP/

RewriteRule (([^/]+/)*)index.(html?|php)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

[SEOKeith]

It's the same thing the rewrite is a 301 it's just using Apaches mod_rewrite to achieve it.

You can use either option, after you have setup the 301 you can check the Apache status code, If you have shell access you can tail the access log file.

If you don't have shell access I am sure their are Chrome / Firefox plugins that will verify your 301 code, or you could use Screaming Frog.