Canonical or 301 redirect, that is the question?

[bronxpad]

So my site has duplicate content issues because of the index.html and the www and non www version of the site. What's the best way to deal with this without htaccess? Is it a 301 redirect or is it the canonical, or is it both?

[DeptAgency]

Hi Joel,

I'd say a 301 redirect using your HTaccess file is best. However, if you cannot access the htaccess file i'd go with the rel canonical. Otherwise you would be using meta refresh or javascript and the like, which are generally not appreciated by Google. Besides, if the page is truly a duplicate the canonical link tag usually does the trick anyway!

Good luck,

Sven Witteveen
Expand Online

[Vivamedia]

Hi Joel!

Googles recommendation for this is a 301 redirect.

If you need to change the URL of a page as it is shown in search engine results, we recommended that you use a server-side 301 redirect.

More reading: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93633

In other case, if you dont have access to do it server-side, then a canonical is better then nothing.

Good luck!

[bronxpad]

what about using a php 301 redirect? is that also a good option? I'm looking for the simplest solution that doesn't mess up my seo efforts.

Thank you

[X-com]

I would say 301 redirect. e.g. in PHP you can use:

/home.html to /

if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] == '/home.html') {

header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');

header('Location: /');

}

non-www to www

**if ($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] == 'example.com') **{

header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');

header('Location: www.example.com' . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);

}

Good luck!

[bronxpad]

Thanks for your tips.

[Dr-Pete]

I'd agree that, theoretically, 301-redirects are better here, but if it's just the home-page, a canonical tag can definitely sweep up any problem duplicates. If you're getting www and non-www versions of multiple pages indexed, then you probably need 301s. I'd check the index with the site: operator and see. If you're really getting multiples of both indexed, you probably have internal linking issues (inconsistencies). Step 1 in any de-duplication is to make sure you're always linking to the same version. Same with "index.html" - link to "/" internally or the absolute URL of the site (without "index.html").

PHP (code-based) redirects should be fine, as long as they resolve correctly. I've used code-based headers in some other languages (like ColdFusion) and it's generally been ok. If that gets messy, though, and if it's just the home-page, the canonical tag will do in a pinch.

[X-com]

No problem! I'm curious what solution you are planning to choose and of course, if it helped you rank higher.. although that sort of data will only be available in a couple of months of course.