Question about multiple versions of home page

[odmsoft]

Hi guys,

I'm having a question, answer to which i'm unable to find anywhere. I browesed the whole internet lol. So the question is about multipple versions of the home page. In particular, i want to know how should i deal with home page URLs with this extention: /index.html

All the rest possible versions of home page i know how to deal with but this one "/index.html" i don't. I did add a cononical tag to it but i'm wondering whether or not i should add 301 redirect to chosen version og the home page (let's say it is www.mydomain.com). Please advise the best practices on how to deal with this.

Thanks in advance!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

I would 301 redirect any homepage extensions to the www.domain.com with no extensions homepage.

I would also check your backlinks, sitemap, and internal links to make sure that none of those are linking to extension pages. Do a quick crawl of your site too and see if any URLs also have any extra extensions and redirect those as well.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[odmsoft]

Hi Patric,

Thanks for answer! So it is just regular 301 redirect? I'm asking because once i redirected /index.php to preferred home page version (www.mydomain.com) of another site and that site went down. I'm not sure if i did it wrong (i don't think so coz it is a simple thing) but i affraid it will happen here as well. Do you have any input here?

Thanks

[ThompsonPaul]

This kind of redirect is essential, very common, and will not cause the website to go down if implemented correctly, Marina. Because this redirect involves adding code to the htaccess file, an incorrect configuration could cause sitewide problems, but that would be because of an error in the added code.

Paul

[RuthBurrReedy]

With some Content Management Systems, the extension /index.php gets added at the CMS level and can cause problems when you try not to use it. I would at least test the redirect (during a low-traffic time of day) to see if it goes fine - if not, you may need to consult your CMS provider.

[odmsoft]

Hi guys, I appreciate your responses! ThompsonPaul, can you show me an example of correct code of how to make such a redirect? Thank you!