301 redirect (www.domain.com/index to www.domain.com)

[eyepaq]

Hello,

Please let me know what are the exact right steps in order to get rid of the duplicate content issues related with:

www.domain.com/index.html same as www.domain.com  without creating an infinite loop.

Do you have a step by step guide posted within seomoz including 301 redirect for non www to www for all urls and index.whatever to main domain name without going into a infinite loop ?

btw how to you spot the loop ? is it obvious like never ending refresh of the home page ?

thanks a lot !

[StalkerB]

Probably the simplest way to redirect the non-www to the www is to put this in your .htaccess file

RewriteEngine On Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

For reference the .htaccess file goes in the root of your domain via whatever file transfer program you use and of course replace example.com with your domain

If you get stuck, let me know

[eyepaq]

is the last part safe ? as far as the infinite loop things that some are afraid of..

[StalkerB]

The last part redirects index.html to /

There would only be a loop if you redirected / to index.html

99.9% sure this'll work for you I'm using the exact code on a small site right now and it's working fine

[Getz.pro]

I agree with Barry, but watch out for that last snippet. I've got caught when hosting companies redirect on their side. So test before walking away for more coffee : )

[eyepaq]

how it will behave if the redirect is not correct ? It will be visible ? (like a never-ending refresh of the main page)

[StalkerB]

Yeah, if it doesn't work you'll probably be faced with a blank page or you may get a 500 server error or maybe a 310. It should be obvious pretty fast

[eyepaq]

Thanks mate !

More then helpful.

[eyepaq]

Can I use a code like this ? (i've added one entry for index.php as it looks like the site has both an index.html and an index.php)

Barry Smith
Journeyman264 mozpoints
6 helpful answers
1 SEOmoz endorsed answers

| Helpful Answer | Barry Smith, Head of SEO at Gaming Media Marketing | about 2 hours ago |

Probably the simplest way to redirect the non-www to the www is to put this in your .htaccess file

RewriteEngine On Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.php
RewriteRule ^(.)index.php$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

[StalkerB]

Hmm, maybe, I doubt the index.php is doing anything as if there's a index.html and index.php the .html takes precedence.

Check what's in the .php file, might be easier just to delete it.

[eyepaq]

seomoz tool is showing duplicate pages for those 3. Each of the version has at least 1 internal and even external links.

all 3 respond in the browser with the same layout/page

[StalkerB]

Well, I would recommend you alter the internal links to just point to the new '/' default, but in the meantime...

I would have thought your code would have worked, but every time I try it my site falls over. It might work for you though. Give it a try but test it straight away

I'll see if I can get a different version working on my test site for you if not