Duplicate content?

[dcmike]

I am not understanding this - I see a duplicate content warning. When I look into it I see these two urls:

http;//search-engine-upgrade.com

http;//search-engine-upgrade.com/default.asp

(NOT a blog)

[ninjamarketer]

I checked the header for both URLs are they are indeed giving me a 200 ok header code which means this is a page canonicalization issue.

Page canonicalization happens in cases where www or non www, .php or non .php , .asp or non .asp pages exist.

The solution to this is to do a 301 redirect of http;//search-engine-upgrade.com/default.asp to

http;//search-engine-upgrade.com using htaccess file.

Please this line of code in your htaccess file

redirect 301 /default.asp http://search-engine-upgrade.com

or you can the following rewrite code

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /default.asp\  HTTP/

RewriteRule ^default.asp$ http://www.search-engine-upgrade.com/ [R=301,L]

[danrawk]

a 301 permanent redirect (as ninjamarketer mentioned) will work. if that's too technical you can also take a look at adding a canonical link to your default.asp.

the canonical link will not remove the "default.asp", but it will communicate to google and the SE's that the correct url for this content is at http://www.search-engine-upgrade.com

in the header put:

< link rel="canonical" href="http://search-engine-upgrade.com"/>

here is google's page on this.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394

you may also want to check your server settings. sometimes they will use a default homepage or configure the 301 for you.

:>) good luck!

dan

[dcmike]

Well shiver me timbers. I  never figgered your homepage could compete with itself! I guess it's time for me to stop depending on my old-school wordsmithery (old school here only goes back to the mid 90's) and get a new pocket protector ,-]

Thanks for the help & prompt reply. I have already deployed the htaccess

[dcmike]

I had the server admin do a 301 on www.search-engine-upgrade.com to the non www, but I have to admit, I had no idea I had to do similar with the default page....Jeeze!

[KeriMorgret]

When I go to http://search-engine-upgrade.com/default.asp it's not removing the default.asp or rewriting to add the www, just wanted to let you know as you might want to double check the htaccess.

[dcmike]

Thanks to both you and Keri - Even though my hype barks loudly of SEO I am a web designer who has had great luck in organic SEO via good page construction and my copywriting skills. I don't really "tune" other's sites - I rebuild them, usually in hand coded classic asp. Ergo, I am not actually a classic SEO service like many here.

I am finding that I am facing my next tech upgrade here with off-page issues like this one.

I got rid of the htaccess and added the above code in the head. I have never used htaccess like this before and use a format tailored to the server this site resides on. adapting it may have caused the gaffe.

Again, many thanks.