Fixing A Common Problem: Duplicate Websites
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The Problem:
A very common mistake small businesses are making with their websites is having multiple web addresses by which to reach your home page.
If you go to www.yourdomain.com, the search engines often feel this is a different website to yourdomain.com (without the www)
While it isn’t critical, and most search engines are able to cope with this common problem, you may find you receive significant SEO and traffic improvements by sorting it out.
Potentially your website is being penalized due to duplicate copies of your content, or you have backlinks pointing to four separate pages.
Try each of these on your own websites, obviously replacing “yourdomain.com” with your actual domain name.
www.yourdomain.com
yourdomain.com
Both of the above should redirect to the same location, most appropriately www.yourdomain.com – if you find this isn’t the case, you are presenting at least two copies of your website to the search engines.
Note: If you find one of the above results in a 404 (page not found) error it is best to speak to your web host or website team about resolving this.
In addition – one of the following may also show a duplicate copy of your web site. Three of the below should result in a “page not found” error. The 4th should ideally redirect to www.yourdomain.com
www.yourdomain.com/index.htm
www.yourdomain.com/index.php
www.yourdomain.com/index.asp
www.yourdomain.com/index.html
If you find one of the above shows your website without redirecting to www.yourdomain.com, you are potentially presenting three or more duplicate copies of your website to the search engines.
As per above, one of the four following may be yet another duplicate of your home page.
yourdomain.com/index.htm
yourdomain.com/index.php
yourdomain.com/index.asp
yourdomain.com/index.html
If you find that you can access your homepage via more than one of the above links without being redirected to www.yourdomain.com, you have a little problem which needs to be addressed.
The solution:
Easiest: Contact your webhost and request “a 301 redirect of the non-www to the www, and from index files to the directory url.” – if they ask for further clarification you can provide a link to each of the separate ways you can view your website and say “I need these all to 301 redirect to www.yourdomain.com”
More difficult: DIY… While this depends greatly on your web host, the most common platform is a LAMP server (Linux, Apache, mySQL, PHP) – if this isn’t the case for you, you will need to research “Mod-ReWrite for <Your Platform>”
If, like most websites, yours is hosted on a LAMP server:
You will need to edit (or create) a .htaccess file. This is just a file in the root (“www” or “html”) directory of your web host which is named “.htaccess” – this file needs to contain the following text:
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/ [R=301,L]
Replace “.html” with your index file extension, and “yourdomain.com” with your actual domain.
Warning: If you are using a CMS (Content Management System) you may have conflicting re-write rules. It is best to search for information about 301 permanent redirects that relates specifically to your CMS software. Most will have a plug-in which will take care of it all for you.
Tags: .htaccess, 301 redirect, duplicate content, Mod-Rewrite, SEO
SEO Guide for 2010