One Slash that Can Damage Half of Your SEO

I take your point, but surely a more relevant issue is the http://www.yourdomain.com as opposed to http://yourdomain.com without the www.

Again, as you say, regarded as 2 separate pages by the Engines.

This (no www.) applies mainly to blogs and I would love to hear about ways of stopping SEO dilution on this issue too!

Very intersting pick. I have just checked with few searches on google. All results that end up at base URls, e.g. http://www.abcdef.com/ will always show a Slash at the end. None was without a slash, i.e http://www.abcdef.com.

So what is recommended for link building with or without slash?

Thanks

thanks for the tip I have noticed that and noticed that it could also get deferent PR

I’m guessing this also holds true for blog posts. I know I’m not as diligent with the links to the blog or individual posts.

One solution if you are just starting out is to change WordPress to add a .htm or .php to the permalink and then always use that.

Thanks for the heads up. You should have linked to the forum post so that others can jump in.

cd :O)

This is a very interesting point. Never gave it any thought in the past, but I will from now on. It has the possibility of making huge differences in your links and page ranks.

That was new and important to know. Thanks!

Very good tip!! Wait…A GREAT tip!!!
Thanks

This is good information. I think the same can be said for using www or no www. I haven’t found confirmation of that (I haven’t looked hard either) but that what my observations tell me.

If anybody knows for sure, please let me know.

–Gole
http://www.panicselfhelp.com
http://www.antiquefloorlampblog.com

Then this would be true if you make your domain name http://yourdomain.com or http://www.yourdomain.com, correct? I’ve never figured that one out, either…

Alden~

Thanks for this insight.

Now, what about having http://www. or just http:// ? Is there a big difference?

Very good point, which is why you should use wordpress to build your sites. You should set the permalink FIRST, then all links will be directed automatically to your domain with or without the / as you set it.

I do have more tips on my site about link building if it is something that interests you.

A great article! I wish I had known this before building my links. But there is still time to change now and thanks to FTS for the useful tips.

I have one other question that has been bothering my mind. When I read in your PDF how you got a new blog to number one position in less than four weeks, I am forced to ask about your article submission. You said you submitted two articles everyday. I want to know if it is okay for me to submit the whole 60 articles at once to FTS? Will this yield the same result? Looking forward to a quick reply please.

Thanks for the good job that you are doing.

Yes I noticed this myself on reporting and found that Google and Yahoo index pages with the / differently. Problem is with viral type marketing you can’t always control the way people link to your site.

As a reply to all “http://www.domain and http://domain” – questions

I was not checking the issue, but it makes perfect sense that these are different pages as well.

Answer to Abbey

We are not the Google to give you an ultimate answer, but gradual growth of backlinks seems to be more naturals and safer. That is why – better 2 articles daily during 30 days than 60 in a lump.

Answer to iva

We have tried both with and without slash. If you are consistent and build backlinks to the “version” that you chose (slashed or non-slahes), that makes no difference. We have pushed sites by building backlinks to slashed versions, and we have pushed non-slashed domains.

Consistency is the key here.

At least, this is what experience shows.

Hi all,

thank you for the post, great info.

Kind regards & good health,

Darren C.

Thank you for supplying another great way to be safe and ensure quality link building. Having just signed up, and already seeing quality links without penalty, I appreciate all you do at FreeTrafficSystem.

My Blog is in a Sub Directory. For search engines does it make a difference with or without the slash?
Or, is one better than the other?

Thanks,
Gary

Hi friends:

I had no idea about this tiny but important detail. I’ll be careful from now on. Thanks.

Jesus

Interesting.
Search for google.com and you get 447,000,000 results. Every result shows a / at the end.

Search for google.com/ and you get 445,000,000 results. Every result shows a / at the end.

I would like to see proof of this. I read the same thing a few years back. I have never tried it because it is just common sense to be consistent when link building. A / in unix is nothing more then a path (directory or folder) separator. That being said, you would think that the search with the / at the end would have had more results instead of less.

But, when doing the searches of google.com and google.com/ , and they both show the / in the results doesn’t make sense to me:)) Any ideas on this?

The www. or no-www. issue is a pretty old one, actually. It’s about “canonical” URLs, and if you search for that you’ll get a boatload of debates about it. It’s just a smart move to be consistent. Always build backlinks with either the non-www. or the www. version of your pages. And always include the trailing / or don’t. It’s a simple fix for both. You can’t change how others link to your site, so don’t sweat that. Just be consistent with what you can control.

same with www and no www. simple but good tip!

Very interesting issue, we blog all our life but never notice such important thing like that. Thanks for sharing

Hi All,

I’ve only joined up with FTS 24 hours ago, so this is my first
introductory comment. Hope it helps!

The with and without “www” and “/” issue actually leaves the
Search Engines thinking there are 4 versions of the same page
on your site and distribute PageRank to each version.

The secret to stopping the dilution of your PageRank, is to
simply enter the following code into your .htaccess file (it
should be in the public-html folder of your site):

Options +Indexes
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}^yoursite\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1/ [L,R=301]

NOTE: Be sure to change “yoursite.com” to your actual URL.

This small change will force all the “non-www” links to
redirect to the “www” version and all the “non-/” links
to redirect to the “/” version. Thereby concentrating
your site’s traffic for better PageRank results.

Robert,
http://www.QuickWebProfits.com

I try for the consistency approach also, it doesn’t mean I don’t slip up on occasion!! This is an excellent tip, and as stated above probably also relates to the www. portion of a domain also. I am having problems with a DNS configuration at the moment, I am hoping it is self resolving, but if anyone here knows a faster resolution I am all ears!!!

You have really made me think as a non professional, I think I now know why I have made some reciprocal links and the other person has said that he can’t find my link at the page I’ve put it on. Is he looking at my site with or without a slash?
http://www.galicianrustic.com or http://www.galicianrustic.com/

Yup! Sometimes we make a mistake with the slash on the url. So, thanks for your HOT WARNING!

So what real format of link building is the best I am confused on this part of link building.

Don’t recall the article location on the http://www.domainname v. domainname, but the gist was that setting a permanent redirect (301)would obviate the seeming dichotomy.

Found one link, about WordePress permalinks:
http://www.netprofitstoday.com/blog/index.php/change-your-permalinks-without-losing-traffic/
but it’s not the link I saw initially.

However, my read is/was that the 301 would endanger neither your SERP location nor your Page Rank.

If that is indeed true, then a 301 for the slash/no-slash would seemingly do the same.

Anybody to validate this assumption?

We left the discussion to grow a little, without interfering into it and this produced nice Q&A between our readers – thumbs up. Any helpful feedback is appreciated and we are not the “almighty gurus” to be the one to answer your questions

By the way, the issue about subfolders gave an idea for another great SEO tip that we will share with your shortly.

I’m not sure I believe that the trailing ‘/’ vs. no ‘/’ has any bearing, but it really doesn’t matter. Your point is well taken: we should all strive to use one iteration of our link URL so we get the best bang for our link-building buck. Thanks!

Thanks for this tip. Every one helps.

I think it ultimately doesn’t matter whether you use the trailing / or not. I think the search engines are sophisticated enough by now to know these are identical manifestations. But it’s still a smart move to use the same string every time you link, whether you use www. or no http://www., as well as the trailing slash or no slash. Stick to one. It’s the best insurance.

John, Small Business Branding

This was and absolute GREAT post! Thanks a lot for this information about the difference b/w slash and no slash when it comes to building back links. I had no idea that there was a difference.

I’ve just started my blog (hubsite) about 3 weeks ago and I’ve been searching for ways to build my back links. I’ve found some great posts about building back links but I think this post has to been the best one yet.

Although I don’t have many back links right now (I’m still building them) I do get a fair amount of traffic to my site from other traffic sources but I am very interested in getting more free organic traffic via seo.

Thanks for this post it’s been really helpful…

I wonder anyone has any success to report from using the method, I’d like to hear the results.

Thanks again.

Toni Roberts

Great post. I had set up my site for the with and without www

But had not even thought about the good old slash. Many thanks

I never thought about any of this. Thanks for an eye opener! I’m glad I saw this blog post while I’m still early on in working on links to my site. Very helpful!

Real eye opener for me, I’m never sure whether to put a / after my blog or not when I’m submitting it to directores…
Thanks for the very useful info.
Seb

Thanks heavens for this article. I wasn’t aware of this but luckily for me I had been using only one version.

A real eye opener indeed.

Lian Vaiphei

Thanks for the really useful information.

It is the same as the question if to use http://www.domain.com or domain.com without the www.

Great reminder, thanks.

Thank you for this post. I was just about to start link building for a new site and had not given any thought to this issue. Now I understand I need a strategy with choosing the type of link done first.

I never gave the / a thought before, but I think ‘profitmastro’ made a good point in saying that that you can avoid the issue with your htaccess file. But again, consistency with link building helps speed up the process and it’s always best to avoid any potential pitfalls.