Which homepage URL is better?

use .htaccess file modification to solve this problem. you can also use canonical tag in /index.php page to solve this problem

 

I use www.domain.com is here difference between domain.com ?

 

If you have Mod_Rewrite or some other utility that allows you to fix canonical issues using 301 redirects then use it INSTEAD of <link rel="canonical">.

<Link rel="canonical"> was not designed to be a 1st choice solution for canonical issues. In fact it should be used as a last resort - if you have no other way to fix canonical issues. <link rel="canonical"> was created for sites that have no good way to implement canonical URLs (like pure HTML sites w/ no server-side scripting running on IIS 6.x or lower) or for large ecommerce/CMS based sites which use an index.XXX plus LOTS of query string parameters to render their entire site). It does not do everything that a 301 redirect does and it is not supported by all search engines. And can create issues if for instance you point it to a version of the URL that is not indexed.

301 redirects have been, are, and always should be the preferred method of implementing canonical URLs. Get familiar w/ Mod_Rewrite and .htaccess files if you are hosted on Apache. It's well worth the time spent.

And my original post suggestted INCLUDING trailing '/' so that you can be consistant site-wide when executing default documents in folders (index.html, index.php, default.asp, default.aspx, etc.) While most browsers will automatically add it if you omit it when typing in the home page URL (so it doesn't matter as much for the home page URL and another reason to include trailing '/' as default), as a previous poster indicated... this does NOT happen when you type in a folder name to run a default document in that folder without the trailing '/' as in http://www.example.com/folder. Depending on how your web server is configured http://www.example.com/folder and http://www.example.com/folder/ "can" be seen as different URLs. Better safe than sorry. So have Mod_Rewrite rules in place to enforce this site wide so that anytime someone requests a folder name with no trailing '/' you redirect to the same URL WITH a trailing '/'.

 

The OP asked if there were a difference between domain.com and domain.com/ in regards to duplicate content.

I am aware of no evidence that these two are treated as different URLs by any search engine. In fact, I am not aware of any evidence that the presence or absence of the trailing slash on folders (e.g. example.com/folder vs. example.com/folder/) has any effect on SE's.

Any issues related to the trailing slash would appear to be server side only. On Apache at least, this almost always is confined to a bit more processing overhead and some needless errors being thrown.

 

I have Apache hosting with mod_rewrite enabled.

I could be able to redirect index.php to the homepage with the code I mentioned in my previous post.

I think that domain.com and domain.com/ is not the same thing. Why?
Because when I check both of their HTTP header responses, they give HTTP 200 OK. That means domain.com and domain.com/ are separate pages ?
If yes, this is a critical problem. Because 2 identical homepages cause content duplication and less authority.


As for my internal pages, Yes I see the internal URLs with trailing slashes in my browser address tab.

Do you mean that if I see the URLs with trailing slashed, then they are redirected to "/" by the server? How about HTTP headers? I see no 301 response between the URLs with and without "/".

 

I forgot to ask this important question:

When I purchase text links should I add "/" at the end of my homepage URL?

 

Without your domain I can't tell you for sure if you have issues or not.

 

If you're going to risk getting caught for buying links then you should use the preferred or canonical URL for the page you are going to point the link to. So if you're buying links for your home page and you want http://www.example.com/ to be your canonical URL then use that as the href value in the <a> element. This should also be the case for any page you're trying to promote using paid or "planted" (farmed) unnatural links you build like through article submission, blog commenting, etc. as well as pages on your own site linking to other pages on your site.

ALWAYS use the canonical URL anytime you reference any page on your site. It is said that each 301 redirect causes you to lose a small amount of juice that would normally be passed. I've heard everything from 1-10 or more percent.

 

It does not mean that they are separate pages.

Open a browser and try to go to any domain without adding the trailing slash. You will arrive at the URL with the trailing slash appended. If an Apache server, try to go to any directory without the trailing slash - presto, it will be appended. (And, if you check your logs you will find that it threw an error.)

Look at the SERPS and find a URL that does not have a trailing slash appended.

So, again, the use of the trailing slash is best practice, but omitting it will not result in duplicate content.

 

domain.com.

 

only domain name is preferrable.