DOES TRAILING SLASH MATTER IN LINKS FOR SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION?
The question "Does a trailing slash matter for SEO?" is one of the most frequently asked. The gist of the answer is yes, though not always. In this article, I'll describe what a URL looks like, when a trailing slash is required or optional, and how to determine if your website has a trailing slash problem.
DOES TRAILING SLASH AFFECT SEO?
You've probably heard of trailing slashes if you're a developer, designer, or just someone who wants to learn more about SEO and the role that URLs play in it.
Why does Google consider trailing slashes to be problematic? And what impact would its absence have on your website?
As a webmaster and SEO expert, I frequently encounter issues of this nature. When I was working with one of our clients who had two landing pages with different URLs but similar content, I ran into this for the first time. Although these pages appeared to be performing well in the SERPs, closer inspection of their content revealed that duplicate content issues existed on both pages as a result of missing trailing slashes in some places and their presence in others.
Their duplicate content wasn't the issue; rather, Googlebot was unable to determine which URL contained the most pertinent information. Google penalized both pages for having duplicate content as a result of this misunderstanding.
The problem was that search engines interpret the leading slash on URLs as a signal that there is more information after it. It serves as a signal to Googlebot that the URL refers to more than one page of content. Google is unable to distinguish between different pages on your website without this trailing slash.
So what can you do if your website contains duplicate content?
1. Examine your site's organizational structure to ensure that Google can easily crawl all of its pages.
2. Organize your website thoughtfully, and check that it makes sense to visitors.
3. To help Google distinguish between different versions of the same content, use different URLs.
WHAT DOES A URL LOOK LIKE?
Let's explore how URLs function now that you are familiar with what they are. Because of this, "example.com" and "EXAMPLE.COM" have different URLs. This implies that Google will only index the URL with uppercase letters if you have a duplicate URL on your website with lowercase letters and uppercase letters.
It's also crucial to remember that every URL on a website needs to be different; otherwise, both the www in your domain name and the example in another page's URL would lead to the same page on your website. Finally, each URL must be readable by humans, which requires that there be no extra spaces or symbols.
As you can see, there are a lot of factors to take into account when using URLs. Although they may appear to be minor details, they are crucial for website optimization, usability, and SEO. If you need assistance setting up your site's URLs or have questions about how they operate,
WHEN DOES A TRAILING SLASH MATTER?
Yet when exactly should you employ trailing slashes? When it makes sense, that's the answer. The URL would look something like this, for instance, if you have a page on your website called "Product Information" and that page has numerous internal links to other pages on your site that are also related to products:
https://example.com/product-information/
However, it might make sense from an SEO standpoint to include a trailing slash rather than not include one if there were no other pages with similarly named URLs and the content of those pages was very different from one another but still related in some way to product information.
By doing this, Google will be able to categorize these pages without having to make an educated guess based solely on their titles.
Please get in touch with us if you are still unsure about whether your website has a trailing slash problem.
MISSING OR ADDED TRAILING SLASH CAN BE CONSIDERED AS DUPLICATE CONTENT
1. Verify the settings of your CMS to ensure that it is adding the trailing slash.
2. Search engines may flag URLs with and without trailing slashes as having duplicate content problems.
Check for trailing slashes using a program like Screaming Frog. This will demonstrate the exact location of the problem on your website and whether it affects all pages or just one. Make sure the server is set up to add the trailing slash if you are not using a CMS. If it's not, adjust the configuration or get in touch with your host to fix the problem.
Check the settings to make sure the trailing slash is added if you're using a CMS and it's not. If you want to permanently remove the trailing slash from search engine results, you can do this by checking a box or creating a 301 redirect for your URL.
DOES TRAILING SLASH MATTER IN LINKS FOR SEO
WHO IS NERD NARROW?
Search engines may consider a trailing slash to be duplicate content if it is present or absent. It might mean the difference between that page appearing in the top results on Google or not. Additionally, if other websites on related topics don't exactly match your URL, it might give you an advantage over them.