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Please Help: SEO Canonical Link Issue (using with or without trailing slash?)

by Chloe Brooks
2 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi Guys
I'm confused about the trailing slash issue and what is the best SEO practice. According to what I read Google treats these urls differently.

www.xyz.com/
www.xyz.com

As you can see the first one has a trailing slash and the one without. When I search it in Google on the serp listings it has the trailing slash but then when I click it and go to the site it has the version without it. Does that mean you link to the version with the trailing slash (since Google indexed this version) or do you link to the version without which is the version that shows in the browser....

So which version should you link up to from within your website but also from external websites from and SEO perspective (to not lose any link juice between both versions)?

So then what about the subpages like this:

www.xyz.com/services/
www.xyz.com/services

Likewise here which version is the best practice to link up to from within your site and also externally to get the best link juice to the canonical version.

Many thanks
Chloe
#canonical #issue #link #seo #slash #trailing
  • Profile picture of the author daguerfi
    If it's a directory I prefer to use the trailing slash.

    www.xyz.com/ (conventionally a directory)
    www.xyz.com (conventionally a file like: html,php...etc)

    Google will treat the tow paths as separate pages. Use a 301 redirect from the duplicate to the preferred version.

    for more information visit the blog post by Google here, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: To slash or not to slash
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  • Profile picture of the author Chloe Brooks
    Thanks for this. So how is it counted? If the trailing slash shows up in the serps but then when you click it, it resolves as without it. Then how to link up from within the site and from external back links? Should it be with trailing slash or not...Thanks for the article but its 5 years old so not sure how applicable it is...cheers
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