Properly Handling Your Domain Names & Canonicals
-
Believe it or not, but www.domain.com, www.domain.com/index.html, domain.com, and domain.com/index.html are all different in the eyes of many search engines, even though they all end up displaying the same page. These are called canonicals. It is important to keep things simple for search engines. Use the .htaccess file for an Apache server or the httpd.ini file for IIS servers to 301 redirect all variations of the home page to one uniform domain. Please note; if you are using a Microsoft IIS server and want to use the httpd.ini file, you will first need to install the isapi_rewrite on the server. By 301ing the canonicals you help avoid any potential confusion by the spider about what exact domain is the home page.
If one site is linking to www.domain.com/index.html and another is linking to domain.com, will both get counted by Google as a back link to www.domain.com? Maybe, maybe not, don’t take chances, 301 redirect.