Ensuring your website is serving up the best possible version of the URL is not only great for indexing all of your UNIQUE URLs in Google and Bing but also maximises your backlink profile by avoiding two or more versions of a URL splitting your domain authority.

Improving canonicalisation is important to maintain consistency and avoid duplicate content issues.

Choosing one preference over the other should be considered based on conventional knowledge, I.e trailing forward slash vs no trailing forward slash at the end of URLs.

But more important is consistency. Check your website for duplicate content by following these simple steps;

1. Example.com vs example.com/ - do both exist or does one redirect to the other?

2. www.example.com vs example.com - does one redirect to the other? .

3. Example.com/ vs example.com/index.html .

Of course there are many more examples of duplicate content and canonicalisation issues but these issues are among the most common.

Any questions about your domain, either send us an email or pvt message or comment below: