{"id":119403,"date":"2021-03-03T17:45:46","date_gmt":"2021-03-03T09:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seo-hacker.com\/?p=19403"},"modified":"2021-05-11T05:48:33","modified_gmt":"2021-05-11T05:48:33","slug":"trailing-slash-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seo-hacker.com\/trailing-slash-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"All You Need to Know About Trailing Slash in SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"All<\/a><\/p>\n

Most webmasters and SEOs already know the existence of slashes in URLs, but what they don\u2019t know is that these (trailing) slashes, or otherwise known as a forward slash, can be disastrous if not managed properly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A trailing slash in a website\u2019s URL is a common occurrence; especially for websites that have numerous pages. But should webmasters always include trailing slashes in their URLs? What are the implications of trailing slashes at the end of URLs have on SEO? How do search engines understand trailing slashes in our URLs? All of these questions will be answered here.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What is a Trailing Slash?<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

A trailing slash is a forward slash commonly found at the end of a URL usually indicating a directory while those URLs not having a trailing slash would indicate a file. Here\u2019s an example:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Sitemap<\/p>\n

In this example, the trailing slash for our\u00a0<\/span>Sitemap SEO<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0page can be found after the word \u201cseo\u201d. Although it seems simple at first, trailing slashes have intricacies that SEOs and webmasters need to know to further optimize their website.<\/p>\n

Trailing Slash Examples<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

As I\u2019ve mentioned, the intricacies of trailing slash has webmasters and SEOs come up with multiple questions on how to properly use it, what are the differences in usage, etc. A few years back, Google\u2019s John Mueller provided a simple guide to help webmasters understand the different use cases of trailing slashes and how search engines understand them:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"JohnMu<\/p>\n

Furthermore, he gave a helpful image to help visualize his explanation:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Trailing<\/p>\n

Since we\u2019re primarily talking about the effect of trailing slashes in SEO, let\u2019s ignore its usage in hostnames and protocols for now, and let\u2019s focus on the usage on a path\/file. As can be seen in the example,\u00a0<\/span>(F)\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>and\u00a0<\/span>(G)\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>are not the same even though the only difference between the two is a trailing slash. So, it can be understood as having a page without a trailing slash and having a page with the same URL slug, but with a trailing slash, are considered different pages.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So in the example, I used in the earlier part of this post, if I have a page (<\/span>seo-hacker.com\/sitemap-seo<\/span><\/strong>)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>and I have another page, (<\/span>seo-hacker.com\/sitemap-seo\/<\/span><\/strong>), even if these two are\u00a0<\/span>identical\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>in content and everything else, they are considered separate pages are crawled and indexed separately without having any relationship with one another. In SEO, this will pose massive problems, here\u2019s why.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trailing Slash and SEO<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

So, how do these examples affect SEO? They mainly affect your SEO in 2 ways:<\/span><\/p>\n

Same Content = Duplicate\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

The example I used above with the sitemap-seo page can be categorized here. There will always be instances where you\u2019ll notice that there are two versions of a page, one with a trailing slash and one without.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem here is that pages like these are usually tagged as duplicate content and are detrimental to your SEO efforts. Duplicate content is one of the biggest mistakes you can make as an SEO since search engines, most especially Google, put an emphasis on delivering\u00a0<\/span>unique<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>original<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0information to users. There are 2 simple ways to fix this, you either:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Redirect the other page to the one you prefer<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Canonicalize the other to the one you prefer<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    This is easy to do since you can set this up in your CMS using plugins. But if you want to clean up your website, then you can delete one of the pages. This is a bit more difficult than the other 2 but it\u2019s still simple enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

    We\u2019ve had numerous clients experience this problem and redirection or canonicalization works wonders on avoiding duplicate content penalties and it also helps with our SEO efforts since it makes our website look better in Google\u2019s eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Different Content = Cannibalization<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

    A more complicated problem is if two pages, one with a trailing slash and one without, have entirely\u00a0<\/span>different content<\/span><\/strong>? Of course, this happens in A\/B tests or due to improper website development. Unlike the problem above, canonicalization is not a solution for this problem. Only redirection would work in this case.<\/span><\/p>\n

    But if you want to retain the content in the page you\u2019ll redirect, then I suggest creating an all-new page that has a unique URL.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Should You Use a Trailing Slash in Your URLs?<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

    It actually doesn\u2019t matter. You can use trailing slashes in your URLs or you don\u2019t. But what\u2019s important is you stay\u00a0<\/span>consistent<\/span><\/strong>. If you choose to use trailing slashes in your URLs then\u00a0<\/span>always\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>use trailing slashes where it\u2019s applicable and vice versa.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    To sum it up, you have to stay\u00a0<\/span>consistent<\/span><\/strong>. Google does not really have a preference if your website uses trailing slashes, but if you\u2019re inconsistent when uses trailing slashes, that\u2019s when you\u2019ll run into the problems I\u2019ve mentioned above. So I suggest when you decide on one, always stick to it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Do you have any more questions about trailing slashes? Ask them in the comments section below and I\u2019ll answer them!<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Most webmasters and SEOs already know the existence of slashes in URLs, but what they don\u2019t know is that these (trailing) slashes, or otherwise known as a forward slash, can be disastrous if not managed properly.\u00a0 A trailing slash in a website\u2019s URL is a common occurrence; especially for websites that have numerous pages. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wl_entities_gutenberg":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[100013],"tags":[102522,103760,103758,103759,103761],"wl_entity_type":[102502],"class_list":["post-119403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seo-tips-and-tricks","tag-duplicate-content","tag-forward-slash","tag-trailing-slash","tag-trailing-slash-seo","tag-trailing-slash-url","wl_entity_type-thing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAll You Need to Know about Trailing Slash in SEO<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Improper use of trailing slashes can be detrimental to your SEO. 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