Which front page link to use?

[mikemac]

Hi Peter

After watching Traffic Blueprint bonus video 2 at the end you showed how the web master of the site you were talking about used domain.com/index.html to go to his front page. But his page with the higher page rank was just domain.com/ so he should have been using it.

I've had my domain on the top of a Google search phrase since 2004. That's not a big deal because nobody searches for it. I do have some people coming to my site from other sources though, about a quarter of them coming from bookmarks. Still not making any money to speak of though. Okay enough rambbling.

What I've done to start with a couple of years ago is use just mydomain.com in text links. Then I must have changed it to www.mydomain.com for text links. And then within the last couple of months I started to use www.mydomain.com/index.html when linking back to the front page within my site.

Is www.mydomain.com or www.mydomain.com/ the best link that I should be using for my front page? Which one, with the / or without it? Or is it just to be consistent?

Also after watching bonus video 2 I changed all the links to my front page within my site back to www.mydomain.com/

When I search Yahoo with link:mydomain.com without www. it shows 24 inlinks. When I search Yahoo with link:www.mydomain.com with www. it shows 21 inlinks, that are different than the first. With link:www.mydomain.com/index.html it seems to show the same 21 inlinks as link:www.mydomain.com.

Google does not show any at all for link:mydomain.com, link:www.mydomain.com (with or without the /) or link:www.mydomain.com/index.html I'm sure Google was showing about 30 inbound links just within the last month or month and a half. A bunch of inbound links from delicious aren't showing anywhere now. One thing that may or may not have effected this was that I got disqualified from using Google AdSense just within the last month. Could that be why? It pays to read the TOS closely. Woops.

I can't use MSN to find link:mydomain.com, link:www.mydomain.com or link:www.mydomain.com/index.html anymore for some reason. It just shows a blank screen with done when I try it. I know I have used MSN for this within the last 6 months. I'm still using a windows 98 SE operating system. Seeing MSN does not support windows 98 anymore could that be the reason why I can't use it to find my inbound links now?

I guess the main thing that I am asking is what link should I be using for my front page? This one www.mydomain.com/ and be consistent with it?

I didn't join Traffic Blueprint specifically for my domain that I've had for a couple of years although I have and will be making some more recommended changes from Traffic Blueprint to my pages on it. I will be submitting a different domain for critique in a couple of days. Traffic Blueprint was well worth the money.

Thanks
Mike

[AstarothSolutions]

basically the search engines will see domain.com, www.domain.com, www.domain.com/, www.domain.com/index.html, www.domain.com/index.html? etc all as different links and therefore will rate each one for the number of incoming links etc and therefore have a different page ranking for each one.

Consistency is the key if you had used 4 different version and had 1000 backlinks evenly spread you are portentially in a worse situation than someone with just 500 back links but only a single listed homepage.

Personally I would go for a straight forward www.domain.com as things like forums etc are more likely going to automatically convert it to a link than with out the www's and without the default page name as this may change over time and create a lot of work to try and correct links/ set up redirects etc.

[matt1biz]

Sometimes it's impossible to force people to link to domain.com or domain.com/index.html, or even with or without the www. subdomain.

You can solve this issue by using a 301 redirect on your index.html which will transfer visitors as well as any link or PR benefit to the domain root.

You can also solve the www issue by verifying your site through Google webmaster tools where you can select a preference for www. or not.

[mikemac]

Thanks guys.

Okay let's assume that I will be using http:// with all of my linking. And let's also assume that I do not want to use a 301 redirect link for my front page.

But I do want to be consistent from now on by using the same front page link everywhere.

What would you suggest as the best front page link to use,
www.domain.com without the / ?

Or www.domain.com/ with the / ?



Personally I am almost leaning towards www.domain.com/ with the / because, for instance if you copy http://www.teneric.co.uk from your url bar above, open another browser window, paste it and open it in the browser it does not come up as http://www.teneric.co.uk It comes up as http://www.teneric.co.uk/

This is a question that I have been struggling with for years. And it seems that everyone that I ask has a different answer. Which is probably the reason why I have inbound links going everywhere.

It would be really nice to get a solid answer on this one, including why I would use www.domain.com/ either with or without the /

Peter? Moderators? Anyone?

Can we come to the definative answer to this once and for all?

Thank you
Mike

[matt1biz]

With or without the / won't make a differnece, it's essentially the same page whereas anything after the / such as /index.html is a different page.

domain.com and www.domain.com are different (www. is a subdomain)
www.domain.com and www.domain.com/ are the same
www.domain.com and www.domain.com/index.html are different

[matt1biz]

Here's a good guide for you
http://www.accuracast.com/seo-weekly/url-seo.php

[mikemac]

Oh okay matt1biz. That clears it up.

Thanks for the guide. I see that page you posted also says "Google Webmaster Tools now allows website owners to specify which version of the URL should be used." So I guess I better register for the Google Webmaster Tools to get all my inbound links pointed to the same url. Like you mentioned yesterday.

By the way, if that is your guide Matt the link to the Google Webmaster Tools goes to a page that says " Oops! Please try again!"

Thanks again
Mike

[mikemac]

Matt the guide you posted also talks about XML Site Maps.

Someone else was asking about XML Site Maps a couple of posts below in this same part of the forum.

I posted that I just made up my own site map page and linked it to my front page and my other pages and Google picked up all my pages within what seemed like a week.

Do you know if there are any other advantages of using an XML Site Map besides getting Google to pick up your pages?

Also do you know if Google Site Map is the same as XML Site Map?

Someone suggested Google Site Map to me a while ago.

Mike

[matt1biz]

Personally I opt for HTML sitemaps, though there's no real advantage disadvantage to either.

Also do you know if Google Site Map is the same as XML Site Map?

Yes the Google sitemap is an an .xml format, they're the same thing.

Here's a couple of good resources for you,

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
To create an .xml sitemap

Also it's now possible to upload an .xml sitemap to the root directory of a site, add it's location to robots.txt and the major serach engines will now pick it up automatically without you having to ping them,

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...temapsorg.html

Second, it's now easier for you to tell us where your Sitemaps live. We wondered if we could make it so easy that you wouldn't even have to tell us and every other search engine that supports Sitemaps. But how? Well, every website can have a robots.txt file in a standard location, so we decided to let you tell us about your Sitemap in the robots.txt file. All you have to do is add a line like

Sitemap: http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml

to your robots.txt file. Just make sure you include the full URL, including the http://. That's it. Of course, we still think it's useful to submit your Sitemap through Webmaster tools so you can make sure that the Sitemap was processed without any issues and you can get additional statistics about your site

[matt1biz]

Originally Posted by mikemac

By the way, if that is your guide Matt the link to the Google Webmaster Tools goes to a page that says " Oops! Please try again!"

Nope, it's not mine, my sites never have broken links