Todays SEO post is a quick and easy one to avoid duplicate content.
http://www.craigharris.org
http://www.craigharris.org/index.php
Both this links return the same page and would be considered duplicate content by Google. To fix this include the following bit of code in your sites .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*index\.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.php$ /$1 [R=301,L]
If your site uses a .HTML main page use this:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*index\.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.html$ /$1 [R=301,L]
This will redirect all requests for the index page to the directory root avoiding duplication. If you have more RewriteRule lines in your .htaccess file you can remove the L at the end.
Read my previous article on duplicate content with the WWW sub-domain here: http://www.craigharris.org/2011/03/18/to-www-or-not-to-www-that-is-the-duplicate-content-question/
