Hi, master SEO,

I need some real valuable advices.

I was given to understand that .com is the site, .com/ is the home page, and .com/index.html or .com/php, etc. is also the home page.

I read from a recent SEO article (some of you might have seen it too) that Google treats.com/ and .com/index.html, etc. are different pages but with same content and therefore would impose penalty.
How to avoid this if this is the case?

In the same article, it said splitting the links to different urls (.com/ and .com/index.html) would split the value and lower the pagerank of both pages. It was recommended that all links should to directed to .com/ instead of /index.html, etc.
What would be the best linking strategy - linking to .com or .com/ or .com/index.html, etc.?

I also understand that deep links are very important as first it would improve the pagerank of those pages with deep links, and second the overall links to the domain would still be the counted for the pagerank of the site, i.e. the homepage. So linking to /index.html, etc. should not split the value of the links.

Grateful to all expert advices.

Lets set the record straight -

.com is the domain, not the site

.com/ is the site root

most web hosts serve a default page when the root is called, in this example - index.htm

the server sees .com as an invalid request - that's why your user agent (browser) always appends the /

the server sees .com/ and .com/index.htm as two separate pages, and serves the content that it is programmed to do, in most cases the same content

SEs (like google) see different urls as ......er.......different

google does not penalise for duplicate content, it filers out all but one of the copies it finds

.com/index.htm is not a deep link

Now for the advice -

when linking to your home page, link to .com/ - this goes for internal and external links

get external links to pages not accessible by direct links from your home page - these are the deep links

Northie wrote:

the server sees .com/ and .com/index.htm as two separate pages, and serves the content that it is programmed to do, in most cases the same content

SEs (like google) see different urls as ......er.......different

google does not penalise for duplicate content, it filers out all but one of the copies it finds

.com/index.htm is not a deep link

Now for the advice -

when linking to your home page, link to .com/ - this goes for internal and external links

get external links to pages not accessible by direct links from your home page - these are the deep links

Hi, Northie

Thank you for your most valuable advices, and they are most insightful.
I still need some clarification - forgive my ignorance, please.

Since "...it (google) filers out all but one of the copies it finds", why my .com/ and .com/index.php are both cached and the pageranks are different (PR3 and PR2 respectively)?

As regards "...external links to pages not accessible by direct links from your home page...are the deep links",  what is the implication (effects in pageranks, or other considerations) to that page and to the domain of such links to that page accessible and not accessible by direct links from home page?

What harm does it make when linking to .com/index.php instead of .com/


Thanks again.

just be consistent, the less confusing you are to a search engine the more chance you have of them liking you

You can't control how others link to you, but anyone linking to your home page will probably use .com/

therefore you should do that as well

Also, if you change servers, or the set up of your site you may want to serve index.php insread of index.htm, or index.html etc etc

SEs like links to different content, so do people, if you have more than one page on your website then you should have links to each different page - makes sense, huh?

The truth is your home page doesn't actually serve anybody any use, getting your home page to #1 for your keywords isn't what you're trying to do - you want to get relevant pages #1 for the term that's being targetted - ie giving users what they searched for.

With most e-commerce sites the home page is almost worthless, but site owners don't actually understand this

Therefore get deep links to your sales pages/product pages etc.

These links will contain your domain name so your entire domain will get 'brand awareness' with users and SEs alike

Forget the little green bar and look at your web logs next your sales figures - these metrics are much more valuable to you

Hi, Northie,


Thanks for you informative advices.


In short, linking to .com/ and .com/index.php does not do any harm except it is not flexible if there is any change of home page url in future.

I think I got sales and marketing senses, but I do not understand how the SE and the webs work, and there are so many people posting different "advices" in those SEO newsletters and articles (such as, google will penalize duplicate content and .com/ and .com/index.html are different pages of duplicate content...).

I wish to clarify this point because when I percieved that my .com/ and .com/index.php have different PR and then I changed all my internal links and some external links (article submission)  to the home page to .com/index.php., especially due to the fact that I misunderstood any page with an extension in url , i.e. .com/.... is internal page,
and linking to internal page will boost the PR of that page (and thus the SERP) and at the same time improve the no. of links to the domain (and thus the PR and the SERP). I wonder if I should spend the time and effort to change all internal links to .com/ right away.

And there is not much difference for an internal page being accessible or not accessible from the home page. But anyway, if the page is important to solicit external linking, then in most cases, it should be linked from the home page!

I still do not understand, other than the subpages of a main internal page (such as a directory, a blog). or space not available on the home page (which I doubt), what harm does it make for not linking direct from the home page? So basically, there should rarely be any deep linking.


Thousand thanks!