This note preserves the original context of the Facebook post. Some tools, interfaces, and external links may have changed.
Whether the URL has a trailing slash will produce different results depending on the URL level and server settings.
The root URLs https://domain.com and https://domain.com/ usually represent the same resource, but https://domain.com/page and https://domain.com/page/ may be regarded as different URLs.
Also in need of unification are HTTP and HTTPS, www and non-www versions.
In practice, you should select a canonical URL first, then express your preference through 301 redirects or canonical tags, and simultaneously check the URLs used in internal links, sitemaps, and hreflangs.
The most noteworthy thing about this article is not a fixed slash rule, but the diagnostic principle that “all important signals should point to the same canonical version.”
Links mentioned in the original post
Related reading
How Search Engines Work: Crawling
Crawling is the first step in search. A crawler starts with a URL, visits it, discovers more URLs, and repeats the cycle. The concept sounds simple, but it contains many important SEO details.
SEO e-Newsletter Issue 49 – 2022.01.16~2022.01.31
It is still New Year’s Eve in the United States when I post this. I wish you all a Happy New Year! This e-newsletter was sent out during the annual holiday, but Chrome DevTools at point 6 and Archive.org at point 8 both recommend doing it yourself. If you want to be lazy during the New Year, just wait until work starts and then go back and read it~
SEO e-Newsletter Issue 53 – 2022.03.16~2022.03.31
This episode contains quite a lot of content and is quite long. You can find time to read and digest it slowly. If you have to choose, I suggest you pay close attention to the news that GA4 is preparing to completely replace the old version of GA, and we will continue to share more tips and tools in the next few weeks. In addition, the seventh point of content brief seems to have been rarely mentioned before. If you need to manage content output at work, it is highly recommended to refer to this method.
HTTPS is not only required for login and checkout
shared a basic concept in 2018, explaining why the entire website should use HTTPS from three perspectives: encryption, data integrity and server verification.
What happens after entering the URL: from Request to Status Code
Use a simplified web page request process to understand how Request Headers, Response Headers and 2XX, 3XX, 4XX, and 5XX status codes describe the results of resources.
Blank category page: noindex, soft 404 and page change signal
Starting from the discussion of blank category pages in e-commerce, we sort out the differences between noindex and soft 404, and how changes in content, internal links, and products can serve as signals for re-examination.