Interesting 301 redirect idea

[jabalabs]

I've been reading that it's possible www.example.com and www.example.com/index and http://www.example.com, etc, could all be competing with eachother. Should I use a 301 redirect from any possible homepage URL to the one I want? Is it possible I'll add a little more strength to my site by redirecting all links to one homepage?

[Sorvoja]

Short answer: yes.

In real life this is almost a trivial issue and the search engines normally figure this out by themselves, unlike just a few years ago. It should be enough just to make sure that all internal linking is consistent.

[A.N.Onym]

For more info about having a consistent homepage URL and proper 301 .htaccess redirects, read here and here.

[journey08]

Originally Posted by jabalabs

I've been reading that it's possible www.example.com and www.example.com/index and http://www.example.com, etc, could all be competing with eachother. Should I use a 301 redirect from any possible homepage URL to the one I want? Is it possible I'll add a little more strength to my site by redirecting all links to one homepage?

Yes, so it's really important to use 301 redirect so that all of those pages are treated as one by search engines and the backlinks you build for those pages will not be divided...

[pittbug]

And if you can't do the 301, use the new canonical tag.

You won't get any more strength, it just minimizes that chance people will link to index.php, which makes it easier later on if you change technology to say index.aspx

Also make sure any homepage links you have on the site go to / and don't reference the filename.

[pawan]

301 redirection are helpful from both user and technical point of view for the website.