These days, most SEOs and webmasters are aware of the term “trailing slash” in URLs. But they are unaware of the fact that if not handled appropriately, these trailing (Slashes), also known as forward slashes, could have disastrous results.
It is typical for website URLs to have a trailing slash, especially for websites with several pages. However, should webmasters add trailing slashes to their URLs?
What effects do trailing slashes at the end of URLs have on search engine optimization? Etc. in today’s article we will provide answer to all these questions.
What is a Trailing Slash?
The letter “/” that follows a domain name in a URL is known as a trailing slash.
- The URL www.example.com/, for instance, has a trailing slash.
- The website example.com- URL doesn’t have a slash.
You will clearly observe when you browse different websites that some of them conclude with a slash and some of them don’t. If you see this slash it is a signal that the page was classified as a directory.
The site was a file in case, the URL lacked this distinctive character. Nowadays, people consider the distinction to be arbitrary, and even Google no longer rates webpages in this manner.
The changes throughout time were caused by the development of file structures.
Simple architecture is no longer the only option for contemporary network systems. Directory pages that identified directories and files with a terminating slash have been replaced by templates that store the file structure, and dynamic files are now used to produce pages.
These changes continue to confuse users who are unsure whether or not to add a slash to the end of their URLs.
How does a Trailing Slash in a URL impact SEO?
Adding a slash to the end of the URL is optional; either choice is acceptable. It’s important to understand that search engines treat URLs with or without the slash as two separate pages. It can have negative effects on SEO.
Issue of duplicate content
Internal duplicate content is present when two pages with identical content are discovered on the same website and the only distinguishing feature is a slash.
In such a case, it becomes quite difficult for Google to pinpoint the original source, and everything becomes highly disorganized. In this situation, it’s crucial to choose one URL that will serve as the main version that Google crowns and indexes.
User experience issues
Whether the URL ends with a slash or not, it is still considered to be a unique and separate webpage. The content of the website could potentially alter if the identical URL appears both ways, with and without the trailing slash.
Although the page is comparable in most trailing slash situations, you cannot be certain that it will continue to be so given the number of people that work on websites and are constantly making changes and occasionally injecting custom code.
The likelihood that two separate URLs for the same page may change depends on how long they are. Consider how confusing it would be for a visitor to visit your website in two different versions or to click a link to an earlier version of your page from another website. The user, search engines, and everyone else who interacts with your website will all be hampered if you ignore trailing slash issues.
Link equity problem
Anyone seeking to link to your page will be confused if they find two versions of the same page at two different URLs. Do you use the trailing slash? A choice must be made. If half of the people link to the URL with a trailing slash and half do not, your link equity is divided in half.
Crawl budget issues
A website’s crawl efficiency may suffer if there are too many pages on it, each having a separate URL that ends in a slash. To put it simply, Googlebot will need to spend more time on your website and use up more of your crawl budget on the same content. Consequently, this can negatively affect the SEO of your website.
Conclusion
Using trailing slashes (or not) in your domain’s URL structure is not the cause of this misunderstanding, to conclude. Whether or not you use a trailing slash in your URLs is irrelevant to Google. The way you use them is what matters most because Google counts each one as a different URL.
That’s why it is suggested to take the assistance of the best digital marketing agency that offers full-scale SEO services for the better optimization of your website. If you wish to connect with such an agency then get in touch with Stellar Digital the best digital marketing company in Gurgaon and Delhi NCR.
