Having set the 'home' page as wwwdotmydomain and redirected the http:/mydomain as a 301 to stop splitting the 'inlinks' , duplicate content etc; I was wondering whether or not I should change the back 'home' links from the other pages to the http:/www.mydomain or leave them as they are, which at the moment are linked to the 'index' page owing to the html editor I'm using? Whether or not the search engines would then see this link as wwwdotmydomaindotcom/index rather than the full URL?
Any thoughts would be appreciated I would change what you can to link back to the top level domain. For one, at the least, it will make changing your home page easier in the future, eg if you go to a system that uses index.html instead of index.php Thanks , since I wrote this post I have looked at the way my site links back. If I'm at one of the 'sub' pages and I click the 'Home' page link, the address in the browser comes up as http/wwwdotmydomaindotcom/index But since I have gone to all the trouble of creating a 301 redirect so http:/mydomaindotcom is my main URL. Would I be better off linking directly to that URL from my 'sub' pages rather than http:/wwwdotmydomaindotcom/index in case search engines see this as another 'website' and punishes me for it and if I should change it, how do I? I'm using NVU as my html editor.
Thanks Steers82 for your explanation, my site is static eg;html. I'd say no, because 301 are permanent moves that translate page rank to the new page. If you point to the 301, you're just increasing server load. The 301 already tells google, hey, this page permanently moved to here, please index this and drop the other. In time, the new page takes over with google, but will NOT take care of the issues with your present backlinks. You'll either need a proactive approach of emailing and requesting they update the links, or you'll need to leave the 301 in place forever.
Just take your time working through your internal pages to correct the link. It just makes better sense so you don't have to worry about forgetting to upload an htaccess file or setting IIS again later on potential server moves to ensure things don't break.
Any thoughts would be appreciated I would change what you can to link back to the top level domain. For one, at the least, it will make changing your home page easier in the future, eg if you go to a system that uses index.html instead of index.php Thanks , since I wrote this post I have looked at the way my site links back. If I'm at one of the 'sub' pages and I click the 'Home' page link, the address in the browser comes up as http/wwwdotmydomaindotcom/index But since I have gone to all the trouble of creating a 301 redirect so http:/mydomaindotcom is my main URL. Would I be better off linking directly to that URL from my 'sub' pages rather than http:/wwwdotmydomaindotcom/index in case search engines see this as another 'website' and punishes me for it and if I should change it, how do I? I'm using NVU as my html editor.
Thanks Steers82 for your explanation, my site is static eg;html. I'd say no, because 301 are permanent moves that translate page rank to the new page. If you point to the 301, you're just increasing server load. The 301 already tells google, hey, this page permanently moved to here, please index this and drop the other. In time, the new page takes over with google, but will NOT take care of the issues with your present backlinks. You'll either need a proactive approach of emailing and requesting they update the links, or you'll need to leave the 301 in place forever.
Just take your time working through your internal pages to correct the link. It just makes better sense so you don't have to worry about forgetting to upload an htaccess file or setting IIS again later on potential server moves to ensure things don't break.