You might have two versions of the same page indexed on Google. One of the pages will have a backslash at the end and the other won’t.
Duplicate versions of the same page indexed on Google can harm your search rankings. This happens when Google doesn’t know which version of your page to rank.
If you have a self-referencing canonical you won’t have this problem (it tends to be an issue for older sites). Here’s how to check if your URL is self-referencing, and the code you need to add if it isn’t.
Download a Chrome extension like Detailed. Activate the extension on your domain.
If you have a green tick everything is fine.
If you don’t have a green tick; check what version of your site is most commonly indexed. You can do that by looking at which version of your most popular posts appear in the search results.
To set up a site-wide canonical URL, add the following code to the <head> section of your HTML document:
Copy code: <link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.example.com/” />
Replace “https://www.example.com/” with the canonical URL of your website.
This code tells search engines that this is the preferred version of your URL to index and display in search results. Alternatively, you can use the version without the backslash.
When someone loads your site, it will always direct to the version with or without a backslash.
Nico is the founder of Crunch Marketing, a SaaS marketing agency. He works with enterprise SaaS clients like Writer, Right Inbox, and Surfer SEO, helping them scale lead generation globally across EMEA, APAC, and other regions.
