Slash (/) or No Slash - Does it Matter?

[TravG]

I have often wondered whether it makes a difference whether you have a trailing slash (/) after your url to link back to your homepage. Does it make a difference whether you do or not?

Ex. xxwww.abc123.com or xxwww.abc123.com/

I feel like you should not use a slash because when other sites link back to your homepage most times there is no slash, but again I'm not sure if it even matters or not.

Thoughts?

[wonderpunter]

No... i remember the old wives tales and how some oldskool seo'ers wanted to include the / on all links but never bothered myself and not seen any negative or positive..

[DanHorvat]

It's just important to be consistent, as an URL with a trailing slash and the one without are considered two different URLs by Google. Some people even do a redirect to make sure the chosen convention is followed.

Other than that, it's an issue that matters in UNIX (where it originated) as / indicates there are children nodes, but it doesn't matter here. If you want to do things "right" you'll use the trailing slash on all URLs that do have child nodes, e.g. you'll use www.site.com/slots/ for the category URL as there are children pages such as www.site.com/slots/slotgame. And won't be using a / on URLs that don't have children.

With this in mind, the main URL should have a trailing slash because it has children (the entire site), but I choose not to use it.

For Wordpress sites, I just don't touch anything. Though I really don't like the fact that it's adding a / at the end of URL of every page or post. But I don't want to mess with this. Basically, this isn't something that deserves attention if you're running a Wordpress site as everything works properly out of the box.

[WBM]

wont make the slightest difference at all

[Sherlock]

The idea behind redirects is if you are getting links from other people they might link to both versions. Like chrome is showing non / version of homepage even when there is / for me etc. The redirect def should be there.

[Cash Bonus]

Not at all.

[Doolally]

I agree, as far as search engine placement goes, it makes no difference.

[PROFRBcom]

I have always chosen without the slash. Same goes for excluding the www.

I figure the less the user has to type in the better.

[jaachterberg]

I agree with you all. Personally i think the www is also ugly. Slash or no slash doesn't really matter.

[gil.langelaan]

There is no difference, just remember that you'll need to build links to the chosen version of site URL, cause if you'll build to https://site.com/ when your site is https://site.com - you'll lose some link juice because of redirect.

[Mario The Gambler]

I always use a slash at the end because I think it increases the loading speed of my site a little. Here is the explanation:
https://edit.co.uk/blog/urls-trailing-slash-seo/

If you use Wordpress, most SEO plugins (Yoast for example) will automatically choose for you to add a slash.

But if your entire site is slash-free, I think I would not change anything if it's consistent throughout the site.

[Gambino888]

no it does not matter, there is usually a redirect on WP sites.

[Ninja16]

Not at all indeed

[shikher]

I dont think it make a difference