: SEO: Monthly changing homepage, better to redirect or duplicate? I have a website called What can I plant now which is a simple site with a page for each month of the year and a homepage

@Steve110

Use response code 302 - "temporarry redirect" for whatcaniplantnow.com/february for redirecting to whatcaniplantnow.com/
Because you really just temporarry move uri :)

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@Heady270

You don't want to do any redirecting. Users should be able to bookmark the "current advice" given by the home page and the specific advice for any given month.

There does appear to be an SEO problem though, I can't find your home page. If I search for "what can I plant in february cauliflower" I get your /february page. But even searching for "whatcaniplantnow.com" doesn't bring up the home page. Google does appear to be detecting it as duplicate and not showing it for any searches. I don't think redirects would help that.

Maybe you could redesign the home page to be "not quite duplicate". Put 5 things to plant now on the homepage with a "see more" link to the current month and have some articles featured on the home page. Or live with your homepage not being searchable.

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@Radia820

This raises the problem of duplicate as you seem to be aware...

The best method would to use just some of the information on the front page but ultimately try to get your visitors to click to read more in February.

You want some unique content on the front page so I would do something like:


Add a image slider - Images of lots of vegetables of Feb Plants (Change this monthly, Google loves fresh pages)
List 3 vegetables with unique text about these vegetables (Do not copy from month pages) and with a SEE MORE BUTTON linking to Current Month Page (Change this monthly Google loves fresh pages)
Fill the bottom of the page with around 500 words about why seeds only grow at certain times for year, have a few tips or anything really as long as its on topic about planting seeds. (You shouldn't need to change this monthly and should consider this static.)


Basically you don't want users using the front page you want them clicking though to see what they can plant. So you need to treat these as separate pages and keep them unique.

You should treat your front page as aiming for rankings such as "What can I plant now", "what seeds can I plant now" and the deeper pages "what seeds can you grow in March" ETC. So never duplicate content and never try to rank to much on one page, also Google loves deep links.. its much more natural so to speak.

By the way, Redirecting can hurt rankings especially when your doing this on a monthly basis.

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