What's a trailing slash and is it important for SEO?

While virtually every Internet user utilizes a search engines at least once per day - if not per browsing session - not everybody gives them the credit they truly deserve. The majority of us simply forget about the time and effort Alphabet (Google's parent company), Yahoo's owner Verizon, and Microsoft put into designing and maintaining these highly useful websites.

Further, search engines, collectively, are the most popular websites on planet Earth.

One Of The Many Factors Considered Is Trailing Slashes

Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are the web addresses that identify what website you're currently visiting, and are similar to street addresses in the sense of identification. Failing to address letters and packages properly could result in them getting returned, becoming lost in the mail, delivered to unintended addresses, or - the most likely result, given the address wasn't botched too badly - taking longer to deliver improperly addressed mail.

Failing to address your website properly could result in Internet users being unable to find it, taking slightly longer for it to load, and losing rank on search engines. The third possible consequence is undeniably the harshest outcome, as losing such position could negate mentally painful hours you poured into search engine optimization, not to mention wasting money, if you paid a professional to perform SEO services.

But What Is A Trailing Slash?

Website addresses typically have loads of forward and back slashes, such as the following example: https://en.ryte.net/wiki/SEO_tips/trailing_slashes/. The bolded, underlined slash at the end of the aforementioned example is considered a trailing slash.

There are no requirements online to identify any website with a trailing slash, although it may be more convenient if files are located after the trailing slash, like so: https://en.ryte.net/wiki/SEO_tips/.

The Answer

In the last example, only the bolded slashes don't matter. All other slashes, given they're trailing slashes, do, in fact, matter.

The most important part of this lesson is to use the same trailing slash-related protocol for all web addresses in your domain. If you opt for trailing slashes, use them every single time, without fail. Similarly, if you think trailing slashes look clunky, never, ever use them at the end of URLs.