User experience and the trailing slash for directories in the URL?

1. What is a trailing slash used for in a URL?
2. How does a trailing slash impact SEO?
3. Should base URL have trailing slash?
4. What is leading slash in URL?

What is a trailing slash used for in a URL?

Historically, it's common for URLs with a trailing slash to indicate a directory, and those without a trailing slash to denote a file: http://example.com/foo/ (with trailing slash, conventionally a directory) http://example.com/foo (without trailing slash, conventionally a file)

How does a trailing slash impact SEO?

Trailing Slash & SEO – The Takeaway

When using trailing slashes, each page is analyzed and counted as a separate URL. Therefore, to avoid internal duplicate content, you should use appropriate 301 redirects and get rid of 404 errors. Thanks to it, identical pages won't fight for the same positions.

Should base URL have trailing slash?

The short answer is that the trailing slash does not matter for your root domain or subdomain. Google sees the two as equivalent. But trailing slashes do matter for everything else because Google sees the two versions (one with a trailing slash and one without) as being different URLs.

What is leading slash in URL?

Path starting with slash ensures that, the path is absolute to the root directory and not the current directory.