Internal link question
-
Hello,
I was wondering if internal links should be full urls? for instance my coder might put "page-title.html" but I was wondering if its better for seo to have it be the full url "http://www.blah-blah.com/page-title.html"
thanks in advance..... I love this place!
-
I have been researching this further. If I want to change this on our large Website, I'm going to need major evidence that it's better and that it won't slow down our pages. In this article, Andy King makes the case for relative URLs. But he also says:
"Using the
base
element and mod_rewrite can alleviate the need for absolute URLs, and save additional space."Is this a true and accurate statement?
-
You are on the right track Dana. No, using absolute URLs is not going to cause a meaningful increase in server response time / page load time. I would look at other sitewide header/footer issues, javascripts / CSS and possible images on CDN etc.
-
I would recommend you to do absolute linking as its more accurate with less chances of any mistake in your internal linking effort!
-
Thank you Patrick for the link and Scott for the question. We just replaced all of our canonical tags with absolute URLs and i solved a lot of problems with weird URLs showing up as duplicate content in GWT.
UGH, but you both totally burst my bubble! I tell you what, just when you think you're cranking along in the world of SEO something comes along to humble you. Recently, I had been going through many old articles, some of which had absolute URLs. I was methodically going in and replacing them with relative links because we are on the page speed warpath right now and our IT director is convinced relative URLs reduce server calls and make the page load faster. After everything I read tonight, including the Yoast Post, it seems that the difference in page load speed between a page with absolute and a page with relative URLs is so tiny that it just doesn't matter. Furthermore, search engines my attribute more authority flowing from one page to the next on a site using absolute URLs for internal links.
Follow up question: We do not have gzip enabled. Our site speed is painfully slow (GWT reports average speed as 698 milliseconds) and we also don't have anything like the mod_deflate enabled on Apache....could the relative URLs in our case, actually have an impact on page speed?
If not, clearly I've got to circle back and undo the relative URLs I've put up on both of our sites in the past 2 weeks! ...sigh
Let me know - tomorrow's another day!
Dana
-
I would do full URLs. If your site gets scraped, you'll get a link pointing back.
-
I'd suggest using absolute (full) URLs whenever possible just to ensure you don't accidentally miss any relative URLs if you happen to move content/pages around. Yoast actually has a great blog post about why it makes sense to use full URLs whenever possible - http://yoast.com/relative-urls-issues/
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
When trying to sculpt an internal link structure, is there any point in placing text links to top level pages that are already in the main menu?
Does Google recognise a link in the content if there is already a link in the menu? My understanding is that Google only counts the first link it finds.
On-Page Optimization | | bittristo0 -
To NoFollow or to NoIndex internal links
I all, I have recently taken over a fairly large e-commerce site that I am trying to "fix" and have come across something that I need a second opinion on. A Semrush audit has revealed that there are a heck of a lot of internal nofollow links (over 90 000) that point to predominantly 4 pages from the Header of each page in the site, these are change currency pages to show clients different currencies and a members login page. The pages are: /?action=changecurrency¤cy=EUR /?action=changecurrency¤cy=USD /?action=changecurrency¤cy=GBP /members/ My opinion is that these pages should just be no index pages and they should be followed. instead of being indexed and no followed? Any thoughts on this out there?
On-Page Optimization | | cradut0 -
Should an internal link open in a new tab or in the same window?
Should an internal link open in a new tab or in the same window? Seems like this is an issue that has never had a definitive answer one way or the other. But I couldn't find any recent articles from reliable sources taking a stance and answering this question. Does anyone know if user engagement metrics (time on site, bounce rate, pages per visit) are impacted if a user clicks a link that opens in a new tab? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | NicheSocial0 -
Do follow links
Is it good(according to SEO) to give dofollow rel to external links of highly trusted websites from our content?
On-Page Optimization | | Obbserv0 -
Are Back Links King
We have worked as closely as possible to the guidelines and advice on this forum, if we compare our on page Analsis with other companies in the same field as ours we have a far better site as far as SEO is concerned, our DA authority is higher and most of our page authority is higher but we just cannot seem to get up to their level in the search engines, one site that is in competiton with us do not use Facebook and also they do not use Twitter very much, I looked at some of their backlinks and their top one which was a blog had not been updated since 2011, over the years we have amassed far more what I would call worthless links as this was the done thing then, how can I get on the right track, are there any companies who could assess our site for a reasonable cost to point us in the right direction, we are doing our own blog, Facebook, Twitter, Onlywire?
On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne0 -
Too many on page links - created by filters
I have an ecommerce site and SEOmoz "Crawl Diagnostics Summary" points out that I have too many hyperlinks on most of my pages. The most recent thing I've done that could the culprit is the creation of number product filters. Each filter I put on the page is creating a hyperlink off that page. As an example, there's a filter available for manufacturers. Under that, there are 8 new filter links, thus new hyperlinks. On one category there are 60 new links created because of filters. I feel like these filters have made the user experience on the site better BUT has dramatically increased the number of outbound links off the page. I know keeping it to under 100 is a rule-of-thumb but at the same time there must be some validity to trying to limit them. Do you have any recommendation on how I can "have my cake and eat it too?" Thanks for any help!
On-Page Optimization | | jake3720 -
Why DoFollow & NoFollow Attributes on Same Internal Text Links?
I want to know that, why SEOmoz have defined DoFollow & NoFollow attributes on same internal text links? Please, find out attachment to know more. Left bar have On-Page / Site Optimization link with dofollow attribute but, right section have nofollow. So, why should they have apply on DoFollow or NoFollow attribute on same text links? 6806571615_138b8765fd_b.jpg
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit0 -
Removed listings: 404, internal links or redirect?
For a classifieds web site with medium/high turnover for the various listings: How would you deal with pages of removed listings? a) would you be "honest" and return a 404 since the listing is not available anymore? b) would you maintain historical data about deleted listings so that you can try and 301 redirect to a relevant search results page? c) would you keep the page alive (maybe add a noindex meta tag?) and show links to multiple relevant search results pages in an effort to strengthen internal linking?
On-Page Optimization | | seo-cat0