Question regarding eCommerce sites, relative URLs and secuirty certificates
-
We recently installed a new SSL certificate on an ecommerce site. Our IT Director is insisting that all pages on the site must be coded in such a way so that the address bar maintains a green background when a visitor is navigating the site after navigating to a secure page or logging in.
I have worked on many ecommerce sites and never has this been an issue. Amazon does not use the green bar....but they are Amazon.
In order for this to work, he is insisting that all internal URLs be coded as relative instead of absolute.
How bad is this for SEO or does it really not matter that much? How crucial is it for trust and security?
Opinions welcome!
-
Dana,
/blog would be ok in some circumstances, and ../blog in others. It depends on where you are linking from and to. The ".." means the page being linked to is one level up in the hierarchy defined by the path. So if you're linking to www.mysite.com/notblog/filename from www.mysite.com/blog/postname you would use .. while if you are linking to www.mysite.com/blog/filename you would not.
Your developer is probably insisting this because the security certificate doesn't validate on the development or Q&A site, or possibly because you use subdomains. I don't see why an absolute path on the same domain would cause an error.
-
Thanks Streamline! Would this happen because of the ".." before the forward slash? In other words "/blog" would be okay yes?
-
Relative URLs are not inherently bad for SEO, but they oftentimes trip up webmasters if less than 100% of the links on the site are valid. For example, using a link like "../blog" will tell the search engines to go to http://www.mysite.com/blog/blog and then http://www.mysite.com/blog/blog/blog and so on, causing the crawlers to get trapped in an endless loop which is obviously not ideal for SEO. So as long as you are on top of making sure the relative URLs are always valid, then you should be fine.
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
-
We've a client that wants to repurpose some of the content on there site but not lose rankings. However its changing the content to an alternative to ....
The Current URL Example would be test.co.uk/prodcut-catogory/product-1 . This side of the business is being sold however they have products elsewhere in the range that can be used as alternatives to the product range that will be moved, so they want to amend these pages with an " alternative " slant. Example idea would be to change to the following : test.co.uk/prodcut-catogory/alternative-to-product-1, trying not to change the URL to much, keeping the majority of the content the same but adding new copy stating the benefits of using the alternative product. So it becomes a comparison between the two. I appreciate I will have to amend the URLs, titles, meta, H1s, add new copy & preform a 301's. Option 2 Simply write a second page which is all brand new content talking about it being an alternative to the products and doing a 301 from the original page but not amending that. Be great to get peoples feedback on this approach and if there is anything else that I could do to minimise the drop in rankings once I complete the changes. Thank you D
Conversion Rate Optimization | | SDOwner0 -
How complicated would it be to optimize our current site for the Safari browser?
Hi all! Okay, here's the scoop. 33% of our site visitors use Safari. 18% of our visitors are on either an iPad or iPhone. According to Google Analytics, our average page load time for visitors using Safari is 411% higher than our site average of 3.8 second. So yes, average page load time pages loading in Safari is over 20 seconds...totally unacceptable, especially considering the large percentage of traffic using it. While I understand that there are some parameters beyond our control, it is in our own best interest to try to optimize our site for Safari. We've got to do better than 20 seconds. As you might have guessed, it's also killing conversation rates on visits from that browser. While every other browser posted double-digit improvements in conversion rates over the last several months, the conversion rate for Safari visitors is down 36%...translating into 10's of thousands in lost revenue. Question for anyone out there gifted in Web design and particular Web Dev....Do you think that it's possible/reasonable to attempt to "fix" our current site, which sits on an ancient platform with ancient code, or is this just not realistic? Would a complete redesign/replatform be the more realistic (and financially sound) way to go? Any insights, experiences and recommendations would be greatly appreciated. If you're someone interested in spec'-ing out the project and giving us a cost estimate please private message me. Thanks so much!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | danatanseo1 -
Should I add social media icons to homepage of ecommerce site?
... In particular Facebook likes for social proof and credibility? (We have 1.7k likes, more than most competitors). Aimed at the higher end of the market, I've tried to keep the aesthetic a bit more pared down. But, perhaps this needs to be made more prominent?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Coraltoes770 -
Is my destination url affecting QS?
Hello, I'm running a PPC campaing targeting "Storenvy App" using the ads below
Conversion Rate Optimization | | JustinButlionand the following DESTINATION LINK: http://www.yotpo.com/landing_page?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=s-storenvy&redirect=http://lp.yotpo.com/storenvy-app.html As you can see there is a 301 redirect from http://www.yotpo.com/landing_page?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=s-storenvy TO http://lp.yotpo.com/storenvy-app.html How this will affect QS? Thanks in advance for all your answers! AdDzQi0.jpg
0 -
Optimising /product/ pages for our 15,000 product ecommerce store.
Hi guys! We're constantly working on evolving our /product/ pages on the site, however some times it's pretty easy to get lost in your own mess. Especially when the sites consists of 15,000+ products. So it's pretty painful to handcraft every single page. So I thought I'd jump in here to see if anyone had any suggestions for stuff we're missing, and or should improve? These are product pages: http://www.warcom.com.au/products/9954_draytek-vigor-120-single-port-adsl-122-modem http://www.warcom.com.au/products/49884_warcom-deluxe-double-lcd-monitor-stand---free-shipping There is a few issues we're aware of already.. Negatives: To many links in the left menus. To many links in the footer. Positives: We recently included rich snippets.. We're always testing out colors and styles. We're always testing meta data. Any and all suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | warcom
Paul.0 -
Which eCommerce Platform?
Dear MOZ community members We currently run a custom built IIS/ASP/SQL Server system that is starting to fall apart and needs major overhaul. I'm currently evaluating a number of open source eCommerce platforms (Magneto, OpenCart) and would welcome any advice that some of you may have. We are not a major brand, but we have a good name in our field which we wish to maintain and we ranking very well for our top phrases despite not having SEO-friendly URLs amongst other things. I've downloaded Magneto and installed it on a LAMP could server and got it up and running. It looks very flexible, albeit a little bloated and I can concerned that it's a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Do any other small businesses have experience with Magneto? Thanks for your time! andy www.prendas.co.uk
Conversion Rate Optimization | | andystorey1 -
What is the best solution to track conversions on local plumbing site (non-mobile)?
What is the best solution to track conversions on our local plumbing site? 95% of leads coming from phone calls, the rest – from the contact form we have on every page. Is there a reliable solutions to track conversion rate for non-mobile local site? As a side note, we have 6 different phone numbers on our site that users can call in order to reach us.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | dinok_ya0 -
How can I Monetize My Site with The Type of Traffic it Receives?
I was just in here yesterday asking a question, so I appreciate everyone's patience with this newbie! This is a totally different site that I have a question about so here goes: I have a site that has started to receive large amounts of traffic from an image search. My intention was to use Amazon for products based on my website theme. I haven't been getting traffic from my intended keywords. Now I rank #2 for an image search, loads of traffic! GREAT! But what next? These ppl. aren't looking to buy stuff, they just want the image. Fine, it is a public domain image. I thought of adding some more informational articles and using adsense to bring in some cash. Any opinions on the best way to go with this site? I only have 3 articles up so it could go in any direction from here. Thanks!!!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | iheartkelby0