Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
After HTTPS upgrade, should I change all internal links, or a general 301 redirect is better?
-
I recently upgraded to https.
Of course most internal links of my old posts are still http.
So I set up a 301 redirect in order to make the old link works.
In terms od SEO this is good or it is better to update all the internal links to https, manually?
In that case can I do it in batch with a search/replace command in the phmyadmin database?
any other suggested method?
thank you
-
Hi again. I've seen it. Quite honestly I disagree with absolutes being a priority. The arguments, presented in that WBF don't really work for me against the pain in development (I believe she mentioned even more drawbacks). Also, from my experience I have not seen any (at all) benefits in any way (SEO or loading speed) from having absolutes, rather than relatives.
-
Interesting Giorgio, I hadn't seen that WBF before.
Absolutely no disrespect to Ruth but that's the first WBF I've disagreed with. The scraper risk is something I'm willing to take a gamble on for the benefits of relative links and the other points are moot if your website is setup correctly (htaccess deals with the potential for different versions of your domain and IMO canonicalization should always be used).
Going by that WBF, if your site is set up correctly with redirects and canonicalization, the only benefit here is if a scraper copies your site and there's a very slim chance of this actually happening.
-
but...
wait a minute. this Moz posts suggests keeping you links absolute is "a priority" , from a seo perspective.
under point 2):
https://moz.com/blog/relative-vs-absolute-urls-whiteboard-friday
-
Exactly how to implement it will depend on your CMS but basically, all you need to do is update the hyperlinks from showing the entire link path to a simple, relative one like the examples below.
Absolute Anchor Text
Relative Anchor Text
With hyperlinks, if you don't specify the full address path including http://www then the current website path will be added to the beginning. In this example, since there is no full and complete path before /contact, it's correctly assumed that the link is to point to http://www.example.com/contact.
This is important because it means no matter what changes you make to your domain (www to non-wwww, moving to https, moving the site to a new domain etc) the links will always work perfectly. If you use an absolute path, the minute your change anything about your domain, all the links break because they're manually pointed to the old one.
Here's a bit more info on the topic if the above is a little confusing. It's not a link to my site, just the first I found in a Google search
-
Thank you very much /Dmitrii.
Can I change them to relative?
How should I do?
-
Hi there.
So, you have all your links absolute? not relative? Gotta be painful to manage..
Well, anyway, to answer your question - the only bad part about not changing links to https would be that extra redirect. If your servers are good, fast and very reliable, nobody would probably even notice it. I would check loading speeds though, especially for mobiles.
Personally, I would change all links to relative and never worry about stuff like this. If you want to keep them absolute, then yes, I recommend changing them all. Just for clean conscious sake
About find-replace. That would depend on how your website is built. I assume you're talking about wordpress? Then yes, you should be able to. As long as you know where to search.
Cheers.
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
-
My site auto redirects http to https. This is causing redirect chains. What can I do?
I noticed that Moz flags a lot of redirect chain issues on my site. I realized that this is mostly because the site automatically redirects http to https, and when I create a new URL (when a URL changes, for example) it is automatically flagged as a chain. Example: http://www.example-link Auto directs to: https://www.example-link Which is then redirected to: https://www.example-link-changed (when the address actually changes) I don't seem to have any control over changing where the initial http redirect goes. Any advice on fixing this problem?
On-Page Optimization | | baystatemarketing0 -
Too much internal linking?
Hi everyone, Too much of anything is not good. In terms of internal linking, how many are too many? I read that the recommended internal links are about 100 links per page otherwise it dilutes the page's link equity. I have a concern about one of our websites - according to search console, the homepage has 923 internal links. All the pages have a corresponding /feed page added to the page URL, which is really weird (is this caused by a plugin?). The site also has an e-com feature, but it is not used as the site is essentially a brochure and customers are encouraged to visit the shop. I assume the e-com feature also increases this number. On the other hand, one of the competitors we are tracking has 1 internal link site-wide. Ours is at 45,000 site-wide. How is it possible to only have 1 internal link? Is this a Moz bug? I know we also need to reduce our internal links badly, however, I'm not sure where to start. I don't know how these internal links are linked together - some aren't in the copy or navigation menu. When I scan the homepage links using 'check my links', the total links identified for the homepage is only 170. kAeYlTM
On-Page Optimization | | nhhernandez0 -
301 Redirect to product page or category?
We manage an ecommerce website that sells health products. A few products have now been discontinued. I’m just wondering what would be the best practice in this case. Should we 301 redirect to a similar product or to a similar category page? ANY HELP IS GREATLY APPRECIATED!
On-Page Optimization | | odegi0 -
How much juice do you lose in a 301 redirect?
Our site has a number of, shall we say, unoptimized URLs. I would like to change the URLs to be more relevant; if a page is about red widgets, the URL should be www.domain.com/red-widgets.html, right? I'm getting resistance on this, however, based on the belief that you lose something significant when you 301 an old URL to a new one. Now, I know that if you have a long chain of redirects, the spiders will stop following at some point, and that is a huge problem. That wouldn't apply if there's only one step in the chain, however. I've also heard that you lose some link juice in a 301, but I'm unsure how serious that problem actually is. Is it small enough that we'd win out in the long run with better-optimized URLs?
On-Page Optimization | | CMC-SD0 -
301 redirects from several sub-pages to one sub-page
Hi! I have 14 sub-pages i deleted earlier today. But ofcourse Google can still find them, and gives everyone that gives them a go a 404 error. I have come to the understading that this wil hurt the rest of my site, at least as long as Google have them indexed. These sub-pages lies in 3 different folders, and i want to redirect them to a sub-page in a folder number 4. I have already an htaccess file, but i just simply cant get it to work! It is the same file as i use for redirecting trafic from mydomain.no to www.mydomain.no, and i have tried every kind of variation i can think of with the sub-pages. Has anyone perhaps had the same problem before, or for any other reason has the solution, and can help me with how to compose the htaccess file? 🙂 You have to excuse me if i'm using the wrong terms, missing something i should have seen under water while wearing a blindfold, or i am misspelling anything. I am neither very experienced with anything surrounding seo or anything else that has with internet to do, nor am i from an englishspeaking country. Hope someone here can light up my path 🙂 Thats at least something you can say in norwegian...
On-Page Optimization | | MarieA1 -
Footer link to home page?
Quick question - is it a best practice to add a footer link on each page of a website that points back to your home page, with the anchor text being your official brand name?
On-Page Optimization | | Bandicoot0 -
Is it better to drip feed content?
Hi All, I've assembled a collection of 5 closely related articles each about 700 words for publishing by linking to them from on one of my pages and would appreciate some advice on the role out of these articles. Backround: My site is a listings based site and a majority of the content is published on my competitors sites too. This is because advertisers are aiming to spread there adverts wide with the hope of generating more responses. The page I'm targeting ranks 11th but I would like to link it to some new articles and guides to beef it up a bit. My main focus is to rank better for the page that links to these articles and as a result I write up an introduction to the article/guide which serves as my unique content. Question: Is it better to drip feed the new articles onto the site or would it be best to get as much unique content on as quickly as possible to increase the ratio of unique content vs. external duplicate content on the page that links to these articles**?** Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Mulith0
