Absolute URLs
-
Hi, this is a very basic question but I want to confirm, as I remembered it was consider a good practice to use the absolute version of your links when linking to other pages of your site, not for any issue related to passing authority or PageRank, but because if someone scraps your content then they would take the links as well (as if they didn't remove them).
Have the practices for internal linking with absolute or realtive URLs changed in any way? Which is the best way? absolute or relative? is there any harm for using the relative version?
Absolute: [](<strong><em>http://www.cheapdomain.com/myfolder/mypage.html)[](<strong><em>http://www.cheapdomain.com/myfolder/mypage.html)
[Thanks!](<strong><em>http://www.cheapdomain.com/myfolder/mypage.html)
-
Thanks Nemek and Alan, I actually have some issues with between the mobile version of our site and the absolute links, so yes Alfredo is right about being the best practice, but there is a big technical issue for our dev department.
-
Thanks Alfredo! Preciate it!
-
I think your correct, it is rare that it will actualy help
i like to use relative urls for portability, I think this advatage outweights any slight chance i get scaped, have my links left in, not no-followed and being a link worthwhile
-
Hi Andre,
Basically you're right - it's still a "best practice" but the main (or even only) advantage of using absolute URLs is when your content gets scraped and published "as is". The problem is that most of the time the scrapers will remove your URLs anyway or at least nofollow them. Even if they don't do that the quality of the links to your site you get from the "transaction" is very poor.
I've had a few situations where I got a couple of good links from authority sites that have quoted parts of my content and have included the links that were there. Even so, I've lately changed to using relative URLs because it makes development for me much easier, and I don't think the few scraper links I would get are really worth the hassle.
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
-
Change of URL + SEO Impact
We recently changed the URLs from our site http://www.website.com (old)
On-Page Optimization | | ederdesign
https://website.com/us/en/ (new) Our ranking is plummeting every since and I wonder if the new URL had something to do with it. Do you know if that change, could have impacted the ranking?0 -
To update or not to update news URLs ?
We manage a huge daily news website in my small country - keeping this a bit mysterious in case competitors are reading 🙂 Our URL structure is www.companyname.com/news/categoryofnews/title-of-article?id=articleid In this hyperreactive news world, title of articles change frequently (may be ten times a day for the main stories). The question we debate is : should we reflect the modification of the title in the URL or not ? Example : "Trump says he wants to ban search engines" would have URL http://www.companyname.com/news/entertainment/Trump-says-he-wants-to-ban-search-engines?id=12345678 Later in the day the title becomes "Trump denies he suggested banning search engines". Should the URL be modified to http://www.companyname.com/news/entertainment/Trump-denies-he-suggested-banning-search-engines?id=12345678 (option A) or not (option B) ? In Google News it makes no difference because of the sitemap, but in Google organic things are different. At present (option B in place), Google apparently doesn't see that the article has been updated, and shows the initial timestamp which is visually (and presumably SEOwise) not good : our new news looks like old news. Modifiying the URL would solve that issue, but could, may be, create another one : the new URL, being considered a new article, would lose, the acquired weight of the previous one in terms of referrals, social trafic and so on. Or not ? What do you think is the best option ? Thanks for your expertise, Yves
On-Page Optimization | | yves678901 -
URL for a new website
Hi, I am creating a new website for a client. Is it best to include the keywords from the most common search in the domain name, they would like: forenamesurname.com but should I be recommending: weddingmakeupbyforename.com Does it make much difference to search rankings if the keyword is in the domain name? Thanks v much
On-Page Optimization | | danieldunn100 -
Should I redirect mobile traffic to a different url? Will it hurt SEO?
I'm working on a site that has lots of great content and ranks well but essentially the money is generated by affiliate links. I don't have a mobile version of the site but the company I'm affiliated with does offer a mobile redirect to their domain. Will redirecting mobile traffic to a different url hurt my SEO? I think the user will get a better experience by landing on a mobile page but I don't know if google will see it like that. Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Mixing hyphens and underscores in a url
Hello. I am working on a site that was built with underscores in the urls, but only in the page names, not in the subdirectories. All the subdirectories have one-word names. So a typical url is "example.com/sub1/sub2/page_name." We would like to change the name of one of the subdirectories to a name that would be very useful for SEO, but this new name is a hyphenated word, let's call it "new-sub." If we changed "sub2" to "new-sub" then our url would have a mix of underscores and hyphens: example.com/sub1/new-sub/page_name. But if I used "new_sub" instead, google would read the words as connected with an underscore, instead of reading the subdirectory as a hyphenated word, which would be less useful for SEO. It seems like it might be a problem to have a hyphen in a subdirectory and underscores in the page names. But I want the SEO value of the hyphenated word. Any recommendations? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0 -
How should I structure my product URLs?
How should I structure my product URLs for the best SEO results? Lets say my product is "American Apparel 2001". Would it be better to run the URL together or use a "-" between each word. Here are two ideas I had, but feel free to suggest others. realthread.com/products/americanapparel2001 or realthread.com/products/american-apparel-2001 Thanks for the help! Dru
On-Page Optimization | | drudalton0 -
Close URL owned by competitors.
The following example is exactly analogous to our situation (site names slightly altered😞 We own www.business-skills.com. It's our main site. We don't own, and would rather avoid paying for, www.businessskills.com. It's a parked domain and the owners want a very large sum for it. We own www.business-skills.co.uk and point it to our main site. We don't own www.businessskills.co.uk. This is owned by our biggest competitor. We also own www.[ourbrand].com and .co.uk, and point them to the main site. My question is - how much traffic do you think we may be missing due to these nearly-but-not-quite URL matches? Does it matter in terms of lost revenue? What sort of things should I be looking at to get a very rough estimate?
On-Page Optimization | | JacobFunnell0 -
What is the best practice for changing a url of an existing page
I a looking through the on-page SEO reports in SEOmoz for one of my sites. It suggests that I change the url of a particular page to match the desired search term I want to rank for. In this case it is a site for a local business and the url is example.com/testimonials. when it probabaly should have instead been example.com/city-business-reviews. I have just a couple links to this page and I'm stuck towards the bottom of page 1 in the SERPs currently. Questions... 1. Should I change the url to include the exact keyword term I want the page to rank for? 2. If yes, what is the best method to ensure that any existing link juice to the current url is retained? Would I change the url, then create a new page with the old url and apply a 301 redirect to point it to the new page? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | fastestmanalive0