Relative links
-
Hi,
How much of an SEO issue is it to have relative links vs. fully written out links, like http://www.seolinkquestion.com/my-silly-question ?
If I have a site that uses relative links, should I change them all?
Thanks...Mike
-
If that's the case I wouldn't worry about it, if things change and you start blogging maybe use it there but like you say it's not worth worrying about.
Tom
-
Thanks, Tom!
So, the site this issue is a few hundred pages of not very unique catalog content. Would you rewrite the relative links to absolute?
Best...Mike
-
I would say that it depends on how content rich your site is going to be, if it's likely you're going to be the victim of scrapers use the absolute URLs. Most scrapers will of course try to remove any links you put in, but not all will and it's better for you if they refer back to the site where the content was originally appearing.
I'm going to have to give you a tenuous link here because I cannot find where I originally read it, but point 13 on this page (about an SEOmoz masterclass in bulgaria of all things):
Ah okay and in chapter 4 of the beginners guide:
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development
I've had scrapers recently start paying attention to one of my sites, and it's good to see the absolute links appearing in there. It's not going to pass over much juice or authority, but it will help avoid duplicate content issues.
Edit: And Mike already beat me to it.
-
Dear Mike,
Thanks! I wasn't looking forward to changing everything. Best...MEJ
-
From an SEO point of view it shouldn't make a difference. See http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-internal-interlinking-relative-vs-absolute-urls/7000/ and http://www.seo-theory.com/2008/05/28/are-absolute-links-better-than-relative-links-for-seo/ and http://www.webpronews.com/absolute-vs-relative-links-which-is-better-for-the-search-engines-2004-08
There are cases when absolute is better (RSS feeds, PDF documents, or even on your site so that if it is scraped the links might stay in tact), but personally I like relative URLs on my site. If I ever have to rename a sub-directory (not often, admittedly) things go smoother.
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
-
How can I check spam score and non indexed links
Hi I am working on a project in which I have a local services website <a target="_self">www.thepcrrg.com</a> I want to be sure its links are getting indexed or not. Please help me.
On-Page Optimization | | Jioiebytt2 -
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 -
Should we use the same word in multiple mega menu link text?
We are currently working on a redesign of our site and I'm working on our mega menus. In the middle of this we had an agency evaluate our current/old site for improvements. (yes the timing is strange) One of the things they recommended is updating our link text in our mega menu. See image: old mega menu. The links are to pages for installation guides in our installation section. They recommended adding Installation to every link. To me this looks spammy. And using the same word in the menu and therefor every page seems spammy. The question is do we need to do this on the new site? In my opinion no. We have the links under a section for installation. Is that enough or should we use installation in every menu item? 6JcZwiU krbzxqx
On-Page Optimization | | BbeS0 -
Does anyone use No Sweat WP Internal Links Lite?
Would you recommend it? Are there any other plugins that you'd recommend instead?
On-Page Optimization | | --Chantal--0 -
No followed links, what happens to the PR?
Hi, I have read a few times, on here and other places that when a website applies a no follow tag to a link the PR is not retained but instead disappears (evaporates) thus neither website benefiting. Is that true? If so what is the actual benefit of no following a link?
On-Page Optimization | | Bondara0 -
Is it ok to point internal links to index.html home page rather than full www
I thought I saw this somewhere on SEOmoz before but I was so busy by the time I got around to work on my SEO on my site, I realized I have this happening and can't recall if it is a problem which takes away from my ranking. If my www.website.com is ranking well but I have internal menu links pointing to www.website.com/index.html instead of www.website.com will that take away from my www.website.com rankings? Should I change all my menu links that point to /index.html to the full website url path www.website.com ?
On-Page Optimization | | Twinbytes0 -
Internal Linking - Same page
Is there any benefit in internally linking back to the same page? I have no other relevant pages in the site I can link to so wondering if it's worthwhile to use anchor text to link back to the same page?
On-Page Optimization | | Will_Craig0 -
Alternatives for having less then 100 links per page
Guys, I'm aware of the recomendation of having <100 links per page. The thing is I'm running a vacation rental website (my clients pay me to advertise their properties on my website). We use an AJAX interface with pagination to show the properties. So I have cities that have +400 properties on them... the pagination works fine but google can't crawl trough it (there is a google doc about making ajax systems crawlable, but that would invove a huge rewrite of our code and I dont understand how it helps the SEO). So my question is: what do I do to mantain each property having at least one link pointing to them at the same time that I keep the # of links in each page <100 ? Any suggestions ?
On-Page Optimization | | pqdbr0