Absolute vs Relative URLs
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What are the pros and cons of these two types of URLs and what type of weight does this hold. It doesn't seem to be a big issue in regards to ranking.
Any qualified clarity would help.
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I use a mix of both relative and absoloute, for navigation I tend to use relative links in case i ever move things around. However for content in particular articles or news pieces on a site i use exact links. I have found before that some of these have been used on other sites so including the exact link ensures that there is a link back to the website.
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If your links are absolute and another site scrapes your content, those links are often embedded when they republish it. If you use relative links, those embedded links would not work and you wouldn't get credit for them.
Here is a relevant quote from Rob Ousbey from an SEOMoz post:
"I'd recommend absolute links in post/page/feed content in particular (so that any scraped content maintains the links back to you). For 'navigational' links, there's a variety of reasons why absolute links are still useful, such as making sure link juice flows to the canonical domain (eg: if you have a number of (sub/)domains that resolve to the same content)."
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For SEO it doesn't matter at all. As long as your link points to a valid page or resource, the crawler bots will suss out the full URL.
I personally use relative links wherever possible. They keep the file size smaller, and they're more versatile if you restructure or move domains.
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