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
-
Tag Clouds in Google Despite Canonical Links for Single Tags/Articles
I am frustrated to see a lot tag clouds in Google even though I programmed my tagged pages to display a canonical link to the linking article if the is only one result for the tag cloud. The goal to to make sure that the article, which is of better quality than the tag page, ends up in Google without a bunch of thin tag pages getting in there. For instance this article should be in Google and this tag should not be because that tag has a canonical URL for that article. I do not have a lot of experience with tag cloud SEO because I prefer to limit such pages to categories, but I have found tag clouds to be important for aggregating information for specific issues, people, or places that are not already a site category. Some tags I have used to power social media pages that update automatically from RSS feeds for their related tag archives. That is quite useful for pages like that. Should I start using Meta noindex for those instead of rel canonical? I have already done that for author profiles because author profiles get a lot of on site links compared to individual articles because my gridviews use javascript for paging. The same is true for the tags, so if a tag is tagged in 30 articles it will have links from 30 articles but if those articles are not in the latest 20 for that tag only the latest 20 will have links back from the tag archive. I also suspect having a lot of tag pages with little content to negatively impact my indexing rate. I will see a number of recent tag pages added before new articles.
On-Page Optimization | | CopBlaster.com0 -
To Many Links & Long Titles
One of our clients currently has a number of pages that "Too many on page links", Now her menu in itself has the majority. With it being an eComerce website it has quite a few categories. How harmfull is this to search rankings. The other side of thing's, Currently the client has a large number of pages where the title of the page is the product, However her products for example could be "The pink fluffy bear 2x4 with extendable arm and voice activation ( batteries not included )" Again, how Harmfull is having a large volume of pages named like this.
On-Page Optimization | | bmkdigital0 -
Best Practice: Should We Always Make No-Follow for External Links from Blogs?
Hi Mozers, I have few questions: 1. If I am allowing advertising on my blog and people advertising by placing Ads, Contextual links in Posts, Should I make them No-Follow? If Yes, then I might lose a good amount of income coming from Advertising. What is the best practice without loosing Organic rankings. 2. If I make all the External Links No-Follow (simple wordpress plugin can do), then I may not have anyone to advertise on my blog. What is the advantage that I am going to get? 3. Keeping the Do-Follow on all external links, how it will effect my blog? when there is no spam and all quality content on the blog. Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | mutantspy0 -
Internal link question
Hello, I was wondering if internal links should be full urls? for instance my coder might put "page-title.html" but I was wondering if its better for seo to have it be the full url "http://www.blah-blah.com/page-title.html" thanks in advance..... I love this place!
On-Page Optimization | | Superflys1 -
Site wide 301 or canonical links.
Hi guys, I'd like add code to my header file to specify www. as opposed to just http:// for the canonical links across my entire site. How can I do this? I'd like it to be site wide code that I can just add to my header.php file which is included across the site.
On-Page Optimization | | absoauto0 -
Do footer links apply too many on-page links?
We tend to put a a lot of links in the footers of some of our websites (e.g. www.AlohaWhistler.com). Our CAMPAIGNS report is showing that several pages on such sites have "too many on-page links". We understand the logic that having more than 100 links per page is "too much". Does this also apply to footer links?
On-Page Optimization | | RoyMcClean0 -
Breadcrumb links
Hello. Are the breadcrumb links valued more over other links ? (google searches for them specificaly to display them in the results)
On-Page Optimization | | seo.academy0 -
Absolute vs relative urls
Hello, Should absolute or relative urls to be used for the internal links? I heard mixed opinions on that: One source claims that web crawlers prefer absolute urls as they are more understandable Other source points that there is no difference for web crawlers what urls are used and relative urls are shorter which reduces the size of a page. Which option is recommended? Many thanks Darius
On-Page Optimization | | LinenMe0