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 to block index of link and content
Hi, We have pages where articles are shown and in the sides we have small snippets of Articles which shows the title and close to 25 words and a image. When i search for something in Google the snippet image and content is shown and in Google when clicked it redirects to a page which is not meant to be shown for the keyword the visitor is querying Is there a way i can block all the links and content shown in the right and left side of the page so Google does not get confused with the page content thats not related to that page? thanks
On-Page Optimization | | AlexisWithers0 -
Internal keyword linking - short or long string
I've seen a couple of people leave comments about keyword linking being too specific. If I"m doing a lot of internal keyword linking and I want to rank well for 'widgets', is it better that most of the links just use the word 'widgets' or should some of the links have more words in them. ie: 'red and blue widgets' - 'buy these widgets online' etc.
On-Page Optimization | | sparrowdog0 -
Outgoing Links Best Practice
Hi, It is my understanding that it is good practice to add relevant out going links to my content pages. I do not intend to over do it and the out going links I intend to add would be useful for the reader. My question is do I need to add noindex/nofollow tags to these links? Does it make any difference either way or can I just leave them as index/follow links? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | UnderMe0 -
Follow or nofollow the social links?
I recently seen a site that has delibrately no followed the links to there social sites. The company's Google Plus, Facebook and twitter icons all no followed? I would have thought you would want google to know about these profiles? Whats everyone elses take on this?? shivun
On-Page Optimization | | seohive-2227200 -
Removing Tag Cloud to Decrease the number of On-Site Links?
I have website which has a tag cloud at the footer. This tag cloud or tag box has about 40 links pointing to different words(tags) pages. I believe that the tags are hardly ever clicked on by visitors, since its at the footer. If the tag cloud is removed would this decrease the number of on-site links? According crawl diagnostics summary I have 195 pages with too many links. Would removing it help? And what kind changes can I expect if they removed (seo wise)?
On-Page Optimization | | utesters0 -
Changing Link Title Tags & Backlinks
On 4/19/12 I began changing the link title tags in an effort to further optimize my website. I thought they were excessively long and it would be beneficial to make them more concise. On 4/26/12 my website traffic began to fall drastically and I'm not sure if it is from google's penguin update or from changing the link title tags. I started looking into the sudden drop of traffic and realized that when I run the site explorer tool on all of the pages I changed, the URL is redirecting. It appears that the backlinks are not passing through to the new URL. Before I Changed the Link Title Tag: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm **After I Changed the Link Title Tag: ** http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm So my questions are: The above example shows that the old title tag (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 43 backlinks and the new one (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professiona-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 0. Will the links eventually be attributed to the new URL. I understand that the user will still be directed to my website they click the any of the backlinks, but will the link juice pointing the old URL pass through the new one? Would it be better, in the long run, to continue optimizing the link title tags.
On-Page Optimization | | BeautyStop0 -
Internal linking structure
howdy SEO moz people, I had a quick question about internal linking. I am using the WP platform for my website and on one of the widgets I have a category widget that shows all the pages, (on every page). I wanted to know that when if i make a new post or page does it matter if the internal anchor texts are on the content itself or is it suffice to have it on the side bar within the widget? Basically what im asking is does it matter if i have anchor text links on the content itself or is it ok to have it anywhere on the page. and if it does matter to have it on the content, please help out on any suggestions on where to place them. thanks
On-Page Optimization | | david3050 -
Too many On-Page Links warning + Javascript Menu
We do have javascript menus on each page. These are used by a visitor to contact a specific office in a specif city. Could this be where all these links are being counted? I don't see them elsewhere? What about links that are in the footer? They actually link to the same pages as the menus, but are just straight links.
On-Page Optimization | | Stevej240