Change relative to absolute urls?
-
Is it worth the time to go through a site that was built in Dreamweaver and change the relative urls to absolute urls?
-
It's been a while since I used Dreamweaver but I remember the standard link format being relative. Is it possible if I change the relative urls throughout the 50 pages on the site, that the site administrator (not me) will accidentally revert everything if he updates the site? Wondering how to explain this as being more important than his ease of maintaining the site...
-
My experience has been Yes, for some things...
Doing it for internal page links should make your SEO better by eliminating the chance the search engines will misunderstand those links. And if a page of yours gets scraped, the internal links on that page will at least count towards your site
Doing it for IMPORTANT images will insure that the search engines can correctly index those images. Also it makes it possible for social media like Pinterest to use those images, and for others like Facebook to display an image from your page when that page is Shared.
I usually don't bother with absolute URLs for things like CSS files. Or for images which do not need to be indexed or shared, like buttons and icons and such.
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
-
URL Formatting - Magento
Hi, We are working with a client on Mangento who URLs are formatting Google friendly eg; productname.html - as seen in site search in Google) but when you click the link to the site it is adding on #.VEWKQxbc754 (or similar) The site is also having some page indexing problems as well Thoughts? specific settings/Add on in magento?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pure-SEO0 -
CHange insite Urls structure
Hello Guys! I have a situation with a website and I need some opinions. Today, the structured of my site is: (I have had this site architecture since many years) Main country home (www.mysite.com.tld) o Product_1 Home (www.mysite.com.tld/product1/) § Product_1 articles www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product1_art1 www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product1_art2 www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product1_artx o Product_2 Home (www.mysite.com.tld/product2/) § Product_2 articles www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product2_art1 www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product2_art2 www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product2_artx I have several TLDs with their main and their products. We are thinking in modify this structure and begin to use subdomains for each product (The IT guys need this approach because is simpler to distribute the servers load). I not very friendly with subdomains and big changes like this always can produce some problem (although the SEO migration would be ok, problems could appear, like ranking drops), But, the solution (the reasons are technical stuff), requires the mix of directories and subdomains in each product, leaving the structured in this way: Main country home (www.mysite.com.tld) o Product_1 Home (www.mysite.com.tld/product1/) § Product_1 articles product1.mysite.com.tld/product1_art1 product1.mysite.com.tld/product1_art2 product1.mysite.com.tld/product1_artx o Product_2 Home (www.mysite.com.tld/product2/) § Product_2 articles product2.mysite.com.tld/product1_art1 product2.mysite.com.tld/product1_art2 product2.mysite.com.tld/product1_artx So, the product home will be in a directory buy the pages of the articles of this product will be in a subdomain. What do you think about this solution? Beyond that the SEO migration would be fine, 301s, etc, can bring us difficulties in the rankings or the change can be done without any consideration? Thanks very much! Agustin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOTeamDespegar0 -
Penguin Penalty On A Duplicate url
Hi I have noticed a distinct drop in traffic to a page on my web site which occurred around April of last year. Doing some analysis of links pointing to this page, I found that most were sitewide and exact match commercial anchor text. I think the obvious conclusion from this is I got slapped by Penguin although I didn't receive a warning in Webmaster Tools. The page in question was ranking highly for our targeted terms and the url was structured like this: companyname.com/category/index.php The same page is still ranking for some of those terms, but it is the duplicate url: companyname.com/category/ The sitewide problem is associated with links going to the index.php page. There aren't too many links pointing to the non index.php page. My question is this - if we were to 301 redirect index.php to the non php page, would this be detrimental to the rankings we are getting today? ie would we simply redirect the penguin effect to the non php page? If anybody has come across a similar problem or has any advice, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sicseo0 -
Google tagged URL an overly-dynamic URL?
I'm reviewing my campaign, and spotted the overly-dynamic URL box showing a few links. Reviewing it, they are my Google Tagged URLs (utm_source, utm_medium_utm_campaign etc) I've turned some internal links to Google Tagged URLs but should these cause concern?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
How canonical url harm our website???
Even though my website has no similar/copied content, i used rel=canonical for all my website pages. Is Google or yahoo make any harm to my SERP's?? EX: http://www.seomoz.org is my site, in that i used canonical as rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://www.seomoz.org" to my home page like that similar to all pages, i created rel=canonical. Is search engine harm my website???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MadhukarSV0 -
Hash as a Replacement for Absolute URL in Canonical Tags?
Any idea why companies like Skechers would be doing this: http://screencast.com/t/ooEkATGN7EX ? I suppose it makes sense, but I've never seen it done before. If this works, why on earth would we be using absolute URLs still?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stevewiideman0 -
Service Keyword in URL - too much?
We're working on revamping the URL structure for a site from the ground up. This firm provides a service and has a library of case studies to back up their work. Here's some options on URL structure: 1. /cases/[industry keyword]-[service keyword] (for instance: /cases/retail-pest-control) There is some search traffic for the industry/service combination, so that would be the benefit of using both in URL. But we'd end up with about 70 pages with the same service keyword at the end. 2. /cases/[industry keyword] (/cases/retail) Shorter, less spam potential, but have to optimize for the service keyword -- the primary -- in another way. 3. /cases/clientname (/cases/wehaveants) No real keyword potential but better usability. We also want the service keyword to rank on its own on another page (so, a separate "pest control" page). So don't want to dilute that page's value even after we chase some of the long tail traffic. Any thoughts on the best course of action? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdcomms1 -
Redirecting my new Website URL to my old Website URL
Hi! OK, I am semi - new to SEO Moz but have been self-teaching for 3 years. However I am stuck.. I have been operating my e-commerce site from www.shopadornonline.com for the past 3 years. I just purchased www.shopadorn.com Right now Shopadorn.com re-directs to www.shopadornonline.com because all my products and links go to shopadornonline.com/productblahblahblah I guess I am stuck. Not sure what to tell my web designer to do? Do I give up on having shopadorn.com OR do I start re-directing customers and doing 301 re-directs? I think from what i have read that it is bad to have traffic going to both shopadorn and shopadornonline as they compete for rankings? Where should I start?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shopadorn0