Absolute vs Relative URLs
-
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.
-
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.
-
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)."
-
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.
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
-
Keyword Cannibalization vs. Optimizing Site
I am in the process of optimizing our website and I am having a hard time reconciling two best practices I have found on Moz. 1. You should avoid having multiple pages focus on the same keyword because you will lose some control of which result will show. 2. You should identify your core keywords and weave these keywords multiple times (naturally) throughout your site. I have spent months identifying our top 7 keywords and am working through the site now. The first piece of advice keeps giving me pause. Can anyone weigh in with other considerations or advice on how I can reconcile these two strategies. Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | NikCall2 -
URL keyword separator best practice
Hello. Wanted to reach out see what the consensus is re-keyword separators So just taken on a new client and all their urls are structured like /buybbqpacks rather than buy-bbq-packs - my understanding is that it comes down to readability, which influences click through, rather than search impact on the keyword. So we usually advise on a hyphen, but the guy's going to have to change ALLOT of pages & setup redirects to change it all wasn't sure if it was worth it? Thanks! Stu
On-Page Optimization | | bloomletsgrow0 -
Backlink URL: With or Without WWW?
When it comes to backlinks. Does it matter with or without WWW? For example my website is without WWW and I backlink with WWW, will it still affect my website rank?
On-Page Optimization | | Japracool0 -
URL Length
I know a URL should "technically" shorter than 75 characters. Does that include the http://www.domainname.com ? Thank you 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | Libra0130 -
Internal Linking - in content vs navigation menu
Would like to get some thoughts on whether navigation menus or in-content links are best for internal linking, from an SEO standpoint. A few thoughts to get started with: For sites with a lot of content, you can have a navigation menu linking to your higher-level pages, then in-content links to deeper pages on your site. For smaller sites, this is not an option, as the navigation menu will probably link to all your important pages. You could add in-content links, but Google only counts the first link on the page, so the in-content links would be ignored if you'd already linked yp the page in your top nav menu. I can think of several possible reasons navigation menu links could be less desirable than in content links from a Google perspective. (They are sitewide boilerplate content without context.) If you setup your navigation structure based on what is best for the user, small sites don't have much wiggle room to optimize internal link structure, as all their money pages will be linked to from the top nav menu. Do you think Google prefers in content links to navigation menu links? If so, how do you get around the fact that for many sites, all their money pages are being linked to from their main navigation menu?
On-Page Optimization | | AdamThompson0 -
Blog URL
I know that this question has been asked in the past, and that website.com/blog is better for seo purposes than blog.website.com. We want to setup a custom blog on our site, using Wordpress. Our designers/host are telling us that buy using website.com/blog can causes issues b/c Wordpress is open source, and our site could be hacked? Is there anything we should do about this? Any suggestions? Any Advice appreciated!!! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | TP_Marketing0 -
URL STRUCTURE & RE-WRITING
1.) I need a suggestion from you, please help. How should be the Directory/URL structure if I am offering servicves in many cities of UK/US. /<service>/
On-Page Optimization | | younus
/<service>/<state>/
/<service>/<state>/<city>/ OR /<service>/
/<state>/<service>/
/<state>/<city>/<service>/ Thanks for your time.</service></city></state></service></state></service></city></state></service></state></service></service> What exactly mean by 'URL enforce writer' to rewrite the URL.0 -
SEO Value of Within-Page Links vs. Separate Pages
Title says it all. Assuming that you're talking about similar content (let's say, widgets), which is better: using within-page links for variations or using separate pages? I.e., do we have a widget page and then do in-page links to describe green, blue, and red widgets, or separate pages for each type of widget? In-page pro: more content on a single page, thus more keywords, key phrases, and general appearance of real content. In-page con: Jakob Neilsen says they're confusing. Also, for SEO, you only get one page title, rather than a separate page title for each. My personal bias is for in-page, since I hate creating dozens of short pages for what could be on one page, but my suspicion is that separate pages are better for SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | maxkennerly0