What you are showing is a relative address. The way it is resolved is
by adding in front of it the current domain url being visited.
If you are visitng the www version of the current page, then that
internal relative link is also on the www version of the domain.
You can certainly use a fully qualified URL - this will enforce the
use of www in internal links even if the current page displayed is not
on www. Ideally you are able to 301 redirect from the form you don't
prefer to the one you prefer as well.
An advantage of using fully qualified urls in your links is in case
your page is copied by another site there's a chance they don't change
those links, so that would be a dead giveaway.
A disadvantage is that you cannot easily test the site on your local
machine.
> What you are showing is a relative address. The way it is resolved is
> by adding in front of it the current domain url being visited.
> If you are visitng the www version of the current page, then that
> internal relative link is also on the www version of the domain.
> You can certainly use a fully qualified URL - this will enforce the
> use of www in internal links even if the current page displayed is not
> on www. Ideally you are able to 301 redirect from the form you don't
> prefer to the one you prefer as well.
> An advantage of using fully qualified urls in your links is in case
> your page is copied by another site there's a chance they don't change
> those links, so that would be a dead giveaway.
> A disadvantage is that you cannot easily test the site on your local
> machine.
> On Jun 3, 8:21 pm, LeMarque wrote:
> > Does this apply to internal links?
> > In other words, currenty my links look like <a
> > href="vps_hosting.html">VPS plans</a>
I wonder if this is also a non issue type thing in Google today, wish
someone would clarify todays advice in here, I feel as if nothing can
be answered anymore with any certainty.
There are pros and cons to both absolute and relative URLs in links:
Absolute URLs:
+ help keep the links pointing to your content if someone were to copy
it (*)
+ help keep the links pointing to your domain name if you cannot
select a canonical (can't do 301 redirects)
+ help make sure that you're pointing to the right URL even if you
move things around (say for stylesheets or graphics)
- cannot be tested on a staging / testing server (eg locally) (unless
you insert the links dynamically)
- makes it hard to move content (unless the links are inserted
dynamically)
Relative URLs:
+ make it easy to move content around
+ make it easy to test locally and on a staging server
- are easy to break if linking to content that isn't moved as well
(stylesheet, graphics, etc)
- an evil scraper would have less work (*)
There's a middle ground as well, using absolute links without a domain
name, eg: <a href="/resources/green/mostly/page.htm" ...>
Personally, I prefer to use relative URLs + some absolute (without
domain name) ones to shared resources. The advantage of being able to
test things out 1:1 on a staging server can't compete with the pseudo-
protection against scrapers.
The only place I would use absolute URLs would be if the site is
hosted somewhere where the webmaster can't do a 301 redirect and may
have trouble with duplicates. I've seen this a lot with sites hosted
on a free account with the ISP; often it will be hosted as
http://isp.com/users/~name/site ..., then perhaps http://domain.com/site...
and http://www.domain.com/site... . By using absolute URLs in that
situation, any value passed to one of the wrong URLs will
automatically pass value to the correct URLs as well.
If you have a really good CMS you may be able to change from one to
another and use a staging server without much work. In that case, it
probably doesn't matter which one is chosen.
John
(*) Regarding the evil scraper scenario: I think this is overrated and
those who have problems with it usually have other problems to worry
about. Also, most scraper software recognizes absolute links and swaps
them out anyway.
> There are pros and cons to both absolute and relative URLs in links:
> Absolute URLs:
> + help keep the links pointing to your content if someone were to copy
> it (*)
> + help keep the links pointing to your domain name if you cannot
> select a canonical (can't do 301 redirects)
> + help make sure that you're pointing to the right URL even if you
> move things around (say for stylesheets or graphics)
> - cannot be tested on a staging / testing server (eg locally) (unless
> you insert the links dynamically)
> - makes it hard to move content (unless the links are inserted
> dynamically)
> Relative URLs:
> + make it easy to move content around
> + make it easy to test locally and on a staging server
> - are easy to break if linking to content that isn't moved as well
> (stylesheet, graphics, etc)
> - an evil scraper would have less work (*)
> There's a middle ground as well, using absolute links without a domain
> name, eg: <a href="/resources/green/mostly/page.htm" ...>
> Personally, I prefer to use relative URLs + some absolute (without
> domain name) ones to shared resources. The advantage of being able to
> test things out 1:1 on a staging server can't compete with the pseudo-
> protection against scrapers.
> The only place I would use absolute URLs would be if the site is
> hosted somewhere where the webmaster can't do a 301 redirect and may
> have trouble with duplicates. I've seen this a lot with sites hosted
> on a free account with the ISP; often it will be hosted ashttp://isp.com/users/~name/site..., then perhapshttp://domain.com/site...
> andhttp://www.domain.com/site... . By using absolute URLs in that
> situation, any value passed to one of the wrong URLs will
> automatically pass value to the correct URLs as well.
> If you have a really good CMS you may be able to change from one to
> another and use a staging server without much work. In that case, it
> probably doesn't matter which one is chosen.
> John
> (*) Regarding the evil scraper scenario: I think this is overrated and
> those who have problems with it usually have other problems to worry
> about. Also, most scraper software recognizes absolute links and swaps
> them out anyway.
In the terms of scraper protection, any decent software should easily
be able to handle relative, absolute and absolute with domain easily.
There are a large amount of free examples across the web, and if you
are writing a custom one it wont make a difference anyway!
> There are pros and cons to both absolute and relative URLs in links:
> Absolute URLs:
> + help keep the links pointing to your content if someone were to copy
> it (*)
> + help keep the links pointing to your domain name if you cannot
> select a canonical (can't do 301 redirects)
> + help make sure that you're pointing to the right URL even if you
> move things around (say for stylesheets or graphics)
> - cannot be tested on a staging / testing server (eg locally) (unless
> you insert the links dynamically)
> - makes it hard to move content (unless the links are inserted
> dynamically)
> Relative URLs:
> + make it easy to move content around
> + make it easy to test locally and on a staging server
> - are easy to break if linking to content that isn't moved as well
> (stylesheet, graphics, etc)
> - an evil scraper would have less work (*)
> There's a middle ground as well, using absolute links without a domain
> name, eg: <a href="/resources/green/mostly/page.htm" ...>
> Personally, I prefer to use relative URLs + some absolute (without
> domain name) ones to shared resources. The advantage of being able to
> test things out 1:1 on a staging server can't compete with the pseudo-
> protection against scrapers.
> The only place I would use absolute URLs would be if the site is
> hosted somewhere where the webmaster can't do a 301 redirect and may
> have trouble with duplicates. I've seen this a lot with sites hosted
> on a free account with the ISP; often it will be hosted ashttp://isp.com/users/~name/site..., then perhapshttp://domain.com/site...
> andhttp://www.domain.com/site... . By using absolute URLs in that
> situation, any value passed to one of the wrong URLs will
> automatically pass value to the correct URLs as well.
> If you have a really good CMS you may be able to change from one to
> another and use a staging server without much work. In that case, it
> probably doesn't matter which one is chosen.
> John
> (*) Regarding the evil scraper scenario: I think this is overrated and
> those who have problems with it usually have other problems to worry
> about. Also, most scraper software recognizes absolute links and swaps
> them out anyway.
Please let me know whether the keyword density is reduced when we
using the relative URLs.
For example, i have the page URL "Packers & Movers" is "http://
www.somesite.com/transport-services/packers-movers.htm". If i use
relative path(/packers-movers.htm), whether the keyword "transport-
services" is reduced or not in that page.
> There are pros and cons to both absolute and relative URLs in links:
> Absolute URLs:
> + help keep the links pointing to your content if someone were to copy
> it (*)
> + help keep the links pointing to your domain name if you cannot
> select a canonical (can't do 301 redirects)
> + help make sure that you're pointing to the right URL even if you
> move things around (say for stylesheets or graphics)
> - cannot be tested on a staging / testing server (eg locally) (unless
> you insert the links dynamically)
> - makes it hard to move content (unless the links are inserted
> dynamically)
> Relative URLs:
> + make it easy to move content around
> + make it easy to test locally and on a staging server
> - are easy to break if linking to content that isn't moved as well
> (stylesheet, graphics, etc)
> - an evil scraper would have less work (*)
> There's a middle ground as well, using absolute links without a domain
> name, eg: <a href="/resources/green/mostly/page.htm" ...>
> Personally, I prefer to use relative URLs + some absolute (without
> domain name) ones to shared resources. The advantage of being able to
> test things out 1:1 on a staging server can't compete with the pseudo-
> protection against scrapers.
> The only place I would use absolute URLs would be if the site is
> hosted somewhere where the webmaster can't do a 301 redirect and may
> have trouble with duplicates. I've seen this a lot with sites hosted
> on a free account with the ISP; often it will be hosted ashttp://isp.com/users/~name/site..., then perhapshttp://domain.com/site...
> andhttp://www.domain.com/site... . By using absolute URLs in that
> situation, any value passed to one of the wrong URLs will
> automatically pass value to the correct URLs as well.
> If you have a really good CMS you may be able to change from one to
> another and use a staging server without much work. In that case, it
> probably doesn't matter which one is chosen.
> John
> (*) Regarding the evil scraper scenario: I think this is overrated and
> those who have problems with it usually have other problems to worry
> about. Also, most scraper software recognizes absolute links and swaps
> them out anyway.
|
