Proper Internal Linking / Proper Way To Link To Internal Site Pages?

Hey, what is the *proper* way to link to internal pages throughout your site?

Should you use the following codes when linking to internal pages:

<a href="../page.html">Page</a>

Code (markup):

Or should you should provide the FULL URL in all links throughout your site?

<a href="http://www.mysite.com/page.html">Page</a>

Code (markup):

Is the first option search-engine friendly?
Why or why not?

 

ofcource second 1...

<a href="http://www.mysite.com/page.html">Page</a>

 

I don't think that it matters to the search engines, which method you use.

 

As long as it is a link, search engines will take it as a link. No difference. Even if it has some, it will not be something significant.

 

Either method will work equally well for spidering and indexing. If you site becomes popular enough, or ranks well for keywords, absolute linking (method 2) will provide backlinks to your site when your content gets scraped by black hats.

 

I always use option one as this cuts down on code a little anyway helping to keep your page load down even by a few nanoseconds if you make all your links on a page the same.

<a href="/page.html">Page</a>

Code (markup):

That is how I would do it.

 

The Full URL will help you avoid duplicate content filters when someone scrapes your site. It also keeps every link pointed at the same domain. I.e. www.mysite.com instead of mysite.com (if you don't already redirect mysite.com to www.mysite.com).

 

You may get backlinks if you are using Absolute method...

 

if its work well for you then its best method

 

it doesn't really matter, it's not gonna change the world for your site, i prefer method 2

 

I've been recommended to use the second method - absolute URLs. In particular, Yahoo seems to prefer this method of linking.

 

a keyword phrase anchor link is the best internal linking.

 

Does method 2 get you backlinks from your own site and method 1 does not? Thanks in advance as I'm not clear on how method 2 can get you backlinks as opposed to method 1.

 

No, not from your own site. If you rank at all in your niche your content will get scraped by others (take your content and use it on their site). If you use absolute links then the backlink on their site will point to your site. If using relative links then your site will not get a backlink.

 

Getting scraped by others is the fastest way to get a duplicate content penalty applied to your site. So I would use absolute URLs.

Note: You can also us the <BASE href="http://www.my-site.com/"> tag to prefix your internal links if you need to.

 

Using absolute or relative urls will not prevent scraping or the existence of duplicate content. Since you cant really stop a scraper I would prefer a backlink from it.

 

A search engine spiders and browsers know that where the mentioned document located so it doesn’t need to put full URL