Hello, I'm thinking of updating my sites and wonder if you could give me some advices! I always wondered about if it makes any difference to use absolute or a relative link whithn a site, in terms of serch engin ranking/seo... I know using a relative link is much easier to manage especially if one has many pages but absolute link seems better for even page rank? I wonder.. How about you? which do you use? Any suggestions, own experience, advice will help me! Thank you so much!
Absolute Reason - spiders won't trip or get lost....leaves no question as to where the link directs.... The better your site is coded, the better your site will be, compared to a competitor who takes short cuts.
If you are linking files on the same site, I think it does not matter really. Crawlers knows the linking code. Those who prefer absolute could you explain why.
Hi, thank you alll for your input! I see, absolute is major. As matter of a fact, I've been making all my web sites using absolute links. I've read about seo as to difference using 2 different method of linking, and as webcosmo says, it doesn't matter either way. I mean if one are to have couple hundred of pages, it's much easier to update them if they are all relative links and many major web sites do it this way. But I really wasn't sure if this really was a case, somehow, I thought using absolute linking is better for higher page rank, index quicker and all. what do you think? Thank you again!
Find & Replace wipes out the relative being easier statement. And in life when one takes shortcuts, it often leads to a bad idea, inferior product, lower quality, reduced production, and diminished value..... But that's my opinion,,,,,
Absolute is always better. when implementing Rss feeds, if you have relative paths, you may not get the images visible
I don't think it matters to SE's at all. Use relative in development (to make it easy to move things around) and absolute in live (makes it slightly harder for scrapers to copy large sites).
Actually it can make a difference. Search engine spiders have been known to "trip up" on relative URLs in the past.
Hi, thank you all agan for your inputs and your opinions! You guys are helping me a lot! I really didn't know if relative links will actually "trip up" or get lost. I think I will go for absolute then, I mean I have been. I once changed to relative links and maybe this wasn't the reason, but my pagre rank didn't go up easily and the unique views went down, so you must be right and I wondered.. Thank you all!
Absolute link and relative link have an advantages and disadvantages for your website if you really don't know how to use it properly. Ok here is the thing if you want your website to loads faster than the normal loading, then I suggest to use a relative link. But its not a good idea to use relative link all the time even though using relative links will not affect search engine visibility, I make an exception with PDF files. Remember people are downloading a pdf files for their reference and if you use relative link the page will not loads properly, so pdf file link should be absolute links.