Contextual backlinks - Relative vs Absolute

Discussion in 'Link Development' started by ssrulz1, Sep 23, 2013.

  1. #1
    What is the difference between relative and absolute backlinks?

    I've read relative backlinks are better, a bit confused about it. Any help would be appreciated.
     
    ssrulz1, Sep 23, 2013 IP
  2. sarahk

    sarahk iTamer Staff

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    #2
    Are you sure you aren't getting confused about link structure within a site?

    relative links are where the link/href/src is given as ..\..\whatever.html
    absolute are http://mysite.com/myfolder/whatever.html

    If someone scrapes your site the absolute links will send the user to your site
    If you move a document the absolute link will still find the content - relative links rely on the site being the same forever.
     
    sarahk, Sep 23, 2013 IP
    ssrulz1 likes this.
  3. ssrulz1

    ssrulz1 Well-Known Member

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    #3
    That makes sense.
     
    ssrulz1, Sep 24, 2013 IP
  4. Mr.Dog

    Mr.Dog Active Member

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    #4
    Mr.Dog, Sep 27, 2013 IP
  5. proson

    proson Well-Known Member

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    #5
    Well, for relative, your server needs to translate it to absolute, and then show it to
    your visitors browsers.

    As Google already put page load speed as one of the signal when they rank your site,
    so I will use absolute URLs to prevent server's translation overhead.
     
    proson, Oct 1, 2013 IP
  6. Mr.Dog

    Mr.Dog Active Member

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    #6
    You're saying that you're web-linking your own internal pages?

    I'm still using the relative paths for internal pages. I don't see the point why if you'd make them absolute for speeding the page loading up...
     
    Mr.Dog, Oct 2, 2013 IP