5 replies to this topic

[perkle]

I have a question about my interior links pointing to other pages in my navigation column as well as on page and links pointing to images on either.

Question: Should I always use http://www.example.com/ in all of these links. Whats the current scoup on this.

Perkle

[Randy]

The current scoop is the same as it's always been. Basically that you want to be totally consistent in how you link to your own pages and emulate how others link to your site.

Since most people will link using just the domain name with no filename, this usually means making sure your internal links back to your home page should be just the domain name with no filename.

In practice this can be accomplished a few ways since the engines are going to normalize URLs. So you could use absolute link references like:

CODE

<a href="http://www.yoursite.com/">

or referential link references like:

CODE

<a href="/">

[perkle]

In my navigation should I use http://www.domainname.com/anypage.com or use /anypage.com

Perkle

[1fast72nova]

I am rather new to this but I believe that the terms "referential" and "navigational", as used, are the same thing so "/" or "/anypage.html" would be the preferred method over "http://www.yoursite..../anypage.html".
I have heard that some engines may consider the latter to be an offsite link. Take what I saw with a grain of salt, I am extremely new to all this and will surely be corrected if wrong.

[Joe Dolson]

In my navigation should I use http://www.domainname.com/anypage.com or use /anypage.com

Well, first, I'm assuming that the anypage.com is a typo - that you meant .html.

With that in mind, it really doesn't make a difference. Either choice: /anypage.html or http://www.domainname.com/anypage.html will function. The main difference is that /anypage.html could lead to a page on a different subdomain - the non-www subdomain - if that's where the visitor is starting. However, there are much better ways to force a specific subdomain than to try and code it directly in your pages.

"Better" is always a matter of perspective. There are absolute links such as http://www.domain.com/page.html. There are fully relative links, such as page.html, and there are partially relative links, such as /page.html.

http://www.domain.com/page.html will always go to the exact same location. Doesn't matter whether the page is moved to a different domain, whatever. This has the advantage that you take control over the www or non-www domain issue within your internal links. This doesn't, however, stop other people from using an alternate format.

page.html is completely relative. It will go to a page called "page.html" within the same directory (folder) the current page resides in. This can be advantageous if you're going to be moving groups of pages around - but can also lead to trouble if one page moves directories but others still point to the original location.

/page.html is partially relative. It points to the page at _root_ level called "page.html." The root level might be defined as the highest level location in your server available to the public, not including subdomains. This could point to either http://domain.com/page.html or to http://www.domain.com/page.html - but could never point to http://domain.com/news/page.html. That url would have to be /new/page.html.

In my personal opinion, this partially relative urls are the most utilitarian - they provide a means to specify with great precision exactly where in the site the page is without the more complicated syntax sometimes required for completely relative URLs and without requiring a specific domain name.

I have heard that some engines may consider the latter to be an offsite link. Take what I saw with a grain of salt, I am extremely new to all this and will surely be corrected if wrong.

I don't think that a search engine will consider an absolute domain link to be offsite - but, if it points to a different subdomain (www vs non-www again), that is likely to be considered a separate location, unless you've taken steps to redirect all traffic to one or the other.

[perkle]

Thanks everyone!
It looks like everyone is using absolute linking so I will too.