Internal Links

[saulman]

Hi,

I have a question regarding the seo of my site:

Psychology

Currently some of my internal links are like this:
<a href="psychodynamic.html">Psychodynamic</a>

Others are like this:

<a href="http://www.simplypsychology.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/memory.html">Memory</a>

In terms of seo and link juice will including the full domain make any difference?

[wige]

No, it should not make any difference. The search engine bots are, in general, smart enough to add the domain name to truncated links, and figure out which links are internal or external.

[seiretto]

For the most part I agree with wige, but google prefer you to use one or the other throughout your site.

But more importantly, if you are attempting to market your website get it properly hosted with your own domain name and stop promoting your network provider (blueyonder) for free!

[Peter (IMC)]

the only thing I would advise is to use absolute links in stead of relative links. It makes it a lot easier for search engines to get the link structure right.

Absolute links are links that start with a /

so in stead of <a href="index.html"> you should link to <a href="/">

and in stead of <a href="some-page.html"> you should link to <a href="/some-page.html">

or in stead of <a href="some-other-page.html"> in the directory /a-directory/ you should link to <a href="/a-directory/some-other-page.html">

[seiretto]

Hi Peter,

Your suggestion, which I am not saying is right or wrong, requires the use of the HTML BASE tag:
Links in HTML documents

eg. Without it your final recommendation would link to:
www.the--domain.com/a-directory/a-directory/some-other-page.html
which would return an 404 error! Oh no.

No worries use this each time you edit a page to ensure you have no broken links:
Find broken links on your site with Xenu's Link Sleuth (TM)

Its free and will check all your links on your site within a few minutes.

[incrediblehelp]

Yes it does matter you wan to use either relative or absolute URLs, not both on the same website.

Most importantly try to use absolute URLs in the navigation. I know sometimes when people code using a dev server using relative URLs is a necessary evil.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by seiretto

Hi Peter,

Your suggestion, which I am not saying is right or wrong, requires the use of the HTML BASE tag:
Links in HTML documents

eg. Without it your final recommendation would link to:
www.the--domain.com/a-directory/a-directory/some-other-page.html
which would return an 404 error! Oh no.

No worries use this each time you edit a page to ensure you have no broken links:
Find broken links on your site with Xenu's Link Sleuth (TM)

Its free and will check all your links on your site within a few minutes.

404 errors? I don't see how my suggestion would result in broken links. I use it always, never had any problems.

Xenu is a standard software to use when we bring an optimized website online.

[seiretto]

Peter,

You got me thinking about this in case I was wrong.... so I checked your code on default Apache and IIS web servers and it results in 404 errors, unless you used for example "/index.html" in a sub-folder then this links to the parent folder! NOT the required outcome at all. And Xenu would not see this as an error, but would result in the use of keywords linking to irrelevant content.

Anyhow, if we go back to the actual topic if relates to relative or absolute links.

As I said according Google Googlebot prefers absolute links:
URLs not followed

Absolute links are defined as:
http://www.my--company.com/one.html#anchor-one
And relative as:
./one.html#anchor-one or one.html#anchor-one
see the middle of this page:
Links in HTML documents

So to conclude it is best practice to use absolute links in the form of:

<a title="this page is about..." href="http://www.the--domain.com/folder-name/file-name.html">Relevant words linking to page</a>

Anyone else concur, or disagree....

[subhzash]

Originally Posted by saulman

Hi,

I have a question regarding the seo of my site:

Psychology

Currently some of my internal links are like this:
<a href="psychodynamic.html">Psychodynamic</a>

Others are like this:

<a href="http://www.simplypsychology.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/memory.html">Memory</a>

In terms of seo and link juice will including the full domain make any difference?

I use absolute links for all my site. I believe absolute linking is the best and widely adopted method

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by seiretto

Peter,

You got me thinking about this in case I was wrong.... so I checked your code on default Apache and IIS web servers and it results in 404 errors, unless you used for example "/index.html" in a sub-folder then this links to the parent folder! NOT the required outcome at all. And Xenu would not see this as an error, but would result in the use of keywords linking to irrelevant content.

Anyhow, if we go back to the actual topic if relates to relative or absolute links.

As I said according Google Googlebot prefers absolute links:
URLs not followed

Absolute links are defined as:
http://www.my--company.com/one.html#anchor-one
And relative as:
./one.html#anchor-one or one.html#anchor-one
see the middle of this page:
Links in HTML documents

So to conclude it is best practice to use absolute links in the form of:

<a title="this page is about..." href="http://www.the--domain.com/folder-name/file-name.html">Relevant words linking to page</a>

Anyone else concur, or disagree....

The only thing I can conclude from your tests is that you forgot to add http:// to those links that include the domain name.

/

/google-discussion-forum/68651-internal-links.html

These links work just fine, don't they?