Internal Linking

[bobby9101]

when i am linking to a page in the same folder.
should i link like this:
Directory List (http://ranktips.com/directory-list)
or like this
Directory List (directory-list.htm)
would not the first pass pagerank better?

[voasi]

It won't matter. The http://www will be added to the other form if you don't add it yourself.

[greeneagle]

Let me show you a method that YAHOO likes much better than GOOGLE.

THis client had to have several long pages catered to rural clients. My objective was to provide a great deal of good info for the little rural water utility company and make it easy to navigate internally.

Believe me YAHOO likes the internal page links pbetter than GOOGLE.

YAHOO has slammed them "hands down" in the stats from day 1!

I think the GOOG may see it as excessive, even though it isn't.

Maybe the concept of design for the visitor, doesn't always apply.

Exception! - They seem to be catching up a little after this last update.

Moral of the story - Be careful about what might be considered excessive internal linking;

www.dpwater.com

Ken

[bobby9101]

so i should not have a sitemap on all of my pages.
and occasionally have sporatic links to internal pages?

[greeneagle]

GOOG recommends textural links to your other pages. This can also be done in various interactive means for a better visitor experience using CSS.

Start here:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

And then play around here:
http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/css-menu-generator.shtml

Ken

[DMC_34]

Yahoo prefers relative links. IMO opinion you should always use absolute URLs. I believe Google actually stated it prefers absolute URLs. I have heard absolute URL's will cause less spidering by the bot but I have never experienced it. Our site use only absolute URL's and are indexed deep daily by all 3 major SE's. Also it cuts down on internal duplicate content, if a spider gets a hold of page as host name, domain name, SSL, etc:

http ://domainname.com/somepage.htm
http ://www.domainname.com/somepage.htm
https ://domainname.com/somepage.htm
https ://www.domainname.com/somepage.htm

DMC

[williamc]

I have yet to see a search engine that does not properly follow relative links and index them properly. IMO it does not matter which variation, relative or absolute that you use.

[DMC_34]

We could always run a test. You use relative links. I can place links to your site as domain name and host name and let see what happens? If your not using 301's I hope you enjoy duplicate content. AT the very least you are going to get one page indexed as duplicate content and then every URL on that page will be recorded to be indexed in the same fashion. Game?


DMC

[williamc]

I can place links to your site as domain name and host name and let see what happens? If your not using 301's I hope you enjoy duplicate content.

domain name and host name? Explain that a bit further if you don't mind. Not positive what your meaning is. As for duplicate content, that is a possible by-poduct, however, google does do pretty well at fixing domain.com to correspond to www.domain.com in a couple months automatically, so that really is a non issue.

Now if you meant 2 completely differing url's such as domain.com/category1 displaying the same page as category.domain.com, then yes, you most likely would see a dupe issue.

[DMC_34]

I can place links to your site as domain name and host name and let see what happens? If your not using 301's I hope you enjoy duplicate content.

domain name and host name? Explain that a bit further if you don't mind. Not positive what your meaning is. As for duplicate content, that is a possible by-poduct, however, google does do pretty well at fixing domain.com to correspond to www.domain.com in a couple months automatically, so that really is a non issue.

Now if you meant 2 completely differing url's such as domain.com/category1 displaying the same page as category.domain.com, then yes, you most likely would see a dupe issue.


host name link = http://www.mydomain.com/
domain name link = http://mydomain.com/

I have seen both version in 2 of my sites. They are duplicate content of each other. Google by nature will take and use only one. It seems they usually pick the original. I will say when 18 pages in our index where just as domain name instead of host home we dropped on those keywords in Google. After I put in 301 redirects and fixed those pages the keyword rankings went back up for those pages. Coincedence? Maybe. But bottom line, use absolute URL's to be safer. We have about 1200 bot hits a day from Google, MSN, and Yahoo and we use only absolute URL's. I am sure Slurp might index more if we used relative but if its regualry indexed anyway why bother, go on the safe side.

DMC

[DMC_34]

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=49048

[williamc]

Okay, I see where you are coming from now, and yes, that could pose a problem. There is a very easy fix for that tho and that is to simply add a 301 for domain.com -> www.domain.com so no matter what variation anyone uses to link to you, it always ends up at the www. version no matter what.

In this fashion, you will never see the duplicate issue at all.

[DMC_34]

Okay, I see where you are coming from now, and yes, that could pose a problem. There is a very easy fix for that tho and that is to simply add a 301 for domain.com -> www.domain.com so no matter what variation anyone uses to link to you, it always ends up at the www. version no matter what.

In this fashion, you will never see the duplicate issue at all.

Yes, exactly what we did.

[jawn_tech]

I guess ultimately, the rule applies to nav links as well, to keep them consistent to ensure uniform www or non-www versions of the site consistent from the beginning, just as one would try to do with ibl's whenever possible.