The Branson Pro

Absolute Vs. Relative Links.

There is huge debate over which is better for SEO - absolute or relative paths for your links.

Here’s the difference between the two:

An absolute path gives the full URL for the page. It goes by protocol, server or domain address, directory, and then finally the document or page itself.

An absolute path looks something like this:
<a href=”http://www.thebransonpro.com/whatever/whatever.php”</a>

The first part of it (HTTP) is the protocol. The domain name (thebransonpro.com) is the server address. The first /whatever is the directory. And the last whatever.php is the actual document name.

Since absolute paths give the full address for a resource on the Web, they can be used on virtually any other web document and still make it to the correct “destination”.

Relative paths, on the other hand cannot do this. A relative path would look something like this:
<a href=”whatever/whatever.php”</a>

Notice that is omits the protocol and server address for the resource. This is because a relative path is only relative to the specific server or directory that the parent file resides on. Relative paths automatically assume that the file is already on the same server or domain as the document that is calling it.

There’s nothing wrong with using relative paths for the pages in your website. As long as all of the pages are on the same server and possibly in the same directory, it’s not going to matter, as far as navigation goes.

However, some SEO pros will tell you that you should always use the absolute paths, no matter what. The reason being is simple. They claim that in order to get full “credit” for the links on your web pages, it’s necessary to use the absolute path so that Google and the other search engines will be able to parse them correctly. By using relative paths, you might not be getting the full “link-juice” from your internal linking strategy.

Honestly, I don’t see any big difference one way or the other. I’ve got websites using only relative paths and I have websites using strictly absolute paths. And all of them are doing well.

But just the same, for the purposes of page rank sculpting or some highly arcane internal linking scheme you may want to implement, go ahead and roll with the absolute method for defining your links.

Better safe than sorry And honestly, it only takes an extra second or two to define the absolute path of your page.