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Hamaas447

: HTML and SEO - Relative Links and Absolute Links Question: Does it matter if some links are full URL: ie: http://example.com/contact-us.html (absolute) versus relative (example.com/contact-us.html)

@Hamaas447

Posted in: #Http #Https #Seo

Question: Does it matter if some links are full URL: ie: example.com/contact-us.html (absolute) versus relative (example.com/contact-us.html) for SEO purposes? The difference is when using absolute it includes the full part versus relative doesn't include it in the link when viewing source.

I have a site that has a submission form that I would like to serve up via SSL / HTTPS. The issue is that when I force (via .htaccess) for this particular submission form page to SSL / HTTPS only then all of the links on the page are to HTTPS. For example, the main navigation bar on all pages of the site and what is indexed by search engines is HTTP only. On this one HTTPS page it shows all of the other navigation links as HTTPS because I used relative links in the HTML (ie: /contact-us.html). I don't want search engines to index HTTP and HTTPS versions of all of the same pages (identical indexing).

I have updated the main navigation section to do absolute links (ie: example.com/contact-us.html) however, I noticed when I looked in the source it will reflect the whole example.com/page-name.html section but on other relative links that I didn't make absolute it will only reflect the /page-name.html.

Will this matter for SEO purposes that some links on the page show the domain's example.com/page-name.html while some links are relative /page-name.html? If you look at the source of any page the navigation is now all absolute and any content, paragraph, etc related links are all relative.


Does this matter SEO-wise?
If so, what is the work around? Go through the source of ALL pages and make them absolute?

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@Goswami781

It's slightly more clear now.

Firstly, you need to set your preferred URL.

Example:

Let's say your home page preferred URL is: www.example.com
Then have all other versions of your URL to redirect (301) to preferred URL like:

example.com http://www.example.com example.com

TO: www.example.com
If above is done then even if you got mix of URLs in your page like with http or https or www etc, there will be no issue as it will get redirected to preferred URL.

Relative vs Absolute
From SEO side there is no impact so you can have based your need. Just make sure the link doesn't go to 404 page.

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