Absolute vs Relative URL Interlinking Observation & Question
-
So I've read a few articles about this here on SEOMOZ and other sites.
I understand the benefit of relative url linking from a developer's point view. I've also read that using either internal linking methods doesn't really have any real SEO benefits or cons that would impact your rankings greatly. (Except with the slight chance of getting traffic and backlinks from a scraper site.)
But I'm seeing examples where this may not be true.
I did a search for 5 star hotels in Vegas in google.
Some of the top results were Hotels.com and Expedia.com
Priceline.com was on the second page.
I used the search operator link: to Hotels.com, Expedia.com and Priceline.com vegas hotel pages respectively:
Hotels.com: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=d&site=webhp&q=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.hotels.com%2Fde1504033-st5%2Ffive-star-hotels-las-vegas-nevada%2F&oq=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.hotels.com%2Fde1504033-st5%2Ffive-star-hotels-las-vegas-nevada%2F&gs_l=serp.3...3650.7043.0.7972.8.7.1.0.0.0.90.363.7.7.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1j2.4kALxt0jpxI
Expedia.com: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=d&site=webhp&q=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.expedia.com%2F5Star-Las-Vegas-Hotels.s50-0-d178276.Travel-Guide-Filter-Hotels&oq=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.expedia.com%2F5Star-Las-Vegas-Hotels.s50-0-d178276.Travel-Guide-Filter-Hotels&gs_l=serp.3...1681.3746.0.4076.6.6.0.0.0.0.100.348.5j1.6.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1j2.KxqwbH-YFV0
The results were that priceline had no backlinks internally or externally to their vegas page. Whereas their competitors did, most of which were from their own internal pages. Looking at priceline's linking structure and architecture, they use a relative url structure and sessions ids to link to various pages. Their competitors don't. Wouldn't you argue that this may be adversely affecting their rankings. I know other things are to be factored in if you dig deeper. But that seems to be a major difference. It just seems that their content management system or how their site is coded isn't really passing link juice.
-
Thanks Tammy. It's good to have a second opinion confirming my suspicions. I agree the whole structure of the site needs a lot of work.
Thanks again!
-
I wouldn't argue at all, I would agree. It is an old school SEO tidbit that you should not use relative URL's when building a site structure with the silo level landing pages. While the over all theme of the page is beneficial for general terms, you are losing valuable page rank/ link juice and the capability of ranking for long tail keywords. While the over all structure of the site as a whole needs work, and entire overhaul and recommendations for a virtual cross linking to the top level landing pages and specific content relevant to those terms.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Domain and urls aren't showing up in Google search
Hi, Moz community, I hope you are staying safe, I have been trying to search our website in Google by using the whole domain name, but it's not showing up. For example: https://www.example.com/
Competitive Research | | ksmith88
https://www.example.com/inner-page.html
Or if search brand name: Example, doesn't come up But when I try example.com, it comes up along with other pages. Neither the inner pages are being come up in the search nor the home page with https://www.example.com. I have checked with Site:example.com, it is showing all the pages, but it is weird on the other hand that it is not visible in the search, what could be the reason? Any tool to check it? I thought it was because of the latest core update from Google. But, there are many keywords in the rankings, so I am sure the website hasn't been impacted. I checked penalties or issues through many tools and even in the search console, everything is fine. Any help would be appreciated.1 -
Purpose of Putting "/collections" in URL String
I'm noticing that on many of my competitor's eCommerce sites, the URL for every subcategory of products is preceded by "website.com/collections/subcategory" rather than "website.com/maincategory/subcategory" Can anyone tell me why this is, and if it is beneficial to SEO to have URL strings designs this way?
Competitive Research | | acubine0 -
Why competitors rank with no content & filters
We're investing a lot in on-page content and creating categories/sub categories to target relevant keywords. Although it seems competitors with high domain authorities are clearly dominating in the SERPs and the pages have NO content. They are literally filters that create landing pages. For example when you search "Kaydian Beds", Debenhams rank below the manufacturer with just a filtered page, this page has not been optimised with content to target the keywords, only the META title changes depending on the chosen filter. Link: http://www.debenhams.com/furniture/beds/kaydian Our link: https://kontenta.co.uk/brands/kaydian-beds.html This is very frustrating as quality content should beat pages with little or no content, we will spend some time and get some inbound links to the page to try boost the rankings but does anyone have any similar experiences with anything like this?
Competitive Research | | Jseddon921 -
Relevancy vs Quality of the website in blog commenting
For example, I would like to comment on a do follow blog with my link inserted in the comment. The blog post is relevant with the link i inserted however there are too many spammy links on the comment. Will this affect my website in terms of "link neighborhood" even my site is relevant to the blog? how do you judge whether the blog is worth commenting and putting your link on it? Does link building on blog comments actually hurt the page rank of websites if it go wrong such as spammy sites?
Competitive Research | | andzon0 -
Local Real Estate Site vs Larger National Sites
Hello all, I am a local realtor that created my website with an idx feed. I am on page one but at the bottom. Question is how can a local real estate website rank better in the SERPS than the larger national brands? Any tips out there from those who have worked with real estate websites and seo? I'm trying to out rank the larger sites for my main keywords. Thanks all.
Competitive Research | | bronxpad0 -
Amazon vs. eBay
I'm doing an analysis to understand why Amazon outranks eBay sometimes. They are both big brands with alot of trust so just want to confirm my thinking and maybe gain some new insight. Amazon has more pages indexed (in Google), more internal links (pointing to homepage), and more images indexed in Google Image Search (alot more!), and of course a higher page rank.. So, question I would like to run by everyone, is are the stats basically what is responsible for Amazon's SEO success as compared to eBay? Or, is there something else I'm missing? PR: eBay 7, Amazon 9 Pages Indexed: eBay 106M, Amazon 875M Internal Links: eBay 62, Amazon 261 Google Images: eBay 150M, Amazon 4.3B
Competitive Research | | sofia120 -
Fast Question - domain value
For example, If I have a domain: dvdumwandeln.com , and I want to focus in the bellow keywords: dvd umwandeln , dvd in avi umwandeln , and so on... I develop a IA like this: www.dvdumwandeln.com/dvd-in-avi-umwandeln/ . Here the domain will give any value to the keyword dvd in avi umwandeln ( if we have the domain dvdumwandeln.com )? I hope I did explain it well... If I do it, its a good SEO pratice, is this going to really boost my keywords? Thanks for trying to understand my explaination
Competitive Research | | augustos0 -
Google Places - Top Listing & Strange Analytics
Hello, we have been working with this customer for a few years, doing their PPC, organic marketing, and we had established one google places listing for them as well. I guess the owner got sold on having someone else work with us to do google places for an additional office location they recently set up, and for whatever reason, they bypassed having us do it. This company never gained FTP access to the website. And despite heavy competition (apparantly), they have that new location listed in the #1 - A spot, without making any changes to the website. And, to top it off, when you review the Google places performance, there is a weird result I had never before seen labeled as "* loc:". You can see what I'm talking in both screen shots. Is there any guidance you can offer, first as to what that listing label means, and second, do you have any ideas how to 'reverse engineer' how they were able to get top listing so quickly for our customer like that? local_results.jpg local_analytics.jpg
Competitive Research | | JerDoggMckoy0