• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Technical SEO
        4. Set base-href to subfolders - problems?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        Set base-href to subfolders - problems?

        Technical SEO
        3
        5
        3349
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • Vivamedia
          Vivamedia last edited by

          A customer is using the <base>-tag in an odd way:

          <base href="http://domain.com/1.0.0/1/1/">

          My own theory is that the subfolders are added as the root because of revision control.

          CSS, images and internal links are used like this:


          internal link

          I ran a test with Xenu Link Sleuth and found many broken links on the site, but I can't say if it is due to the base-tag.

          I have read that the base-tag may cause problems in some browsers, but is this usage of base-tag bad in some SEO-perspective? I have a lot of problems with this customer and I want to know if the base-tag is a part of it.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Vivamedia
            Vivamedia @Highland last edited by

            Hi Highland!

            I know that relative URLs is anything but good, especially when you also use URL rewrite.

            The only question is how Google will react to this?

            Thanks for your answer!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Vivamedia
              Vivamedia @Cyrus-Shepard last edited by

              Hi Cyrus and thanks for your answer!

              The client is using the base tag on all pages on the site, but with different URLs. For example:

              Root page: <base href="http://domain.com/1.0.1.0/2/1/">

              Subpage:
              <base href="http://domain.com/1.0.1.0/5/1/"> OR
              <base href="http://domain.com/1.0.1.0/13/1/">

              Productpage:
              <base href="http://domain.com/1.0.1.0/14/1/">

              As you can se they are using a lot of different base locations and unfortunately we are unable to change the base URL and test.

              We have problems with both broken links and rankings. Whenever a new version of the system is created, all base URLs will be changed. This may mean that old links are still there and will be broken.

              What do you think Cyrus, can this hurt us from a SEO perspective? It must be confusing for Google with all the strange base URLs?

              I think the best would be to rebuild the structure and remove the base tag!

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Cyrus-Shepard
                Cyrus-Shepard last edited by

                Most of the time you don't need to specify a base URL. The browser already knows this location. In some situations defining a base is helpful, such as mirrored sites when the URL used is not the same URL that is needed to resolve files.

                Is your clients using a universal base tag that is the same across the entire site? I can't tell from the question, but this is a common situation that could potentially cause problems.

                There's nothing inherently wrong with using a base tag. Most of the time, if you use it, you simply want to set it to the URL of the current page.That said, to avoid complications, the only time you really want to use the Base tag is when relative URLs wouldn't work without it.

                You might want to test how the links on your site resolve and see if removing or modifying the base tag helps clear up your broken links.

                Vivamedia 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • Highland
                  Highland last edited by

                  Those are some sloppy URLs. I especially advise people to avoid the problems of relative paths in ANY URL. And, yes, <base> probably isn't helping.

                  Links starting with / are fine. That's the root of your site. Anything using "../" should be nixed and use a fixed path. And never, ever use "./".

                  Vivamedia 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • LivDetrick

                    Role of Robots.txt and Search Console parameters settings

                    Hi, wondering if anyone can point me to resources or explain the difference between these two. If a site has url parameters disallowed in Robots.txt is it redundant to edit settings in Search Console parameters to anything other than "Let Googlebot Decide"?

                    Technical SEO | | LivDetrick
                    0
                  • MarketHubb

                    Help Setting Up 301 Redirects from Coldfusion Site to Wordpress Site.

                    I have created a new website and need to redirect all of the previous pages to the new one. The old website was built in coldfusion and the new site is built in wordpress. One of the pages I'm trying to redirect is www.norriseal.com/products.cfm to http://norrisealwellmark.com/products/. This is what I have in my .htaccess file <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymlinks
                    RewriteEngine On
                    RewriteBase /
                    Redirect 301 /products.cfm http://norrisealwellmark.com/products/</ifmodule> The result of this redirect is http://norrisealwellmark.com/products.cfm How do I prevent the .cfm from appending to the destination URL?

                    Technical SEO | | MarketHubb
                    1
                  • bendyman

                    Problem with Yoast not seeing any of this website's text/content

                    Hi, My client has a new WordPress site http://www.londonavsolutions.co.uk/ and they have installed the Yoast Premium SEO plug-in. They are having issues with getting the lights to go green and the main problem is that on most pages Yoast does not see any words/content – although there are plenty of words on the pages. Other tools can see the words, however Yoast is struggling to find any and gives the following message:- Bad SEO score. The text contains 0 words. This is far below the recommended minimum of 300 words. Add more content that is relevant for the topic. Readability - You have far too little content. Please add some content to enable a good analysis. They have contacted the website developer who says that there is nothing wrong, but they are frustrated that they cannot use the Yoast tools themselves because of this issue, plus Yoast are offering no support with the issue. I hope that one of you guys has seen this problem before, or can spot a problem with the way the site has been built and can perhaps shed some light on the problem. I didn't build the site myself so won't be offended if you spot problems with it. Thanks in advance, Ben

                    Technical SEO | | bendyman
                    0
                  • SOtBOrlando

                    how to set rel canonical on wordpress.com sites

                    I know how to do this with a wordpress.org site but I have a client that does not want to switch and without a plugin I am lost. any help would be greatly appreciated. Jeremy Wood

                    Technical SEO | | SOtBOrlando
                    0
                  • TihomirPetrov

                    Www2 vs www problem

                    Hi, I have a website that has an old version and a new version. The content is not duplicate on the different versions.
                    The point is that the old version uses www. and non-www before the domain and the new one uses www2. My questions is: Is that a problem and what should be done? Thank you in advance!

                    Technical SEO | | TihomirPetrov
                    0
                  • mkhGT

                    Are robots.txt wildcards still valid? If so, what is the proper syntax for setting this up?

                    I've got several URL's that I need to disallow in my robots.txt file. For example, I've got several documents that I don't want indexed and filters that are getting flagged as duplicate content. Rather than typing in thousands of URL's I was hoping that wildcards were still valid.

                    Technical SEO | | mkhGT
                    0
                  • qdigi

                    Do knowledge base plugins on a subdomain have seo benefit?

                    Hi SEO Moz, We want to use a knowledge base plugin (cheaper & faster than building it ourselves) where we can have Q&As for our website. We want this to help with our SEO by adding in our keyterms that we want to rank for. We've looked into TenderApp & Get Satisfaction which look like good solutions - however, as they're both on a sub-domain do we get any seo benefit from this? When people link to our knowledge base, will this help our website at all - or is the benefit going to go to TenderApp/Get Satisfaction? For instance - Our website URL is http://widget.products.com The KB URL is http://widgetsupport.products.com If the above plugin is not a good solution, is there anything else that is better? Any help will be greatly appreciated!! Thanks.

                    Technical SEO | | qdigi
                    0
                  • jtay123

                    403 forbidden, are these a problem?

                    Hi I have just run a crawl test on screaming frog and it is showing quite a few 403 forbidden status codes. We are showing none of these in webmaster tools, is this an issue?

                    Technical SEO | | jtay123
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.