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.
After HTTPS upgrade, should I change all internal links, or a general 301 redirect is better?
-
I recently upgraded to https.
Of course most internal links of my old posts are still http.
So I set up a 301 redirect in order to make the old link works.
In terms od SEO this is good or it is better to update all the internal links to https, manually?
In that case can I do it in batch with a search/replace command in the phmyadmin database?
any other suggested method?
thank you
-
Hi again. I've seen it. Quite honestly I disagree with absolutes being a priority. The arguments, presented in that WBF don't really work for me against the pain in development (I believe she mentioned even more drawbacks). Also, from my experience I have not seen any (at all) benefits in any way (SEO or loading speed) from having absolutes, rather than relatives.
-
Interesting Giorgio, I hadn't seen that WBF before.
Absolutely no disrespect to Ruth but that's the first WBF I've disagreed with. The scraper risk is something I'm willing to take a gamble on for the benefits of relative links and the other points are moot if your website is setup correctly (htaccess deals with the potential for different versions of your domain and IMO canonicalization should always be used).
Going by that WBF, if your site is set up correctly with redirects and canonicalization, the only benefit here is if a scraper copies your site and there's a very slim chance of this actually happening.
-
but...
wait a minute. this Moz posts suggests keeping you links absolute is "a priority" , from a seo perspective.
under point 2):
https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/relative-vs-absolute-urls-whiteboard-friday
-
Exactly how to implement it will depend on your CMS but basically, all you need to do is update the hyperlinks from showing the entire link path to a simple, relative one like the examples below.
Absolute Anchor Text
Relative Anchor Text
With hyperlinks, if you don't specify the full address path including http://www then the current website path will be added to the beginning. In this example, since there is no full and complete path before /contact, it's correctly assumed that the link is to point to http://www.example.com/contact.
This is important because it means no matter what changes you make to your domain (www to non-wwww, moving to https, moving the site to a new domain etc) the links will always work perfectly. If you use an absolute path, the minute your change anything about your domain, all the links break because they're manually pointed to the old one.
Here's a bit more info on the topic if the above is a little confusing. It's not a link to my site, just the first I found in a Google search
-
Thank you very much /Dmitrii.
Can I change them to relative?
How should I do?
-
Hi there.
So, you have all your links absolute? not relative? Gotta be painful to manage..
Well, anyway, to answer your question - the only bad part about not changing links to https would be that extra redirect. If your servers are good, fast and very reliable, nobody would probably even notice it. I would check loading speeds though, especially for mobiles.
Personally, I would change all links to relative and never worry about stuff like this. If you want to keep them absolute, then yes, I recommend changing them all. Just for clean conscious sake
About find-replace. That would depend on how your website is built. I assume you're talking about wordpress? Then yes, you should be able to. As long as you know where to search.
Cheers.
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
-
Solve Redirect Chains
I've gotten a few Redirect Issues that involve Redirect Chains, with the https:// version redirecting to the www. version and then redirecting to the right URL. Here is an example:
On-Page Optimization | | Billywig
Schermafbeelding 2021-12-07 om 11.04.32.png I've tried setting a direct redirect between the first and the last URL, but WordPress doesn't seem to allow that (it's overwritten). I've also tried checking the internal links to make sure that none of the links are the first one. They don't seem to be there. Does anyone have any tips on solving these Redirect Chains?0 -
301 Redirects - Large .htaccess file question
We are moving about 5000 pages from root into different folders. We need to individually 301 each page because the are sitting at root level now: mysite.com/page.com We want to move them to: mysite.com/folder/page.html etc I dont think redirect match can works because of the different files names and folders they are being moved in to. Will 5000 entries in .htacess slow site loading? Any other suggestions how to handle?
On-Page Optimization | | leadforms0 -
What to do to index all my links of my website?
Ok, i have a new website, with only 14.000 page indexed by google, but the potential is big, 1-2 million pages. What i have to do, to force somehow google to index my website faster? This is my website: https://vmag.ro/
On-Page Optimization | | TeodorMarin0 -
Link flow for multiple links to same URL
Hi there,
On-Page Optimization | | doctecs
my question is as follows: How does Google handle link flow if two links in a given page point to the same URL? (do they flow link individually or not?) This seems to be a newbie question, but actually it seems that there is little evidence and even also little consensus in the SEO community about this detail. Answers should include source Information about the current state of art at Google is preferable The question is not about anchor text, general best practises for linking, "PageRank is dead" etc. We do know that the "historical" PageRank was implemented (a long time ago) without special handling for multiple links, as e.g. last stated by Matt Cutts in this video: http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 On the other hand, many people from the SEO community say that only the first link counts. But so far I could not find any data to back this up, which is quite surprising.0 -
Alt text / internal linking
Hi everyone A question about best practice when linking from pictures on our homepage - hirespace.com We have an option of using divs with background images (nicer in terms of design) but it means that we can't use anchor text or alt text to show Google what these internal links are about. The other option is to use images which do not allow us as much flexibility in terms of CSS but would allow us to use alt text. There is also an opinion that we should have separate text links at the bottom of the homepage to get the anchor page in. What is best practice in this situation - is alt text worth sacrificing some CSS flexibility for? How important is anchor/alt text for internal linking? Thanks guys.
On-Page Optimization | | HireSpace0 -
How much juice do you lose in a 301 redirect?
Our site has a number of, shall we say, unoptimized URLs. I would like to change the URLs to be more relevant; if a page is about red widgets, the URL should be www.domain.com/red-widgets.html, right? I'm getting resistance on this, however, based on the belief that you lose something significant when you 301 an old URL to a new one. Now, I know that if you have a long chain of redirects, the spiders will stop following at some point, and that is a huge problem. That wouldn't apply if there's only one step in the chain, however. I've also heard that you lose some link juice in a 301, but I'm unsure how serious that problem actually is. Is it small enough that we'd win out in the long run with better-optimized URLs?
On-Page Optimization | | CMC-SD0 -
Footer link to home page?
Quick question - is it a best practice to add a footer link on each page of a website that points back to your home page, with the anchor text being your official brand name?
On-Page Optimization | | Bandicoot0 -
Is it better to drip feed content?
Hi All, I've assembled a collection of 5 closely related articles each about 700 words for publishing by linking to them from on one of my pages and would appreciate some advice on the role out of these articles. Backround: My site is a listings based site and a majority of the content is published on my competitors sites too. This is because advertisers are aiming to spread there adverts wide with the hope of generating more responses. The page I'm targeting ranks 11th but I would like to link it to some new articles and guides to beef it up a bit. My main focus is to rank better for the page that links to these articles and as a result I write up an introduction to the article/guide which serves as my unique content. Question: Is it better to drip feed the new articles onto the site or would it be best to get as much unique content on as quickly as possible to increase the ratio of unique content vs. external duplicate content on the page that links to these articles**?** Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Mulith0