Hyperlinks to homepage

how should internal links to your website's homepage look like?

[v_michiel]

(sorry if my Enligsh is insufficient)

Almost all websites consist out of multiple pages. There usually is one homepage, and on all other (sub)pages there usually is a link present to that homepage.

Now my question is what those hyperlinks best can look like; should you for instance best always use "http://www.domainname.com", or can you maybe better use "index.html" (given that all files are in the same directory)

Thanks already for your answers.

---------EDIT--------
I'm particularly interested in whether or not this choice for a certain way of internal linking is relevant for SEO. So if all your internal links to your homepage for instance, are [domainname.com...] (instead of just index.html), may that improve your PageRank?

[edited by: v_michiel at 2:17 pm (utc) on Aug. 9, 2005]

[Robin_reala]

I'd go for the relative link (just the file name). That way if you decide to change domains later you can easily transfer the files over.

[v_michiel]

Please check the added part in my openings post...

[oddsod]

I used to think that a relative link to index.htm was good but after a lot of reading here on WW I changed all my links to the homepage to go to ht*p://www.mysite.com/

It helps protect against 302 hijacks, it helps with the confused Google and its canonical problems, it helps if you ever want to change your default home page to php or something else, and in some cases it can make a small difference to PR (by preventing PR being split across, say, index.htm and index.html).

[v_michiel]

ok, tnx for your insights...

[oddsod]

I would suggest that if you already have some IBLs to your site in the form of yoursite.com/index.htm consider setting up a 301 permanent redirect from yoursite.com/index.htm to yoursite.com/ (and use a different index file - like default.htm or index.html as your real homepage)