Internal Links

Can there be too many?

[phish]

Here's my questions.
When linking internally, which is the best method?

href=www.widgets.com/bluewidgets.htm
or
href=bluewidgets.htm

also since the theory is that "G" cant follow dhtml rollovers, is a text nav bar both at the top and bottom of every page too much? penalty material?

Thanks
-Jas

[HarryM]

When linking internally, which is the best method?

I would go for href=bluewidgets.htm every time.

If every link includes the domain name, that means a lot of work if you ever need to change it.

It's also a lot easier if you want to restructure part of your site.

less server processing

is a text nav bar both at the top and bottom of every page too much?

I'm no expert on this, but I hope not! :)

[nativenewyorker]

You can do both types of linking.

Use the abbreviated href=bluewidgets.htm for all your regular links and insert the following tag into your header.
<base href="www.widgets.com/" target="_top">

Use the full URL in your sitemap (if you have one). I believe I read somewhere that Google likes full URL paths. The sitemap will ensure Google crawls every page.

Ted

[FoodPlaces]

I would use bluewidget.html - but with a domain root level specifier (or whatever you want to call it)... like this

/bluewidget.htm

I used to specify [domain.com...] waaay back when, but I am finding that (even still to this day) some web browsers will do a DNS lookup again (each time it does not see a same site relative URL like the first 2 examples). That wastes time and uses another browser-server connection. So, on a technical end, it is best to either start with /directory/directory/file.htm type format or file.htm even. Not too many resources, but it does save them (if your page is image heavy, it might be a decent amount of resources actually).

- Rob

[HarryM]

nativenewyorker proposed

insert the following tag into your header. <base href="www.widgets.com/" target="_top">

If you do that you will have to change the <base> tag if you move a page to a different directory. If you keep all links relative, then you can move a cluster of directories anywhere in the site and the internal links will still work.

The attribute 'target' is deprecated in XHTML transitional, and its not a good idea to start using a technique which is on its way out.

There is no need to use full urls on a sitemap, as Google treats it the same as every other page.