Absolute URL vs. Relative URL: Which One is Better?

‍A well-organized URL website structure contributes to the correct functioning and successful scanning and indexing of the website by search engines. The same goes for the ease of website development and navigation.

‍But does it really matter whether you use absolute or relative URLs? Which one is better for your needs?

‍In this article, we’ll shed light on the eternal absolute vs relative URL battle. We’ll break down the key differences between these two URL types to help you choose the optimal one for your goals.

‍First things first. In this case, it’s the question — what is a URL? URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and it denotes the address of a particular resource on the internet.

‍Other commonly used terms are “link” and “path”. As their names suggest, they indicate links and paths leading to online resources. The terms “links” and “paths” are self-explanatory, and we will use them interchangeably with the term URL throughout the current absolute vs relative links battle review.

‍URL is a critical element and a universal connector of the online world, by which a user or search bot can go from one resource to another, be it a website or a file.

‍URL consists of the following elements:

• URL address to which we want to link;
• An additional element, also called an anchor, which enables the transition (an anchor can be a word or a piece of text, a picture, or the URL itself).

‍Each URL looks like this:

• The <a> tag wraps the text that we want to turn into a URL (this is an abbreviation for the word “anchor”);
• The href attribute defines the address of the page where our URL should lead;
• The closing </a> tag to end the URL.

‍Google has developed guidelines and best practices for building URL structures. Follow these if you want your website to rank high in Googe’s search results.

‍Source: Google

‍Most of us are used to seeing URLs as long lines of text and numbers containing absolute (full) paths to pages or files. For example:

‍http://site.com/category1/single-page1

‍http://site.com/catalog1/file1.html

‍Any absolute link contains information about the data transfer protocol (HTTP or HTTPS), the domain name, and, if necessary, the address of the target page.

‍Here is another absolute link example:

‍https://www.linksmanagement.com/blog/

‍Here, www.linksmanagement.com is the domain name, while the blog is the location of the desired page(s), also known as a slug.

‍In this form, we enter URLs into the browser search bar to access a resource or an object. It’s one of the most common browsing operations — copying and pasting the whole thing without paying attention to the details (the place where the devil often likes to live).

‍Any URL must begin with the name of the data transfer protocol and include the domain name (“http://site.com/”). What is the path of a url in this case? In this form, the path to the object (web page or file) is used as a parameter of the href attribute when creating a full URL using HTML tools.

‍Its subsequent insertion into the content of a given page (document) has the following format in HTML code:

‍<a href=”http://site.com/category1/single-page1″>anchor</a>

‍<a href=”http://site.com/catalog1/file1.html”>anchor</a>

‍What is absolute URL, then? Let’s define absolute URL in simple terms:

‍An absolute URL is a full web address of a particular resource or a file, including a protocol (https), subdomain (www), domain (linksmanagement.com), and path or a slug (blog).

‍Absolute URLs can theoretically be used everywhere, but in practice, they are used more often when referring to an external web resource. They affect the position of a website in search results, so SEO specialists place them on donor sites to increase the authority of their websites in the “eyes” of search engines.

‍Source: Semrush

‍A relative URL is always shorter than an absolute one. It does not contain information about the data transfer protocol and the domain name, but only the location of the desired page. It contains part of the URL address. Here is a relative URL example:

‍/blog/

‍It will only serve its purpose, i.e., lead to the desired resource, if such a resource is placed inside the website’s domain or catalog. In all other situations, when trying to access the desired resource outside the root domain, a notorious error 404 will be displayed.

‍Source: Freepik

‍Both absolute and relative URLs are indispensable elements in web design and are widely used by SEO practitioners and webmasters. However, in this relative vs absolute URL debate, each of them has its unique features. Let’s make a quick summary at this point.

‍Absolute URL:

• contains the full website address (data transfer protocol, domain name, target page);
• is used to go to external resources (for example, from one website to another);
• is successfully used for external linking in off-page SEO.

‍Relative URL:

• contains only information about the location of the target resource/page;
• is used only for navigation within the same website;
• is used for internal linking in on-page SEO.

‍These differences give us a good starting point and an understanding of how and when these two link types can be used.

‍Let’s put relative URLs to an unbiased examination. The goal is to see if they have any advantages over the absolute links and understand their optimal usage scenarios to avoid possible problems and risks.

The perks of relative URLs

‍Relative URLs come with a range of advantages worth exploring in detail.

‍Compact code

‍Relative links are very popular with web developers because they simplify coding considerably. Instead of writing out the entire path, which is tedious and time-consuming when working with thousands of pages, you can use the shortcut “/product.”

‍In this case, it is easy to understand that the page is located on www.certainwebsite.com, in a “product” catalog category.

‍Easy transition from staging to production

‍If the staging environment for certainwebsite.com is hosted on a separate domain certainwebsitestaging.com, the full URL of the product page will be written as follows:

‍https://www.somewebsitestaging.com/catalog/category/product

‍It’s not hard to see that when hosting many pages in the staging environment, sooner or later you will have to move them all to certainwebsite.com, spending a lot of time and effort re-coding thousands of links.

‍Relative URLs free us from this headache. They allow you to immediately transfer the entire site structure to the working environment, and the tags written in relative addresses will be applied to the new domain.

‍The bottom line is that the labor resources of your development team are used much more efficiently when working with URL relative paths.

‍A minor increase in loading speed

‍Short URLs make your site pages load faster. However, you should not rely on relative links as a comprehensive solution for optimizing loading speed. Their effect on the loading speed is minor. If your site content is loading too slowly, dig deeper to find more serious problems.

‍Source: Freepik

What’s wrong with relative URLs?

‍If they have so many pronounced advantages, why are SEO specialists and webmasters reluctant to use them? It turns out that the relative URL format has some drawbacks, too.

‍The duplicate problem

‍The duplicate problem is when one relative URL <a href=”product”> can generate four variants of absolute URLs:

‍https://www.xwebsite.com/catalog/category/product

‍http://www.xwebsite.com/catalog/category/product

‍https://xwebsite.com/catalog/category/product

‍http://xwebsite.com/catalog/category/product

‍If you do not choose a canonical version, Google will perceive all these variants as unique pages. Of course, modern search algorithms powered by AI are becoming smarter and learn to automatically determine the main version. Nevertheless, errors are still common, so you should not blindly rely on artificial intelligence.

‍Why is duplicate content undesirable?

‍Many SEO enthusiasts are afraid of getting Google penalties for duplicate content. The penalty will not be as severe as in the case of spam links, but poor crawling by search bots can significantly harm your website’s authority and ranking.

‍Google spends a lot of resources to scan the web for updates and reflect the latest changes in search results. Each site is allocated a limited “crawl budget.” Its size depends on the authority, size, and complexity of the platform, as well as its structure and frequency of updates.

‍If there are four versions of the same site, the allocated crawl budget may not be enough to crawl them all. Google may not know about the changes to some pages and will display outdated information in search results!

‍In addition, regularly encountering duplicate content, Google may decide to reduce the crawl budget and frequency of visiting such a resource.

‍Is a full URL a better choice in this case?

‍The key difference between absolute and relative links is that absolute links prevent such a scenario from developing. Search bots see a single version of the site and are not distracted by duplicates, which significantly increases the chances of showing updated content in search results.

‍Risk of web scraping

‍Relative URLs make it easy to move content from a staging environment to a production domain. However, even this advantage also has a downside: competitors can easily steal your site’s content and host it on their own domain.

‍According to a study by Akamai, scraping is not so much done by humans but by bots. Bots, they say, constitute 42% of overall web traffic, with 65% of these bots being malicious. Scraper bots have a negative effect on many facets of a business, like revenue, brand identity, competitive edge, and customer experience.

‍Absolute URLs, on the other hand, protect intellectual property. Instead of rewriting web addresses for thousands of pages, scammers are more likely to look for easier prey, i.e., unprotected platforms.

‍Source: Freepik

‍From an SEO perspective, the minor perks of the relative URLs are completely overshadowed by the disadvantages. For that token, absolute URLs look like a better choice with their absence of a duplicate problem and better protection from web scraping.

‍For those planning to use absolute URLs, here are some SEO tips to help you set up the correct format:

• When canonicalizing your website, use HTTPS protocol, as Google considers it more secure than HTTP and your website would stand a better chance of ranking high in SERPs.
• While it doesn’t directly impact SEO, it’s better to use the version without the “www.” as those four characters (three letters and one extra dot) only make the URL longer.
• Explain the importance of absolute URLs to your SEO and development teams, as they may see rewriting thousands of web addresses as a waste of time. Your task is to explain to them that from an SEO perspective, eliminating the risks of scraping and duplicate content is a no-brainer.
• When creating absolute URLs, pay attention to URL slugs. A URL slug is the last part of a URL that comes after the domain name. It indicates a specific page within your website. Ensure your link slugs are short, descriptive, and contain relevant keywords, as they can improve search engine visibility and user clarity.
• Fix the links in your internal website navigation. For example, organize them in a single format (either you use www or not, or HTTP vs. HTTPS). You must also make sure that among the four versions of your website, you choose a single version as the main one.
• Use OnCrawl, Sitebulb, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, or other similar tools to detect links that don’t follow the established format.
• If you can’t fix all your URLs, as your website is too big, canonicalize them to reduce the risk of duplicate content and content theft.

‍In case you cannot afford or don’t have the skills to use one of the SEO tools to automatically detect and fix relative links on your website, you can always do this work manually.

‍However, even the manual approach can be optimized — ask your teams to report any non-absolute URLs they come across while working on your website. At least the detection process will go a lot faster.

‍In the relative link vs absolute link battle, there is no undisputed winner, as each URL format has its own advantages and disadvantages.

‍Relative URLs make the work of web developers much easier, while absolute ones provide greater security, solve the problem of duplicate content and help Google use the crawl budget as efficiently as possible.

‍While many experts consider absolute URLs to be the generally accepted SEO standard, do not rush to rewrite your relative URLs. Carefully weigh the pros and cons of each option, analyzing them against your goals and priorities.

‍If ease of navigation, website development, and loading speeds are your priorities — consider staying with relative links. However, when off-page SEO is the main goal, you’d be better off with the absolute links.

‍Whatever format you choose, you should use it on all pages of your website. This way, you can prevent many errors and simplify the work of both your development team and search bots for better website ranking.