In simple words, Absolute Links are the links that give an exact destination. It is a hyperlink that contains the complete URL that includes all the information necessary to find a particular site.
We can find a site, a page, a document, or other addressable elements on the Internet.
How do Absolute Links Differ from Relative Links?
An absolute hyperlink is one that uses the full URL, especially including the “https://” protocol. If the URL you want the link to point to is “www.yourdomain.com/test.html,” an absolute link might say “https://www.yourdomain.com/test.html.”
You can also point to a subfolder – like www.yourdomain.com/test – by using “https://www.yourdomain.com/test/“.
A relative hyperlink does not include the “https://” protocol, instead of inferring the URL based on the URL of the current page.
In the example, if you are linking to Test.html on the index page at www.yourdomain.com, the link could simply say “test.html“.
For the link to work, it must be in the same directory as the source page; If you want to open the test.html page in the test sub-folder, put the link to “test / test.html“.
If you want to create a relative link from the test.html back to the main index page of the directory, it will include two periods and a slash, that is, “./index.html“.
You can also flash forward to start a link relative to the parent directory and go down from there, ie “/test/test.html“.
Reasons to Encode Relative URLs
As we said before, most candidates prefer absolute links over relative links. So why the relative links?
Although absolute links are better for SEO, there are a couple of reasons to encode relative links.
1. Much Easier and Faster to Code
Comparative links are quick and easy to code. If you are a web developer and you build a website that contains thousands of websites, then you can easily understand the concept.
2. Staging Environments
Having relative links on the same website can exist in staging and production, or the live accessible version of your website. So you don’t have to go back and recode all those URLs.
Apart from this, relative URLs help your web pages load a bit faster. In general, relative link coding is a better solution for the web development team.
Absolute Link vs. Relative Link – Which is Best for SEO
In our searches, we found that most of the preferences are given to absolute URLs for SEO. The following are the reasons.