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.
Set base-href to subfolders - problems?
-
A customer is using the <base>-tag in an odd way:
<base href="http://domain.com/1.0.0/1/1/">
My own theory is that the subfolders are added as the root because of revision control.
CSS, images and internal links are used like this:
I ran a test with Xenu Link Sleuth and found many broken links on the site, but I can't say if it is due to the base-tag.
I have read that the base-tag may cause problems in some browsers, but is this usage of base-tag bad in some SEO-perspective? I have a lot of problems with this customer and I want to know if the base-tag is a part of it.
-
Hi Highland!
I know that relative URLs is anything but good, especially when you also use URL rewrite.
The only question is how Google will react to this?
Thanks for your answer!
-
Hi Cyrus and thanks for your answer!
The client is using the base tag on all pages on the site, but with different URLs. For example:
Root page: <base href="http://domain.com/1.0.1.0/2/1/">
Subpage:
<base href="http://domain.com/1.0.1.0/5/1/"> OR
<base href="http://domain.com/1.0.1.0/13/1/">Productpage:
<base href="http://domain.com/1.0.1.0/14/1/">As you can se they are using a lot of different base locations and unfortunately we are unable to change the base URL and test.
We have problems with both broken links and rankings. Whenever a new version of the system is created, all base URLs will be changed. This may mean that old links are still there and will be broken.
What do you think Cyrus, can this hurt us from a SEO perspective? It must be confusing for Google with all the strange base URLs?
I think the best would be to rebuild the structure and remove the base tag!
-
Most of the time you don't need to specify a base URL. The browser already knows this location. In some situations defining a base is helpful, such as mirrored sites when the URL used is not the same URL that is needed to resolve files.
Is your clients using a universal base tag that is the same across the entire site? I can't tell from the question, but this is a common situation that could potentially cause problems.
There's nothing inherently wrong with using a base tag. Most of the time, if you use it, you simply want to set it to the URL of the current page.That said, to avoid complications, the only time you really want to use the Base tag is when relative URLs wouldn't work without it.
You might want to test how the links on your site resolve and see if removing or modifying the base tag helps clear up your broken links.
-
Those are some sloppy URLs. I especially advise people to avoid the problems of relative paths in ANY URL. And, yes, <base> probably isn't helping.
Links starting with / are fine. That's the root of your site. Anything using "../" should be nixed and use a fixed path. And never, ever use "./".
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
-
Should we set up redirects for all deleted TAGS?
We recently found our site had 65,000 tags (yes 65K). In an effort to consolidate these we've started deleting them. MOZ is now reporting a heap of 404 errors for tag pages. These tag pages should not have links to them so not sure how come they're being crawled. Any suggestions from experience in this area would be useful.
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Do I have a problem with missing pages in Screaming Frog?
We have category pages and some of those pages have pagination due to us having additional items. Screaming Frog could not find the items that were after page 1. Is this a problem for Google? These item pages are still in the sitemap. I am sure they can find them to index them but does it hurt rankings at all.
Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Redirecting root domain to a page based on user login
We have our main URL redirecting non-logged in users to a specific page and logged in users are directed to their dashboard when going to the main URL. We find this to be the most user-friendly, however, this is all being picked up as a 302 redirect. I am trying to advise on the ideal way to accomplish this, but I am not having much luck in my search for information. I believe we are going to put a true homepage at the root domain and simply redirect logged in users as usual when they hit the URL, but I'm still concerned this will cause issues with Google and other search engines. Anyone have experience with domains that need to work in this manner? Thank you! Anna
Technical SEO | | annalytical0 -
Setting title tag with javascript/jquery
Hi there, I'm looking for some advice. I've recently implemented a few jQuery functions which gets specific content from the page and then sets the title and description. See working example here. It seems to work fine but my question I have is whether Google bots can read it and whether it might actually hinder my SEO efforts? Any advice would be really appreciated! Peter
Technical SEO | | peterallen0 -
Are robots.txt wildcards still valid? If so, what is the proper syntax for setting this up?
I've got several URL's that I need to disallow in my robots.txt file. For example, I've got several documents that I don't want indexed and filters that are getting flagged as duplicate content. Rather than typing in thousands of URL's I was hoping that wildcards were still valid.
Technical SEO | | mkhGT0 -
We have set up 301 redirects for pages from an old domain, but they aren't working and we are having duplicate content problems - Can you help?
We have several old domains. One is http://www.ccisound.com - Our "real" site is http://www.ccisolutions.com The 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain works. However, the 301-redirects for interior pages, like: http://www.ccisolund.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators do not work. This URL should redirect to http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators but as you can see it does not. Our IT director supplied me with this code from the HT Access file in hopes that someone can help point us in the right direction and suggest how we might fix the problem: RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} ccisound.com$ [NC] RewriteRule^(.*)$ http://www.ccisolutions.com/$1 [R=301,L] Any ideas on why the 301 redirect isn't happening? Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Does Google pass link juice a page receives if the URL parameter specifies content and has the Crawl setting in Webmaster Tools set to NO?
The page in question receives a lot of quality traffic but is only relevant to a small percent of my users. I want to keep the link juice received from this page but I do not want it to appear in the SERPs.
Technical SEO | | surveygizmo0 -
Where should a knowledge base be hosted for max. SEO benefit?
A client would like to set up a knowledge base to work in conjunction with their website and we are tossing up whether to go with a hosted solution (and therefore set up as a subdomain) or find a solution that we host on the clients domain (which will presumably have more SEO benefit). We are leaning towards the latter (although are mindful that we need to balance the client’s desire for a quality KB solution). Appreciate your feedback.
Technical SEO | | E2E0