Where to link to? .com or extension

[phil123]

Hi everyone.

Just a quick question as its really confusing me.

When link building it appears I have been linking unknowingly it seems to 2 different web address's

http://www.chamonixfirst.com and http://www.chamonixfirst.com/en/home/

I'm very new to this but if you look at the link info for these two different address they have different scores. Have i just halved all the link building i have done so far?

When you search for us on the net its the .com site that appears but the .com/en/home/ has better trust etc.

So i guess the question is, for future linking which address should we be linking to ? .com or .com/en/home/

Many thanks

Phil

[EvolveCreative]

Hello,

You are using a 301 redirect from here:

http://www.chamonixfirst.com

to here:

http://www.chamonixfirst.com/en/home/

301's reduce the link juice by 1-10% according to Matt Cutts. It's not that big of deal, but I'd recommend picking a version to link to and sticking to that 1 version from here on out. I'd advise you to switch the 301 redirect around from what you currently have. I'd be better to have http://www.chamonixfirst.com as the primary version of the URL because most of the people that link to you (natural links) will use that version over http://www.chamonixfirst.com/en/home/ (unless they go to your website and copy-paste). You only have 33 linking root domains, so it's better to get it right now before it's too late. If you had 3x the number of linking root domains I'd probably just advise you to keep it the way you have it. Make sure all of these versions use a 301 to your primary version if you have them:

•    http://example.com/
•    http://www.example.com/default.asp
•    http://www.example.com/default.aspx
•    http://example.com/default.aspx
•    http://example.com/default.asp
•    http://www.example.com/

[phil123]

Thanks Todd, thats great.

I hope you dont mind but i have 1 more question to pick your brain

If www.todd.com links to me that is a root domain linking to me right?

If www.todd.com/links links to me does that also count as a root domain link? Or is that a sub domain link

thanks in advance

Phil

[EvolveCreative]

Hi Phil,

www.todd.com <- linking root domain
www.phil.com <- linking root domain
www.todd.com/awesome <-linking page on the root domain
blog.todd.com <- subdomain link

Feel free to private message me if you have any more questions.

[Dr-Pete]

I tend to agree with Todd that it's better to use your root level "/" URL for the home-page, as Google can get quirky when you target a deeper page. That said, if you're using a proper 301-redirect, most of your current link-juice should be consolidated. Ideally, I'd use the root level, but your current configuration may not be causing any serious problems (and switching always carries a little short-term risk).

[Dr-Pete]

"Linking root domains" is a metric we use because it correlates better with ranking than your overall link count. In other words, if you have 100 links from todd.com (even on different, non-root URLs), that counts a lot less for SEO than having links from 100 different root domains. It doesn't necessarily matter where the link is from the home-page or a deep page (home pages tend to have higher PR, but just on average). What we're really interested in is how many different/unique domains link to your site.