When doing internal linking back to your home/index file what is the best coding course of action?

[CharlesDaniels]

When doing internal linking back to your home/index page is it best to set the code as linked to "www.thedomain.com" or "www.thedomain.com/" or just "/" - I'm attempting some canonicalization and our programmer is concerned about linking to just the URL as he's saying it's going to be viewed as an external source.  We have www redirects in place that come back to just www.thedomain.com and a redirect to send the www.thedomain.com/index.php back to just www.thedomain.com .  Any help would be appreciated, thank you!

[mememax]

linking to the http://www.domain.com is the same as linking to / just develop the way which best suits your needs. The most important thing to do to avoid duplicate issues is to set the 301 to redirect everything to the same page thing you've already done so really there is no difference in that. About using the full url there's no issue on google seeing that as an external link since it's poiting to the same domain. hope this helps!

[Saijo.George]

Since www.thedomain.com is the canonical version. I would link to http://www.thedomain.com from the other pages.

[Robert_G]

When linking to internal pages the preferred method is /.

Why?

Because it helps the speed of your site by saving a DNS query.

[CharlesDaniels]

That's what had our programmer displeased.  Appreciate the assistance!

[CharlesDaniels]

Helped a lot, thanks for taking the time!

[CharlesDaniels]

That was my initial plan but our programmer didn't like the 'external' call being made.  So we went with just '/' keeping it all on site.  Man I love the Q & A here.  Thanks for the help!