Best way to write internal links

Hello -

Two part question...

For the best SEO punch- is it best to link to a internal web page as:

1.) http://www.example.com/widgets/widgets-rock.htm
or
2.) /widgets/widgets-rock.htm

The key question is should one include their domain name in the url for SEO purposes?

Second question:
The home page I'm designing may have several instances where we have 2 or 3 separate internal links going to the same page (not my idea). Though each link would have different anchor text - this sounds like a SEO problem waiting to happen. Do search engines consider that spammy? Can anyone give me their advice on this?

Thanks very much

as far as your fist question, I do not think it matters, as far as your second, if you look at this pages page source you will see that there are several links to the forum index and with multiple anchor texts. if it means anything

Your worries are unfounded. Consider it from a non SEO perspective, Does it make sense? Does it help your user quickly and easily find what they are looking for? Am I putting these links just because of search engines?

Answer those questions and you will know your answer

Maybe times have changed and I missed it but I thought absolute links (www.domain.com/page) were recommended to help improve link juice.

Perhaps it wasn't to help link juice but I remember reading some time ago that using an absolute link for internal links to your home page was far better than using /home or /index. Why would this change for other internal links? Also, has this methodology changed?

As far as I am aware the absolute linking is best when linking back to the home page to avoid canonical issues. Other than that I dont think relative/absolute matters

For the absolute/relative link question - when I look at respected sites of company's who should know SEO (like SEO Books and Pepperjam) - I see they always use the absolute format - for all or nearly all internal links. So that looks like it may seem like the way to go.

Thanks all for feedback

Very well, thanks for the reply. At the very least, I would imagine it doesn't hurt at all. I'm wondering if anyone has conducted any tests on this.....

I'm trying to market my friends website where he placed his internal page as default page.. for e.g., website xyz.com which open xyz.com/abc.html
do u think it will be a problem? it seems there is not default page.
I'm suggesting him to make .abs.html as default.html.
Just want more opinion on this topic.
Thanks

So are you simply trying to assign a page on the site as a homepage? For some reason I'm not following your question.

Most instances i've seen people choose xyz.com/ as the home page. If its the home page, I like to keep it short. No need for xyz.com/default.asp as far as I'm concerned. Just make sure if these pages do exist on the site that you 301 redirect all the instances of the homepage to the one you choose.

Hope that answers your question. Sorry if not.

I dont think thats a problem. You can set any page on your site as the default page, not necessarily index.html or default.asp or something like that.

Thanks for ur reply.

I think I was not clear what I want to say...

there is no homepage of .xyz.com but when u open the website it takes u to .xyz.com/a b c-g h i.html (which is an internal page)

I see. That is odd. If there is a general page on the site that covers what the rest of the site is about, use that page. If not, you may want to create one.

Just to chime in on the absolute vs. relative -

Use the absolute links. In the off chance you write some extremely good content and some other devious, cheating webmaster scum scrapes your content - you might luck out.

I've found that often they will forget to remove links from within the content. If you had absolute links - you just got some backlinks. If you used relative links, then they steal your content with nothing to pay for it but some broken links on their site.

It amazes me when I see referrals from obscure websites where the webmaster simply forgot to remove those links from content they stole from me.

yup.. so my question. there is no problem in promoting the website with .xyz.com/a b c - g h i. html.