Slashes in URLs - SEO Question

[Andy]

I'm wondering what effect on ranking, the use of slashes to reference the root of a web site in HTML links has?

I want to avoid using index pages in the hypertext links to the home pages of directories. The reason is that I want all links to point to the domain name and keyword URLs. One reason is navigation clarity. Displaying "index" is of little value to visitors and seems unnecessary.

So instead of a link like www.mysite.com/pictures/index.html the link would be /pictures and Firefox would show http://www.mysite.com/pictures/ in the bottom bar of the window.

I think this is the best approach to take for coding index page links in a document. In case you are wondering; I don't want to include my domain name in the URLs since I am testing sites on my local computer and including this would be an additional process before being able to upload the site to the web.

[Manu]

Well I think it should not be a concern as long as the links are uniform. /pictures is still better choice because you can easily change to php, asp etc. , can easily 301 redirect whole folder to any other place.....

[Andy]

Thanks for the second opinion. I wanted the flexibility you mentioned also.

p.s. I did a release build of my SiteSugu code and am now testing it out more thoroughly actually building my site with it. But I found some problems with links related to the above post. So I had to recode part of the server and navigation link generation code. But it seems to be working now. However I won't be uploading this new version until Sunday night to allow for some sleep and further testing 

I just noticed your comment Manu on my blog - thanks.

[donecweb]

I'm wondering what effect on ranking, the use of slashes to reference the root of a web site in HTML links has?

Andy I'm not sure what you are asking. Your example is of using a relative link instead of an exact full path link. The type of link would not effect the ranking of your site other than how many times the spider robots see your full address URL. I feel sure that upon seeing a relative link they associate it with the site they are visiting and so it would have no effect.