Linking to Homepage

[TravG]

When you are lining to your own homepage, is it better to use a / or use the URL? I have actually done both but just wondering if there is any evidence of one way being better than the other. Also if you do use the URL, should you use a trailing slash? So xwww.abc.com or xwww.abc.com/

I would think consistency is the key, I remember one time when a guy was linking to my website he asked me if I wanted a trailing slash or not. I didnt know know what to say really.

[jorgedarin]

Usually Google indexes your home page with / at the end of the URL so you should be linking to that one - as a rule of thumb you should be linking to the page that is in the index. For internal pages it's a different story as if your pages are indexed with / at the end and you link to without / you will either have to make sure 1) there are 301 redirects in place or 2) have canonicals to the URLs with / at the end. Not sure if this helps!

[TravG]

yep - thanks. Do you use a slash or use the url? I guess the url if you are saying you use the slash. Can just using a slash "/" instead of writing out the whole URL hurt?

[jorgedarin]

Are you talking about internal links from your same site? If not why would you use / as the anchor text only? It's a bit odd I'd say but it should not hurt in any way - it's just that they would look odd ...

[TravG]

yes - internal linking.

[torrescarlos]

It doesn't matter, you can use both, ther's no difference.