Hi,

I found the following tip after running a search for improving google ranking. It is a suggestion that I hadn't seen previously.

“Tip: if you have a button on your website that takes you back to the homepage, link it to your domain name (www.yoursite.com) instead of a page called home.html or index.html. Google doesn’t recognize the difference between outbound or inbound backlinks.”

I am wondering if this is true. Does it also apply to navigational menus? Should I change all my backlinks from ./index.html to the full url?

Thanks!

There is nothing what you are talking about but what you should do is be consistent. if you are buli\ding links to /index.html then go with that and if you are just going without that make it consistent rule. Normally its just the domain name for 2 main reason

1. When anybody else links he is more likely not to mention the file but just the domain.
2. When you change from .html to .php you are not at mercy of making a redirects.

The "tip"seems to have been rewritten by someone who doesn't actually understand it.

What it means is you should not include the page name when linking to either the "home" page or to a folder. Simply use "/" for the home page or "/foldername/" for subfolders.
It is simply about consistency, it will very likely make little or no difference to your rankings, unless you have thousands of pages on your site and the majority of your linkpop is internal.
As mentioned by shabbirbhimani, it also allows you to change server technology with less problems. Not just from .html to .php but from any coding method to any other.

It applies to all links on your site.