Href

What Is Href?

The href attribute is the technical foundation of every link on the web — and therefore the foundation of all link-based SEO. Faulty href values lead to broken links that damage both user experience and crawling. With JavaScript frameworks in particular, you should ensure that real href URLs are present so that search engines can process links correctly.

Href is an HTML attribute (abbreviation for Hypertext Reference) that defines the target URL of a link. In HTML code, it is used in the <a> tag: <a href="[https](/en/glossary/https/)://example.com">link text</a>. The href attribute is essential for the functionality of links — without href, the <a> tag has no target definition. For SEO, href is relevant because Google reads the href value to understand where a link points and whether it is internal or external.

Technically, Google uses the href attribute to process crawl paths: an internal link with href pointing to another page on the same domain is crawled. An external link with href pointing to a different domain is noted (as a backlink for the target site or as an outbound link from the source page). The href value can be an absolute URL (https://example.com/page), a relative URL (/page), or an anchor (#section). Faulty href values (e.g., typos, invalid URLs) are recognized by Google and lead to broken links.

In practice you should: regularly check the href values of your links for typos and invalid URLs. Use meaningful link targets — an href="#" or href="javascript:void(0)" is bad for SEO and UX. With JavaScript-controlled links: ensure that a real href URL is present in case JavaScript does not load (graceful degradation). Tools like Screaming Frog show all href values on a website and can identify broken links.