Comments on: Internal Links – Only The First Link Counts in Google?

By: Abhijeet

Abhijeet — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:07:34 +0000

Shaun, I could understand the point of long tail keywords but could not really digest “# Perhaps, you could place your navigation below your text” – how that could be effective advantage?

Adding myself to receive follow up comment via email so I could get to know your thoughts on it.

By: trade show booths

trade show booths — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 04:36:33 +0000

hey Shaun,
I like your blog, and I like your style. I’d much rather read the advice of someone who can demonstrate that what they say may be true (with experiments) as opposed to most of the “experts” that just make pronouncements.
I read about this “first link” thing a few months ago, and know there’s a lot of disagreement. I did my own experiment, and agree with you.
Now if you have time, can you do an experiment to answer comment #17?
~ Steve, Pinnacle Trade Show Booths, aka purveyor of trade show booths

By: Hampshire wedding photographer

Hampshire wedding photographer — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 04:11:04 +0000

More fuel for the fire Shaun, Cheers.
Quick question; Can Google read text contained in tables. I have some appropriate text that would make ideal anchor text links to another page.

By: Shaun

Shaun — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:48:25 +0000

Links on your site do help spread Pagerank and help your pages get into Google’s main index, so link to your important pages often. It helps.

Use Yahoo as well for link:www.domain.com searches – it’s better and more comprehensive.

By: David

David — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:45:11 +0000

Take the domain http://www.domain.com.

If I type link:www.domain.com into Google, why are sometimes 90% of the results internal links like http://www.domain.com/directory/page1.htm?

Surely this internal linking cannot have any impact in the rankings? Or does it?

My site is PHP based and many of the links are relative and coded without the full domain name, and dont seem to get counted!

Any tips or insight would be very very appreciated

By: Mackerel Media

Mackerel Media — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:27:25 +0000

We’ve done some basic testing of this and the results we’ve seen do seem to corroborate your post – thanks for heads up!

By: Web Design Company

Web Design Company — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 15:51:02 +0000

I think another issue to consider is how many backlinks are considered by google when one website has multiple links to a particular website. This may even be links to different pages from different pages. Lets say we have a link back to our website from the footer of all pages on a a site we have designed. Surely it will not be counted as 50 back-links but only as one.

This gets more interesting ib the case or press relase or article websites where we may actuall y submit many postings over a period of time. If it will only ever be counted as a single link back, would’nt it make more sense to try and target as many websites as possible as opposed to focusing only on the major ones.

By: Shaun

Shaun — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:16:07 +0000

Cheers Tad – I will have the boys have a look – must have screwed something up

By: Tad Chef

Tad Chef — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:09:16 +0000

Hey Shaun, your site is broken in FF 2.0 – I can’t read it.

By: Ben McKay

Ben McKay — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:57:51 +0000

…it’s good to see you put it into practice too!

By: Shaun

Shaun — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:14:14 +0000

I don’t think Google would penalise you for that. It’s obvious and excessive manipulation Google would penalise – not a linking practice that could occur very naturally.

Thanks or the comments

By: Thomas Baugh

Thomas Baugh — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:06:44 +0000

Interesting article Shaun. My question would be:

Does Google penalize you for having two links in the body text to the same page, or lessen the importance of the one link they do count?

Normally when I add two links on one page to the same destination its to help users navigate and not for SEO.

By: Ann Arbor Michigan Website Promotion

Ann Arbor Michigan Website Promotion — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:38:07 +0000

Wow if what u tested is true are we wasting our time making multiple links on a page!?

By: SEO Asia Guy

SEO Asia Guy — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:20:16 +0000

Awesome fact to ponder. Thanks for sharing.

By: Video Converter

Video Converter — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:18:49 +0000

Google pays attention to the wording of the 1st link on page if link mentioned more than once?

By: Shaun

Shaun — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:04:36 +0000

THanks for the comments Yura – I discuss Michael’s tests a bit more here in an article entitled Does Only The First Link Count

By: Yura

Yura — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:53:48 +0000

I am not sure you were entitled to check by the rankings, since G started giving less weight to pages that don’t have keywords in the body, but using the “These words only appear..” trick is probably right.

You might want to mention that you and your readers might want to use a good alt tag and title tag on the logo image, because that’s where all the pages link to the homepage and it probably is at the top of the code, anyway. If it’s not, good for them, but it’d help, anyway.

Or better yet, like you said, move the header to the bottom and link to the homepage with keyword text.

Also, you might want to mention that the first link test was first (that I know of) run by Michael VanDeMar (read the comments, too):

Cheers.

By: carlos

carlos — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:32:45 +0000

I think google takes the link that describes in a better way the webpage, for example if you have the same 2 links but one of them has an extra keyword

Keyword Shaun Anderson
Keyword SEO Shaun Anderson

google will take the 2nd even if it is down the other.

By: dextro

dextro — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:18:44 +0000

gee..! I never knew it before mate. you sure a seo scientist.

By: kevsta

kevsta — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:45:42 +0000

Hi Shaun

“not exactly Google terrorism” ..remember one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

you’ll have seo science committee over here demanding control groups soon I expect but looks fair enough to me.

By: Shaun

Shaun — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:05:56 +0000

Thanks Daniel

I love testing things, especially on-site, though I am a firm believer Google changes the way it works, and wants to improve everything it does.

Its nice to find the limits where you can, and work out how you can use them to your advantage.

- Enjoying working for Big Dave?

By: Daniel Mcskelly

Daniel Mcskelly — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:46:53 +0000

Good work sir! I hate having to re-test basic principles stuff like this once every few months to make sure it still applies, so thanks for saving me a job

By: Car Lease

Car Lease — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:03:52 +0000

Didn’t even think of this…..