Wed 30 Jul 2008
Does Only The First Link Count In Google?
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TIP 23One of the more interesting discussions in the seo community of late has been trying to determine which links Google counts as links on pages on your site. Some say the link Google finds higher in the code, is the link Google will ‘count’, if there are two links on a page going to the same page.
Update - I tested this recently with the post Google Counts The First Internal Link.
For example (and I am talking internal here - if you took a page and I placed two links on it, both going to the same page? (OK - hardly scientific, but you should get the idea). Will Google only ‘count’ the first link? Or will it read the anchor txt of both links, and give my page the benefit of the text in both links especially if the anchor text is different in both links? Will Google ignore the second link?
What is interesting to me is that knowing this leaves you with a question. If your navigation aray has your main pages linked to in it, perhaps your links in content are being ignored, or at least, not valued.
I think links in body text are invaluable. Does that mean placing the navigation below the copy to get a wide and varied internal anchor text to a page?
Perhaps.
Here’s some more on the topic;
- You May Be Screwing Yourself With Hyperlinked Headers
- Single Source Page Link Test Using Multiple Links With Varying Anchor Text
- Results of Google Experimentation - Only the First Anchor Text Counts
- Debunked: Only The 1st Anchor Text Counts With Google
- Google counting only the first link to a domain - rebunked
As I said, I think this is one of the more interesting talks in seo at the moment and perhaps Google works differently with internal links as opposed to external; links to other websites.
I think quite possibly this could change day to day if Google pressed a button, but I optimise a site thinking that only the first link will count - based on what I monitor although I am testing this - and actually, I usually only link once from page to page on client sites, unless it’s useful for visitors.
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Interesting question… but…. does it REALLY matter?
If you are only discussing INTERNAL links then you’d first have to figure out just how much weight an internal link carries in the first place before deciding just how many internal links Google will count. Best bet is to do whatever your website users will appreciate..then go off and get a whole stack of external links instead.
Just my 2 c’s of course.
BTW..excellent blog!
regards
James.
Shout Out by UK Advertising — July 31, 2008 @ 12:15 am
Hello there - haven’t we met on UK Business Forums?
Actually for me this is incredibly important.
Say you have a navigation array along the top of your page going to your primary sales page. If Google only counts the first link internally too, then if you had a link (SEO) to your seo page, then all your website says about this page is “SEO”.
Put your navigation down below natural content like articles and link to your seo page with varied anchor text so (internal link profile wise) you now have anchor text ‘boost to that page, something like:
“SEO, SEO Company, search engine optimisation, optimise, search engine promotion, etc” instead of just boomf! “SEO”.
I think anchor text in links from internal pages is important and I like it varied as much as possible. I’m not talking about identifying weight in links, just boosting any possible internal anchor text score, in whatever measure.
What you think? Mad? Perhaps
Shout Out by Shaun — July 31, 2008 @ 1:21 am
Hi Shaun, Yeh I’m always around the UK business forums…but I have no idea who you are but don’t be offended by that… I don’t recognise myself sometimes!
I was just doing some link research and stumbled on your blog, small world huh?!!
I agree with what you are saying in the sense of…
If you have a link in your navigation called SEO and it links to your SEO page then it might be worthwhile lower down the page having a link that says “click here for more information on SEARCH ENGIINE OPTIMISATION” but I would say that this would be for your users benefit.
It’s certainly easier to add long tail links if you add links in the content/body of the page but I wouldn’t link to a page more than one extra time from any given page (one nav link and one body link)
How you would actually gauge the weight of either link sounds like hard work. I have 20,000 internal links that use the text “place a free ad” and I just happen to be in the SERPs for that term…. but NOT the page that all those links point to!!! Go figure
hehe
I’d say you’re going to need to be in a massively demanding niche and/or have a lot of flexibility with your website in order to be able to make any reasonable conclusions… and I have no idea just how many links it would take to have an effect, if you were working with a small website (sub 100 pages) it may have no effect at all.
Of course this is all speculation but I have to stick to my guns and believe that making the site for the visitor is the best way - stuffing a whole load of various anchor text links to the same page sounds more confusing that anything else.
James.
Shout Out by UK Advertising — July 31, 2008 @ 11:36 pm
Ah James I knew it. I’m Sandpetra on the UK Biz forums….. only go there when I want to argue about keyword density and the like lol
And I think your still missing the point - a little - and I am not talking about a site with 20,000 pages :).
Work the navigation through the content AND then apply your normal navigation system floated from the bottom with CSS.
Best of both worlds (on a smaller site)
And no offence taken. I’m sure we had a little private conversation about a year ago when I was fighting the good fight at UK Biz.
Shout Out by Shaun — July 31, 2008 @ 11:54 pm
Ha!! you posted a 17 page thread with 165 replies and I’m not even in the thread :).. “Get involved!”
I see where you are coming from with this but I have my reservations about the value of internal anchor text links. As noted.. even with 20K internal links the page itself doesn’t rank so what a standard website could achieve would be very hard to measure. Let’s say your site has 100 pages all about various cars - would you link to all 100 pages from everypage? No, of course not, so you spray a few anchor text links into the content of some pages trying to get as many cars mentioned as possible whilst still trying to maintain a decent structure to your whole site… therefore each of the 100 pages will pick up just a few extra internal links from other pages (in other words - not enough to make a real difference).
In my opinion I don’t think that internal linking with anchor text makes much difference, certainly nowhere near as much as picking up just a few external links - otherwise we’d all be doing it
Shaun, I’ll be back… but in the mean time feel free to drop into MYBF and post some SEO tips
regards
James.
Shout Out by UK Advertising — August 1, 2008 @ 8:59 am
HI James - will do.
And on a last note - don’t think I am advocating internal links are anywhere near as important as external incoming links (IBLS). I am not.
What I am ensuring is that when I do linkbuild, my internal linking structure makes the most out of any linking equity my site has.
I’ll pop along to the forum over the weekend!
Thanks for the comments 
Shout Out by Shaun — August 1, 2008 @ 12:39 pm
Two scnarios need to be considerd here. One is when the same page has two identical links. In this case it makes sens to assume that it will only be counted as one link by search engines such as Google. The other scenario is more interesting. It is when 2 completely independent pages form a website has link back to a particular website.e.g in the case of multiple posts on the same blog or forum where the signature consists of link back to the user’s website. Some believe that Google would only count is one back-link and not multiple. In this case the justification is that each website or domain is counted as one back-link only!
Shout Out by Web Design Company — October 27, 2008 @ 4:53 pm
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