Is it a Google ranking factor?

[ad_1]

If you have two internal links on a single page that both lead to another page on your website, does Google value one more than the other?

And can you use anchor text in your internal links to report to Google which keywords you want to rank for?

What about an external page that links to your page twice: the second link passes as much PageRank as the first?

These are all questions triggered in first link priority conversations.

There’s a bit to unravel here, so let’s get straight to the point.

The claim: the priority of the first link as a ranking factor

There are two separate issues here that have been associated with the term first link priority at various points over the years:

Internal priority of the first connection

If Page 1 of your site links twice to Page 2 of your site, Google only considers the anchor text of the first link in the Page 2 ranking.

Therefore, if you want a specific page on your site to be ranked for [red hot bananas], you will make sure [red hot bananas] is used as anchor text in the link that appears first from Page 1 to Page 2.

Announcement

Read on below

Priority of the first external connection

When YourWebpage.com links to MyWebpage.com multiple times, Google counts the first link and ignores any subsequent links.

(This is the theory appearing in a featured snippet on the term today, so for anyone new to the industry, this will be their most likely understanding of the topic.)

The evidence for the priority of the first link as a ranking factor

Some of the articles and blog posts that advocate prioritizing the first link as an internal strategy point to a post by Rand Fishkin, who claimed to have tested it, as proof:

“… Let’s say that on the home page of your website you have two links to your blog.

The first link is in the top level navigation and the anchor text is [blog]. The second link is in the body of the homepage and says [celebrity news blog].

The anchor text of that second link will NOT help rank the blog page for [celebrity news] because Google doesn’t seem to count anchor text from multiple links to a target from a single URL. “

Announcement

Read on below

The thing is, it was 2008.

And even then, he said,

“On things like this, it’s never a good idea to take my word (or anyone else’s): run the tests yourself and see the results you get. As the engines are constantly evolving, the results could be different in six months or six days ”.

Or, you know, more than a decade later.

From an external backlink perspective, SEO professionals have wondered and debated whether it made sense to get more than one link from a single domain.

The general consensus around 2010-2012, as far as I need memory, was that getting multiple links from a single domain still had value as long as they were different pages linking. Some have said that there have been diminishing returns on each additional link, though.

There is some evidence that both of the above strategies worked back then, and I don’t doubt SEO professionals saying it worked for them.

But now?

Evidence against the priority of the first link as a ranking factor

John Mueller talked about it in a 2018 Google Webmaster Central office hours, in response to a question posted by the user. He said:

“This is not something that we have defined, where we say ‘It’s always like this: it’s always the first link, always the last link, always an average of the links, or something like that.

Rather, it is something our algorithms may choose to do one way or another.

So my recommendation would be not to worry too much about this. If you have different links going to the same page, this is completely normal. This is something we are dealing with; we have to understand the anchor text to better understand the context of that link and this is completely normal.

SEO professionals have, in the past, gone to great lengths to try to decode how Google perceives and treats multiple internal links to the same resource on a single page.

Announcement

Read on below

Check out this experiment from 2011.

Here’s what Mueller said about these kinds of attempts to crack the “priority on first connection” code:

“I know people do SEO experiments and try to figure it out, to try to understand, ‘Oh, Google actually does it this way.’

But from our point of view, this can change and it’s not something we’ve defined. So even if you can figure out how we do it today, then it’s not necessarily how we will do it tomorrow, or how it always is on all websites. “

Some SEO professionals choose not to believe Google when they talk about these things.

But here’s the thing.

What he said about context makes a lot more sense than having a hard and fast rule about it, based on what we know about how Google operates today.

Google has developed RankBrain, the Knowledge Graph and other tools / technologies to help the algorithm better “understand” much more about the content it is evaluating.

Announcement

Read on below

It also doesn’t make much sense anymore to have a hard and fast rule limiting PageRank from one domain to another. It was probably a necessary tactic of fighting spam at some point.

But Google can algorithmically discern much more about the relationship between entities and pages now. There are many other ways to tell if a link makes sense as an actual endorsement of a piece of content.

The priority of the first link is not a ranking factor

You can’t tell Google which search terms you want to rank for based on the anchor text you use first in your internal links.

Announcement

Read on below

Google doesn’t have some kind of governor that limits the amount of trust or authority that can pass between entities (in various signals including but not limited to PageRank).

This could potentially prevent the discovery of useful resources, which is contrary to everything Google is trying to do.

Your priority in internal linking should always be to facilitate an intuitive and seamless user experience first and foremost. Internal links are used to help people move and navigate your site.

Any utilities they might have as secret keyword signals for Google went out a long time ago.

As for your backlink strategy, it’s much smarter to focus on creating content that people want to link to than to worry about potentially wasting PageRank by virtue of who links to you too often. This approach will work more consistently over time.

Bottom line: Google doesn’t use first link priority as a search ranking signal.

Featured image: Paulo Bobita

[ad_2]