Is this a Google ranking factor?

If you have two internal links on one page that both link to another page on your website, is Google more important than the other?

Can you use anchor text in your files? Internal link Send a signal to Google, which keywords do you want to rank for?

If an external page links to your page twice, does the second link pass as much PageRank as the first link?

These are all questions that are triggered in the conversation about the priority of the first link.

There are a few things to unzip here, so let’s get started.

Disclaimer: The first link priority is used as a ranking factor

Over the years, there have been two separate issues related to the term first link priority:

Internal priority link

If page 1 on your website links to page 2 on your website twice, Google will only consider the anchor text of the first link when ranking page 2.

So if you want a specific page on your website to rank [red hot bananas]And you will make sure [red hot bananas] Used as the anchor text in the first occurrence link from page 1 to page 2.

External Priority Link

When YourWebpage.com links to MyWebpage.com multiple times, Google will count the first link and ignore all other links thereafter.

(This is in a theory Featured snippets In today’s terminology, so for anyone new to the industry, this will be their most likely understanding of the topic. )

The first link priority as evidence of a ranking factor

Some articles and blog posts that advocate link priority as an internal strategy point out Rand Fishkin’s post, Who said he tested it as evidence:

“…Suppose you have two links to your blog on the homepage of your website.

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, read [celebrity news blog].

The anchor text of the second link will not help the blog page rank [celebrity news] Because Google doesn’t seem to calculate the anchor text of multiple links from a single URL to a target. “

The problem is that it was 2008.

Even so, he said,

“On things like this, it’s never a good idea to just trust my words (or anyone else)-run the tests yourself and see the results you get. As the engine is constantly evolving, the results may be in six months or six days. It’s different within.”

Or, you know, more than ten years later.

From the perspective of external backlinks, SEO professionals want to know and argue whether it makes any sense to obtain multiple links from a single domain.

As far as I can remember, the general consensus around 2010-2012 is that getting multiple links from a single domain is still valuable, as long as they are links to different pages. However, some people do say that with each additional link, the revenue will diminish.

There is some evidence that the above two strategies were effective at the time, and I don’t doubt those SEO professionals who said it worked for them.

But now?

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

John Muller Talking about this Answer questions submitted by users during the office hours of the Google Webmaster Center in 2018. He said:

“It’s not something we defined, we said,’It’s always like this-it’s always the first link, it’s always the last link, it’s always the average of links, or something like that.

Rather, this is what our algorithm might choose to do in one way or another.

So my advice is not to worry too much about this. If you have different links to the same page, that is perfectly normal. This is something we have to deal with; we have to understand the anchor text to better understand the context of the link, which is perfectly normal. “

In the past, SEO professionals have spared no effort to reverse engineer how Google perceives and handles multiple internal links to the same resource on a single page.

Check This experiment Since 2011.

Here are Mueller’s views on these attempts to crack the “first link priority” code:

“I know people do SEO experiments and try to figure this out, and try to solve,’Oh, Google currently does this.’

But from our perspective, this may change, which is not our definition. So even if you try to figure out how we do it today, it’s not necessarily how we will do it tomorrow, or how we will always do it on all websites. “

Some SEO experts choose not to believe Google when talking about these things.

But the thing is like this.

Based on our understanding of how Google operates today, his statement about context is more meaningful than making hard and fast rules for it.

Google developed RankBrain, Knowledge graphs, and other tools/techniques to help the algorithm better “understand” the content it is evaluating.

In addition, hard rules that restrict PageRank from passing from one domain to another domain no longer make sense. This may be a necessary anti-spam strategy.

But Google can now use algorithms to identify relationships between more entities and pages. There are many other ways to determine whether a link makes sense as an actual endorsement of a piece of content.

The first link priority 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 internal links.

Google does not have a regulator (among various signals, including but not limited to PageRank) that limits how much trust or authority can be passed between entities.

This may prevent useful resources from being discovered, which runs counter to everything Google is trying to do.

Your first priority in internal links should always be to promote Seamless and intuitive user experience First. Internal links are used to help people move around and browse your website.

Any utility they might have as a secret keyword signal to Google disappeared a long time ago.

As for yours Backlink strategy, It’s wiser to focus on creating content that people want to link to than worrying that PageRank might be wasted because of who often links to you. Over time, this method will work more consistently.

Bottom line: Google does not use first link priority as a search ranking signal.

Featured image: Paul Bobita