Second anchor text on page. Does it count?
-
Back in 2008 there was "proof" that the anchor text of a second link on a page would not be counted for the anchor text.
In the MOZ starter guide it is still advocated: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/learn/seo/anchor-textBUT in 2014 it was reported on searchengine land:
http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718
That the second link might be counted. Direct link to the matt cuts video from 28 may 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AsLWIuNNMU(Even in 2010 there where already some different opinions and work arounds.
https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/the-first-link-counts-rule-and-the-hash-sign
https://mza.seotoolninja.com/ugc/3-ways-to-avoid-the-first-link-counts-rule (2011)Question: did anyone recently test this recently?
The deeper questions are:
1:is the LINK value counted if you have more that one link on a page to another page?
2: is the Anchor text counted if you have more than one anchortext to another page?The most interresting i have is that i have a menu from which i link to my important pages. Does it help to put extra links in the content to specific pages?
-
Hi Stramark,
How did you get on in your testing? Just wondering what the latest on this is for 2015-2016?Thanks.
-
I have done a test of my own.
I used a very important page on my website.
The page has not been changed for more than 2 months.
The page has a link from the main menu with the money keyword "zoekmachine marketing"
I used the blogpart of my website to add 5 extra links like this: https://www.stramark.nl/zoekmachine-marketing/#4-p-zoekmachine-marketingI ran the keyword ranking on the specific anchor text on the 9th of july, and today again.
The result is significantly positive. I will monitor for a few extra days
-
This is also a question of usability / user experience. If your page incorporating in-article anchor links is laid out well and has engaged users clicking those links to explore the different sections of the page, you're likely getting a lower bounce rate and better numbers in-terms of users bouncing back to the search results from your page.
In ATPs case, those links were likely causing navigational confusion and/or potential keyword stuffing flags. Cleaning them up served his site better.
In either case, I don't think it's a simple question of solely how many links count, especially in real world usage. Cheers!
-
Hi Stramark,
This is an interesting debate that I have tried to test myself to some extent and found some mixed results.
A site I took over had category pages linked off the home page in 3 locations, the main nav bar, in the content, and in the footer. The anchor text was different in all 3. I made relatively minor changes but the main one was to make the anchor text the same and remove the footer links. (Basically avoiding any threat of being tagged for spammy links with different keywords)
3 Out of the 8 or so categories saw visible improvements with the removal and standardisation of the anchor text. Very few other changes were made to these pages or the site.
This change leads me to believe that not only can more than 1 link have an impact, but different anchor text on the multiple links also can, multiple links are not simply ignored. However, The big debate i guess is whether that is a good or bad impact, since cleaning them up and removing them helped my pages.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved Are links from staff profile pages no longer good for SEO?
Hey there, We run a small site that lists lawyers and we have an opportunity to ask the lawyers to display a 'badge' on their own website's staff page, linked back to the page on our site that they are listed on. Initially I thought this would be good link building (i.e. the lawyer's own staff/profile pages on their website linking to our site where they are listed = a highly relevant link). I was less concerned about the authority of the law firm's sites, though these will range from sometimes low-ish to medium. I just assumed that Google would see the value in the lawyer wanting to link to our site where they are listed. However, our SEO has said that these days Google doesn't give much/any value to these types of links from individual staff pages. His advice was to try and get the badge added to one of their service pages (or their About page) which will be unlikely as the badge is person-specific. I thought I'd ask if this was everyone else's experience regarding Google not valuing links from individual staff pages? Thanks for you help 🙂
Link Building | | Andy-H0 -
Number of other outgoing links on a page
"If the link pointing to your website is among hundreds or thousands of other outgoing links on
Link Building | | ross254sidney
a single page, then chances are that it isn't as valuable." What is the maximum limit to look for outgoing links before placing our link?0 -
How to identify page authority and authority link to it?
Please help me to identify if joining ASTA - American Society of
Link Building | | NadiaFL
Travel Agents will be beneficial to me. One of the benefits ASTA offers link from their site with logo. http://www.asta.org/ How I can identify if this link is authorative? Thank you!0 -
Competitor links on unmaintained pages
hey all, this is my first posting... I have a webpage that is a great resource (ranked 3rd for my keyword) , and unarguably better than the site that is taking the first 2 places. Because my page is a much more useful resource for the same thing I have been looking at who is linking to them and asking them to take a look at mine in the hope that they will replace their link with my more up to date page. The problem is a LOT of the high value links they have (many .edu links) are from old, now unmaintained pages, where I have no chance of getting a link (or even contact with a webmaster) Its frustrating that they have so many good links to such an out of date page. I just wondered if any of you have had a similar situation. It just seems very hard to knock someone off that top spot if they have been established a long time, regardless of the quality of their content. I guess there is no solution to it except to find lot of other high value links myself - so not so much a question as a comment really! but happy to hear peoples own experiences of that sort of situation.
Link Building | | ricalebro0 -
How important are directory submissions to my off-page SEO?
Hi Guys, One area of my link building that I carry out is looking for online directories and social bookmarking websites to submit my website to. I do this in order to gain some backlinks to my website. What I want to know is are they really worth my time, and if so, which types would you say are the most important? I have obviously been through many directory lists, both on SEOmoz and on other websites, and also performed various searches to find relevant directories to my website. I just feel that posting up a link that lies deep in a directory online that, more often than not, have very low PA and lots of outbound links will offer very little in terms of SEO. If anything, this could really bring down the quality of my links and be detrimental to my website, right? This is a subject that I have been thinking about for a while and especially with the recent algorithm update from Google and the attack on many web directories that are, lets say, 'not playing by the rules', I'm worried that this will have a negative impact for my website. Let me know your thoughts guys and if you have any tips on how to get higher quality links from these kind of submission then I'm all ears! Matt.
Link Building | | MatthewBarby0 -
Effects of link bait page
Hi Mozzers! I'm thinking about putting a page with some interesting comedy content on my site as link bait and had a few questions on how i should go about it. 1. Should I link to this page from my home page or would it be better to build outside links to it and then funnel all the page rank to the pages on my site that i want ranking higher? I've been told that page rank is a tiny factor in ranking in the serps so is it worth doing if the only reason i'm building it is to funnel page rank to my important pages? The link bait page content will be on the same subject as my entire site so it will definitely help google associate my site with my product from the incoming links. 2. if a web page on my site receives links does it help other pages on my site to rank higher or just the page with the incoming links? One time i had a flurry of links pop up to my home page and it seemed like all my pages started ranking higher, but it might just have been coincidence? Any thoughts? 3. What's a good way to get my page seen by the masses to draw links? I thought about buying some stumbles on Stumbleupon to get it seen quickly but are there more or better ways to do this? Thanks in advance everyone! Ron
Link Building | | Ron100 -
Google Webmaster Tools Link Count
What are your thoughts on the link information provided by GWMT? It often takes quite a bit of time for the links to show up, and some quality links are never shown. Is it cause for concern if your link count is lower in GWMT than, say OSE? Any implications worth noting?
Link Building | | ericbramlett0