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September 9, 2005

Secondary Navigation Links are Recommended

I found a slightly disturbing thread the other day at WebmasterWorld named Duplicate navigation links downsides? You know how many sites have a form of graphical navigation for those who find graphical links more appealing and then at the footer, the site normally has alternative text based links to the same pages? I am sure you have seen it before, it is all over the place. In addition, many forums have the bread-crumb trail navigational text links at the top of the page and at the bottom of the page (a feature I love, I hate scrolling back up - hint SEW).

These are all examples of having the same link on the same page more then once. Is there something wrong with it? The thread creator said, "I'm afraid that can hurt in any way my rankings since links will be basically duplicated." I assume this thought process was triggered due to the volume of discussion on duplicate content issues that have taken place in the recent history. But having two of the same link, pointing to the same page, and if it is of use to the end user, will not hurt your rankings. In fact, they may help with getting your site indexed and ranking you higher (due to the anchor text).



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posted rustybrick in Search Engine Optimization at September 9, 2005 9:55 AM Comments (8)

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Comments

I could see a possible problem if you stuffed each of the dupe links with keywords, but other than that, it's all a bunch of hooey

 

Posted by Stoney deGeyter at September 9, 2005 17:36

Keep in mind that the anchor text of the last link parsed for an certian URL will be the one that is given credit.

bobmutch

 

Posted by bobmutch at September 10, 2005 03:02

Are you sure on that bobmutch? , I think that the anchor text that gives credit is the first parsed. Well, I dont know if this is always true, but i tested once and the anchor test credit was given to the first link parsed.

PD: rusty, I think that you have a problem with comments preview.

 

Posted by Michel at September 11, 2005 18:56

I'd say it's neither the first nor the last anchor text. The weight of anchor text depends on the links placement and prominence on the page. Most probably all anchor text counts to some degree. With some experimenting one can easily get a feeling for the power of anchor text in 'hot zones' like near the top and within body text, but it's hard to measure it with links in 'cold zones' like bottom lines and repeated navigational elements.

 

Posted by Sebastian at September 12, 2005 11:30

"I'd say it's neither the first nor the last anchor text. The weight of anchor text depends on the links placement and prominence on the page"

I agree. But in the same conditions (one link above the other) the first link gives all the anchor text weight and the other gives no weight. (I dont know if this allways happens)

 

Posted by Michel at September 12, 2005 19:10

Why wouldn't they all be weighted equally? That's what the PageRank algorithm is all about, many links, all saying different things, all weighted accordingly on the page. If I got 10 links to my home page saying different things, the weight of each link would (should?) be 1/10 of the total weight that page can provide (assuming there are no other links going out.)

 

Posted by Stoney deGeyter at September 14, 2005 12:05

Stoney, I am not talking about Pagerank.
This example is about two links to the same page with different anchor text and the value of them in terms of anchor, not pr.

 

Posted by Michel at September 15, 2005 08:04

Right, I understand we are not specifically talking about PageRank but the concept of evaluating the link is similar. PageRank assignees the value that will be attributed for each link on a page. Each link, regardless of the anchor text, has a value. Five links to the same page with different anchor text *should* all weight equally in regards to the value of the anchor text to the page its pointing to.

 

Posted by Stoney deGeyter at September 15, 2005 11:35

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