3 Ways to Avoid the First Link Counts Rule
This YouMoz entry was submitted by one of our community members. The author’s views are entirely their own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.
As many tests confirmed, Google algorithm counts only the first link anchor text but during the time some cheats have been tested to get more than one anchor text.
Using my seo blog (named Posizionamento Zen), I decided to test 3 different ways to avoid this rule to have a confirmation of their effectiveness.
Setup: I created a first page called paginaA1.html, talking about the non-existent italian term "Grisofallicolo". From this page we have 5 links pointing to page paginaB.html, which focus is the fantastic theme "autopozzolismo". Both these pages are made of non-existent words with zero semantic correlation. None of them has got inbound links pointing to it.
The five links are:
- #1: link to paginaB.html with anchor text gusopio"
- #2: link to paginaB.html with anchor text "socofaltignono"
- #3: link to paginaB.html#1 with anchor text "tupopertigna"
- #4: link to paginaB.html?f=1 with anchor text "copiomarmispia"
- #5: link to paginaBB.html with anchor text "lumotirraia"
None of this 5 words is in paginaB.html text, so the target page can rank for them only if each anchor text is counted.
Into the <head> section of page paginaB.html we have <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.posizionamentozen.com/test-seo/paginaB.html" />.
The last file, paginaBB.html, is 301 redirect to page paginaB.html via file .htaccess.
So, we have #1 and #2 textual links to the same url, and other 3 links to the same document handled with different urls: anchor link, querystring + Canonical Tag, 301 redirect.
Expected results: If it's true that only the first link counts, I expected page paginaB.html not ranking for "socofaltignono"; however, if the 3 suggested ways make it possible to get more than one anchor text to the same url, I expected paginaB.html ranking for "tupopertigna", "copiomarmispia" and "lumotirraia".
Testing: To accelerate the indexing process, paginaA1.html (but not page paginaB.html) had been included in the sitemap.xml file of the site; the XML sitemap has been linked in the footer: this has been the only possible path for Google to discover the pages.
After 3 weeks, paginaB.html ranks for its Title tag ("autopozzolismo") and for anchor text 1, 3, 4, 5 but not for anchor text 2.
anchor text #1 (direct link): paginaB.html obviously ranking for this word
anchor text #2 (direct link): paginaB.html not ranking for this word
anchor text #3 (anchor link): paginaB.html ranking for this word
anchor text #4 (querystring + Canonical tag): paginaB.html ranking for this word
anchor text #5 (301 redirect): paginaB.html ranking for this word
Conclusion: The test confirmed that only the first link counts, but there at least 3 ways to bypass the rule:
- hash in the url
- querystring + canonical link on the target page
- 301 redirect
These 3 alternatives can improve internal link building when navigation menus have sub-optimal anchor text values.
Hope this experience can help your SEO efforts!
PS. If you like to mention this test anywhere, please refer to Test Seo #1: at this path will be posted soon the official italian article about the test.
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