Today marks the completion of a little test i created to determine if a second link to a target page would make that page rank higher… This was developed due to the ‘first link rule’ where in a majority of cases Google only attributes the Anchor Text of the first link on a source page to a target page.
To summarise this, on a page containing 2 links to the same product target page, the first links anchor would be attributed and the second ignored.
The upshot of this principle is that if your first link contains an anchor of ‘more’ or is the ALT attribute of an image, you might want to re-work your code so more appropriate anchor text appears higher in the code.
Anyway back to my test
I simply set up two source pages ’1′ and ‘a’ each containing a link to a respective target page. Both of these pages contained the same text content and same anchor text link to its respective target page however one of these source pages contained a second link to the target page using the anchor text ‘read more’
The target pages were both identical and labelled ‘peanut shell gloves 1′ and ‘peanut shell gloves 2′ ( it was a Googlewhack at the time).
After 2 months the results are in.
The page being referenced by the source page containing two links ranks higher than the singluar.
SEO Test Result
What’s more the source page for the winning target was the second link from my home page so we can count our any slight preference in one link being placed before another.
The up shot of this is go link mad and get lots of links from source pages to your target content – just remember that the first link carries the anchor text relevance.
To view the source documents view:
- http://www.markrushworth.com/source1.htm
- http://www.markrushworth.com/sourcea.htm
If you have any feedback let me know.
Great insight Mark – thanks for your findings. Now to go mad with building those links. Cheers