First Link Priority Solutions for SEO and Internal Linking

[esdavis]

I've recently been researching best solutions for solving First Link Priority issues on webpages to boost my internal linking.

I wanted to make sure the method I was using would help and not harm.

Basically, First Link Priority means that when Google is evaluating internal links on a specific page going to another page on your site, they will only use ONE instance of a hyperlink and its anchor text as the definitive link to the other page. And it's always the first link they encounter in the page code.

Notice I didn't say the first displayed link. It has to do with the HTML code underlying the page. The first link they find in the page gets the "juice." Where this can cause a lot of problems, for example, is with images and captions that both link to the same other page. The image is often first, before the keyword-rich caption, and so the image without good anchor text gets the nod from Google.

Home page links in the header tied to the logo are another place this is annoying.

One potential issue I've found the most annoying is the top navigation links on a page. They usually show up really early in the code but by nature are very short and not-keyword-rich anchor text. So using CSS, you can often rework the code so that they LOOK like they display first, but they are buried deeper in the HTML code on the page.

You can also use page redirects or Javascript linking in several different ways to force Google to see links to a single page as being "different" so they don't ignore your favorite. Or they don't even "see" the one you are hiding with Javascript.

There are pros and cons to different techniques mentioned here. I've got my favorites and I try to avoid techniques that Google frowns on for other reasons, but you never know.

I'd be interested in hearing how others are working out this issue from a practical coding/development point of view.