Google’s John Mueller was recently asked whether the value of an internal link is based upon its location on a page; for example, is the value different between having an internal link in the header of the website and having it within the content of the page?
What are internal links?
Internal links are hyperlinks added to a site so that visitors and search engine crawlers can go to other pages on the website. Internal linking is extremely useful to help search engines to find new content on your website.
Martin Splitt, a search advocate at Google, wrote a recent article on Search Engine Journal called ‘How Google Analyzes Web Page Content and Weights It’, in which he made it clear that websites are divided by Google into sections to help improve their crawlability.
This means that the main content section, which is called the Centrepiece Annotation, is where the most important content on the page is, and this is likely the reason this question was asked to Mueller.
The “value” of links
Sometimes, Google uses links to understand what the content on the page is about. The use of structured data, for example, helps you provide Google with specific information about the content on the website. Research says that anchor text is used as a ranking factor by Google and helps communicate the meaning of the content on the site.
Mueller confirmed that the location of the link can be measured, but that wherever the link is on the page, its “value” – certainly as far as SEO rankings is concerned – is still the same. It may therefore be best to simply rely on your judgement as to where links are of most value to helping users understand the information.
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