I know I've read in various places that If I have an article with links to my site, that Google only gives us juice and recognizes 1 of them.

So my question is, which one does it choose. If someone published an article with 3 links in them to my site, which one does the search engine choose to rank us with? What if they all have different anchor texts?

Is it the first link from the top of the document?

Thanks guys!

There is suggestion that search engines only count one identical anchor text per web page for ranking purposes. However, in your suggested situation, ie article syndication, there is no reason to link with the same anchor text through out the article. In fact, i would suggest, if your submitting an article that allows several anchor links to link to inner pages (deep links) with a variation of anchor texts.

Thanks jon.

That's exactly what I was thinking. My company has always released really mediocre to lousy and hard to read press releases only. And all they have is a link on the bottom of the article to mycompany.com* or sometimes just the name of the company.

I was asking because if I inlcude a link to our home page at the bottom of the article, and then an anchored text to the deep-link product page we're promoting and perhaps another one in the text with our company name anchored, which one would google pass the page rank or point for the link to?

My challenge here is to rank one of our deep linked product landing pages higher before being able to do the rest of the site. So I'm trying to promote that deep page. SO I'd like for the PR to pass to the deep link instead of my homepage.... .that's why I was questioning potential positioning of the links. or does it not matter at all?

Firstly, it would be better to link with anchor text rather than company name (unless your comany name was "blue widgets" and your wanting to rank for blue widgets).

Positioning of links, passing PR, my advice would be forget it. Article sites have minimal PR being passed from the page with the article on. Concentrate on gaining links with variations of the anchor text you are targetting- this in the long term will be more benneficial than looking at PR. You seem to think that pages with higher PR will have more ranking influence- this is simply not tue. My advice would be think like a search engine- seek out linking opportunities from relevant pages, with your targetted keywords as anchor text. This will promote relevancy of your webpages which will be rewarded in the serp's with higher positioning.

I have just backlink checked a website for a top keyword in my industry and he has page 2 by submitting to about 900 article directories, this is out of his 1000 links.

So it looks like you can rank well with just directories

Maybe for now... but if Google were to devalue directory links? Or your competiton has a better linking strategy?

Is this not the case with all linking strategys, if google decides to devalue any form of link building then a site will suffer.

So at the momment you are saying article submission is okay but maybe not for the future?

That's what I meant, Jon. A lot of people have told me that Google doesn't value PR quite as much anymore, that's why they update it only once every 6 months or so. I was wondering if Google will consider more than 1 link to my website as something to consider.

Since they accept only 1 link from each article or post. Now, does that mean that if I have a total of 3000 backlinks, but they are from 1000 articles with 3 links in them, that it'd recognize me as having only 1000 links, or does it actually recognize all 3000, and rank me higher than someone with 2000 unique links?

It is not that easy. It is not all about the quantity, but the quality of the links.
200 good, relevant links will contribute more than 400 low totally unrelevant links...

And I think Google will not recognize it as 3000 links, and not as 1000, but somewhere in between. This also depends on the variety in the anchor text and the place in de article.

Btw, the same number of links, assuming that other factors like relevance etc are equal, will hold more value when they are unique links from different websites.

Right. That's what I was wondering about. If I had 3000 links from 1000 websites (articles). If it's not cut and dry, then i'll just go ahead with trying to get as many of these links even from the same website. Nothing to lose, right.

Thats not what i said.......




i.e.. you have an article with three links pointing to your page, all with the same anchor, then (maybe) only one of them will contribute to your sites ranking for that anchor text keyword.

SO if I get 10 links with varying anchor texts from an article in a different website, I get ranked for those 10 keywords?

Im not sure if your asking a) 10 varying anchor text links from one web page, or b) 10 varying anchor texts from 10 unique web pages.

a) You will not neccasarily "rank" for those keywords because of one link. and 2, if the links are to the same page then some may be "discounted".

b) You will not neccasarily "rank" for those keywords because of one link. But yes, they will hold ranking influence given that the links from that page carry weight. ie- do follow, page is indexed, etc etc

My question was for option (a). And what I was trying to find out was how can I determine which ones give me rank, and which ones get discounted.

not true, pr is always updating, the pr you see on your toolbar is updated less frequently



jon has explained that its not that simple. your question refers to 'rank' and 'anchor text'. i think you are confused about how the two are used to help a site to rank in the search engines.

Pagerank, (see my previous comment about pagerank and toolbar pagerank not being equal), theme relevancy and anchor text are all related but are also all individual factors in determining the value of a link.

so, are you asking because you are interested in increasing your pagerank or are you interested in increasing the rank in search engines for terms and their variations?

building links for pagerank alone does not get you ranks in the search engines and only the first (or ONE of those links) will pass pagerank 'juice'

however, imo, using more than one link on a page within the body of the text using varying anchor text links will pass 'relevancy juice' (if you like). this is actually a highly debated issue and i can understand your confusion

That is my source of major confusion. I now understand your point about relevancy with more than one link from the same page. I can't say I want to do one or the other. I'd like to get PR and rank higher at the same time. Let me try and de-confuse myself here.

1. If I have more than 1 link from a site pointing to mine, do I get juice for every link? Which you guys have answered. Thank you for that

2. If all those links pointing to me have varying anchor texts, do I get ranked for all of those keywords? If not, how does G! select them?

ok, it will *count* towards your ranks for those terms

actually ranking highly involves getting more quality links from relevant themed sites, directories, etc as well as having those terms and variations also mentioned throughout your site

I bottle the answer to this question. If interested pm me for a paypal link, bottles average at 1 million dollars *stroking cat*

Great! Thanks guys. I will make an effort to only link from relevant sites.


Wow... let me go sell my comic book and stamp collections right now.

if you want jons services i hope your comic book collection is valuable

Wow! Last I saw a few years ago, it as valued at 238k. I need to rob someone! Any accomplices?

hey hey calm down...you got a 1979 second class?

lol jon. That was either uber-geek or uber-tech. What is it?

its was either uber uber uber geek, or uber uber uber sarcastic... you decide ;)

Heh.. and just like that I get killed :-)

i think he is just making it up as he goes along

btw yaj when i see your avatar from my peripheral vision it looks like the big lips from rocky horry picture show

awwww... wasnt being orrible Yaj.... just teasing you.



oh yh? the power of word manipulation! lol

i know, jon. i'm gonna have to come up with some snappy comeback that don't mean anything either

So.... looking at me from the corner of your eye, eh. Creepy, but never realized to you brought it up. From the basement of office space to the rocky horror show. Looks like my life is going to be a big movie parody.

Maybe I should blog about that ;p