Do contextual links hold more weight?

[Bondara]

Hi,

Say you have an article, does a link in the content itself hold more weight then including it in say the byline?

I have read so many times a link higher up the page, contextual has much more benefit than a link way below the fold separated from the main content within a byline.

Thoughts?

[AdamThompson]

I suspect that at least one of these statements is true to some extent:

• Contextual/in-content links have a little more weight than byline links
• Contextual/in-content links have more contextual relevance than byline links
• Contextual/in-content links are slightly less likely to be penalized or filtered than byline links

I can't prove my suspicions, and I'm not suggesting that byline links are all bad (far from it), but we know for a fact that Google takes "location on the page" in consideration now when calculating PageRank. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0fgh5RIHdE

[sprynewmedia]

Ironically, I still have this resource in my CnP memory - this should help you understand link values better:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links

To answer more directly: probably yes given my assumptions of the placement and coding of the byline.