Drop down menu
-
Does the first anchor text link rule ( the first link is given weight ) applies to links in the body of the content only.
If there are links in the drop down menu, and in the body of the content, does the above rule applies to links in the drop down menu.
-
Whichever link occurs first in the coding, so if the first occurrence is in the menu, yes - that's the generally held belief - though some have demonstrated ways to get around it (I don't have links, sorry).
In general links within body content are given higher value than links elsewhere, so that's why some SEOs have tried to get around this 'first anchor text link rule'. Google (and other search engines, probably) can recognise the difference between menu's, sidebars, footers etc. and main body content - it's something they're getting better at all the time so I wouldn't be surprised if this changed. But then again it could be easier for people to game so perhaps it won't.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Organic search traffic has dropped by 35% since 18 September, we don't know why.
Organic traffic to our website has dropped 35% since 18 September 2017 to date. From 1 January to 18 September 2017 organic traffic was up by just under 1% over all (Google up by 1.32%). Paid search traffic over the same time has remained steady. There is nothing we can think of that we've done that has caused the drop. We had an issue with Google page speed test failing when running a test but we resolved this issue on 20 November and in that time we've seen an even greater drop (44% in the last week). The drop is seen across the 3 main search engines, not just Google, which points toward something we've done, but as mentioned, we can't think of any significant change we made in September that would have such negative effects. There is little difference across devices. Is anyone aware of a significant event in September in the search engine world that may have influenced our organic traffic? Any help gratefully received.
Technical SEO | | imaterus0 -
My PA and DA dropped Higest Rate
hi i got a domain with 49 DA and 36 PA and bought it through namecheap after uploading on their server with https:// after 5 days the site lost its PA and DA now it was 1 PA and 9 DA Could any one tell me what the issue behind this the links is fair and not spam but why the dropping of cause for???
Technical SEO | | gamajunova0 -
Our rankings for "Tree Service" dropped last month
Hi, we've had a page www.savatree.com/tree-service.html which was ranking top 1-12 on the google rankings but has complete dropped out. We don't have any duplicate errors from that page on here. Do you have any suggestions? We do rank highly on Bing and Yahoo (1-2 pages). We can't figure whats going on.
Technical SEO | | SavATree0 -
Massive drop off in Google crawl stats
Hi Could i get a second opinion on the following please. ON a client site we seem to have had a massive drop off in google crawling in the past few weeks, this is linked with a drop in search impressions and a slight reduction in penalty. There are no warning messages in WMT to say the site is in trouble, and it shouldn't be, however cannot get to the bottom of what is going on. In Feb the Kilobytes downloaded per day was between 2200 and about 3800, all good there. However in the past couple of weeks it has peaked at 62 and most days are not even over 3! Something odd has taken place. For the same period, the Pages crawled per day has gone from 50 - 100 down to under 3. At the same time the site speed hasn't changed - it is slow and has always been slow (have advised the client to change this but you know how it is....) Unfortunately I am unable to give the site url out so i understand that may impact on any advice people could offer. Ive attached some screen shots from WMT below. Many thanks for any assistance. stats.png
Technical SEO | | daedriccarl0 -
Google dropping pages from SERPs even though indexed and cached. (Shift over to https suspected.)
Anybody know why pages that have previously been indexed - and that are still present in Google's cache - are now not appearing in Google SERPs? All the usual suspects - noindex, robots, duplication filter, 301s - have been ruled out. We shifted our site over from http to https last week and it appears to have started then, although we have also been playing around with our navigation structure a bit too. Here are a few examples... Example 1: Live URL: https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149002-memory-drawings-there-is-no-perfect-place Cached copy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149002-memory-drawings-there-is-no-perfect-place SERP (1): https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=memory+drawings+there+is+no+perfect+place SERP (2): https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=memory+drawings+there+is+no+perfect+place+site%3Awww.normanrecords.com Example 2: SERP: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=deaf+center+recount+site%3Awww.normanrecords.com Live URL: https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149001-deaf-center-recount- Cached copy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149001-deaf-center-recount- These are pages that have been linked to from our homepage (Moz PA of 68) prominently for days, are present and correct in our sitemap (https://www.normanrecords.com/catalogue_sitemap.xml), have unique content, have decent on-page optimisation, etc. etc. We moved over to https on 11 Aug. There were some initial wobbles (e.g. 301s from normanrecords.com to www.normanrecords.com got caught up in a nasty loop due to the conflicting 301 from http to https) but these were quickly sorted (i.e. spotted and resolved within minutes). There have been some other changes made to the structure of the site (e.g. a reduction in the navigation options) but nothing I know of that would cause pages to drop like this. For the first example (Memory Drawings) we were ranking on the first page right up until this morning and have been receiving Google traffic for it ever since it was added to the site on 4 Aug. Any help very much appreciated! At the very end of my tether / understanding here... Cheers, Nathon
Technical SEO | | nathonraine0 -
My Website Ranking is terribly drop
So sorry I really need your all help 😞 I'm really frustrated and stressed. For my website http://www.cma-academy.edu.sg , it has been ranking on Google 1st page (with the keywords "design course/design courses") for the past over 6 months and the traffic was really good... But it has been almost 2 months since the big drop... my ranking all is gone in just a week and now it's even not on the top 50.. While my competitors websites are stand stil. 😞 I seriously really want to cry because of this.. And I'm sure there is nothing much wrong with my SEO to be abandoned by Google like this and Google still index my webpage, but the crawling rate is so much slow than before.. I really need some help from the expert, especially from seomoz.. Please help me in this, I'm willing to answer any questions as well...
Technical SEO | | AngieDang0 -
Panda and unnatural links caused ranking drop
Hi I have been approached to do some SEO work for a site that has been hit badly by the latest panda update 3.3, they have also had a warning in their Google webmaster tools account saying they had unnatural looking links to their site, they received this in 26 Feb and that prompted them to stop working with their excising seo company and look for a new one. Apparently their rankings for the keywords they were targeting have dropped dramatically, but it looks like just those they were actively building back links for, other phrases do not look affected. Before I take them on I want to be clear that it is possible to help them reclaim their rankings? I have checked the site and the on-page seo is good, the site build is good, just a few errors to fix but the links that have been built by the seo company are low quality with a lot of spun articles and the same anchor text so I see what the Google webmaster tools message is refuring to. I do not think these links can be removed as there is no contact details on the sites I checked I have not checked all of them but a random sample does not show promise, they are from low authority domains. So if I am to take them on as a client and help them to regain their previous rankings what is the best strategy? Obviously they want results yesterday and from our phone call they would rather someone else did the work than them, so my initial response of add some better quality content that others in your industry would link to as a reference did not go down well, to be fair I think it is a time issue there are only 3 people in the company and they are not technical at all. Thanks for your help Sean
Technical SEO | | ske110 -
Google Indexed URLs for Terms Have Changed Causing Huge SERP Drop
We haven't made any significant changes to our website, however the pages that google has indexed for our critical keywords have changed to pages that have caused our SERP to drop dramatically for those pages. In some cases, the changes make no sense at all. For example, one of our terms that used to be indexed to our homepage is now indexed to a dead category page that has nothing on it. One of our biggest terms, where we were 9th, changed and is now indexed to our FAQ. As a result, we now rank 44th. This is having a MAJOR impact on our business so any help on why this sudden change happened and what we can do to combat it is greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | EvergladesDirect0