Andy Beard - Internet Business Systems Discussion - Latest Comments in First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

Chris — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 07:39:57 -0000

Nice Findings there!!! But other videos on stompernet are good and very informative.

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

Mark — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:54:58 -0000

good work on the Stompernet video. more power on SEO :)

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

Vitaly — Sat, 30 May 2009 23:14:06 -0000

That Stompernet video does a great job of giving some basics on how to test and (as they intended) makes clear that for most of us it's not worth our time. As they point out as well one question in your testing is, is the result "useful." Most of the pagerank sculpting and other internal nofollow tricks strike me as dancing for today and may very well wind up being a big hassle to change yet again in the future.

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

AndyBeard — Sat, 30 May 2009 10:49:05 -0000

Well it looks lie you nofollowed the link with useful anchor text, and let the "home" link which appears first without a nofollow - totally illogical

In addition this isn't a useful test as there are too many external and factors.

Adding the link with a nofollow in this comment so people can see, but it is really bad SEO practice.

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

lexington law review — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:02:52 -0000

We actually just tested this by nofollowing our "home" link and then linking to the home page with our #1 keyword phrase. We moved up 7 spots in google from this.

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

Kingpin — Fri, 29 May 2009 11:28:28 -0000

After just going through the 10 or so hours of Stomping the Search Engines 2.0, I've been desperately searching for more info on the first link priority theory, but its limited obviously. There are some interesting points brought up in the post.. which has left me more undecided in which direction to take :/

Thanks for the the Dan Ties video, hadn't come seen that one yet.

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

Business Search -Guy — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:49:17 -0000

I have noticed that Google does follow some rel=”nofollow” tags and follows, and even in some cases indexed the nofollow pages, So why not nofollow links. I don’t know if the same alt text in images on the same page drops the second image link or not but I always put unique alt text on every image link anyway, always have. I also not waste my time on nofollow comments for link building and only comment on a blog with nofollow if I have an interest in the post and I have something to say about it. It’s a waist of time to comment just to build links anyway. If you like a post and it’s a dofollow blog and you add a comment and a URL all the better.

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

Robert Enriquez — Thu, 28 May 2009 10:26:07 -0000

just another idea or article about it

I had a hard time understanding this

"As the tests I have seen used unique to the web anchor text, based upon what Halfdeck is saying, that is why the anchor text for the nofollowed links were used, and the second followed links were ignored for the anchor text.

Thus in theory, as a "Home" link is common as anchor text, if you nofollow it, Google will ignore it… totally."

First statement states that even if you nofollow the Home link they are still used.
2nd statement states if you nofollow the Home link that Google will ignore it totally.

This is good info to know if Google uses the first link/anchortext combination they find whether it's nofollow or not. My article was about Google ignoring it because it's nofollow.

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

hichamd (hicham damahi) — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:55:06 -0000

First link Priority? http://andybeard.eu/1775/fi...

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

AndyBeard — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:11:14 -0000

Though what you wrote in many ways contradict this totally.

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

Robert Enriquez — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:12:40 -0000

Nofollowing the 'Home' Link was also written about at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/...

I'll checkout Stomper's video. Great post :)

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

AndyBeard — Mon, 25 May 2009 11:34:08 -0000

I linked to Rand from the previous post on First Link Priority - I should make them into a more obvious series.
http://andybeard.eu/1605/wo...

I did test the basic theory of all of this last year, but I always had a unique anchor text in the first link.

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

Niche — Mon, 25 May 2009 10:13:17 -0000

Just some clarification on the first link thing. If I find some really obscure keyword phrase that has never before been used as an anchor link and use it to my benefits, what is the benefit of this. If the term is so obscure as an anchor link, what are the chances that ranking for this in the search engines getting a ton of searches

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

Brett Pringle — Mon, 25 May 2009 05:55:07 -0000

Hey Andy,

I recall Rand also doing a similar experient awhile back, regarding which anchor text link counts, also referred to the anchor text link counted, while the 2nd duplicate is ignored. I've only seen a handfull of websites that use CSS effectively to keep navigation in the code below content (heck, still amazed that some designers still use inline styling still today)

With your point on the nofollowing of links, sure Google crawls and indexes, but would nofollowing not simply also mean for them not to count the "vote"? while still indexing the page/content, which would result in "unique" anchor text appearing for those unique searches?

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

Synergy Space — Mon, 25 May 2009 00:27:41 -0000

I've had several pages on my site indexed that were only linked to with nofollow, I thought that pages needed a certain amount of PR to get indexed? In any case I'd be happy if the first link priority theory was proved wrong, then I don't have to figure out how to fix it.

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

Jeet — Sun, 24 May 2009 22:54:38 -0000

@Andy: Great discussion. Wasn't the 'unique anchor text' / 'single result for a query' called google whacking?

Does that mean I can simply prefix 'random adjectives' on my anchor text to ensure link juice is passed? I should test this out with one of my domains.

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

benomo (Benomo Blog Reader) — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:55:52 -0000

@avivancos On Delicious/tag/s: Testing SEO Ranking Factors... http://tinyurl.com/qcwl9x

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

Writers-$1000/Daily — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:27:42 -0000

I have to agree with the whole SEO business. SEO is fickle, and while one thing might work for others, it may not work for another website. All i know is the more backlinks you get from a high page rank dofollow source, the more your website will rank in a certain amount of time. Now, Google has starting banning sites who gain backlinks to quickly. They have also banned other websites for helping contribute to the spammnig problem like Squidoo and Go articles.

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

Michael VanDeMar — Sun, 24 May 2009 17:29:24 -0000

I did not get in a flame war :P

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

neyne — Sun, 24 May 2009 07:37:24 -0000

Hi Andy,

Actually in my"Second link doesn't count -rebunked" article you linked to the other day, I did the whole "nofollow" scenario. The first link was nofollowed and it had a rather rare anchor text and the site that the link targeted was still ranked for that keyphrase, while the second link didn't count.

Send me a mail and I will be glad to discuss details with you

Branko

Re: First Link Priority – Is Stompernet Wrong?

mignews (MIGNEWS) — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:47:29 -0000

First Link Priority - Is Stompernet Wrong?: Don't just take the word of your favorite SEO blogger, learn to test.. http://tinyurl.com/qcwl9x