Website Redesign - Internal Menu and Linking

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I have just redesigned my website and I have been considering the internal menu and linking structure. I have been using the same model successfully now for a few years and I have not really been thinking about changing it, but recent stuff that I have read makes me think that it could be even more successful with a few changes.

Currently I have links to most of the internal pages on the website from the main menus. These are split into two distinct categories in a left column. I also have a horizontal menu with my eight main page links at the top of the page in the masthead and in the footer. This nav structure is common to all pages on the site.I assume that this is OK as it is a fairly standard layout.

Now on the home page I have lots of text that has been written to give me an opportunity to link to the internal pages using KW anchor text. Let's see if I can explain this adequately. Recently I have been reading that Google will only pass link juice from one hyperlink on any page and that it will ignore all others on this page that go to the same destination page.

In other words let's say I have a menu option GREEN WIDGETS. If I then link to my green widgets page within the page text content with a hyperlink green widget information will this pass any more link juice or does the menu link get the credit? Also if I again link to the same page within the content with different hyperlink text ... data on green widgets will this will be ignored?

Can anyone offer opinions on this?

[leadegroot]

Current theory is:
- first link on the page (by code order, not visual order) gets all the link text weight,
- but each link gets a bite of PR
assuming a lack of nofollows, etc

[aristotle]

About a week ago, Matt Cutts talked about this in a video:

[labnol.org ]

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Thanks Aristotle, I am going out now but I'll study this later.

[tedster]

Current theory is: first link on the page (by code order, not visual order) gets all the link text weight

I'm not convinced about the "code order' part anymore. Google and other major search engines have been using a visual page simulation routine to decide on segmentation. So I'd say that theory has a better chance of being accurate if two links are both in the content area, and not so much if one is in the main navigation and the other in the content.

Being in the content area of the page template is a major factor. But the main navigation is naturally a kind of run-of-site linking and its text gets weighted differently.

An added note, most testing I've seen has used external linking, and internal linking is a different beast.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

So I'd say that theory has a better chance of being accurate if two links are both in the content area

I agree. Logically I would expect Google to treat content links different from nav links but who knows?

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Having listened to what Matt Cutts says it would appear that paragraph links get more weight then nav links. Now can anyone tell me if two hyperlinks using different text to the same page will be treated separately or does either of them get ignored?

For example...

Read all about our green widgets and also have a look at our widget sizes on this page

If the two links above were to the same page would the second link be ignored even though it has different text?

[tedster]

I know of two tests that seemed to show the second anchor text being ignored. That's certainly not a lot of data to go with, however. To test the idea accurately you can't have the phrase on the target page -- but in most situations you naturally would.