Category links in both header and sidebar

[onlinesource]

I been studying other websites such as Zappos and notice that they have links to their category pages in BOTH the header and sidebar.

I was told before that multiple links to the same urls on the same page is bad for SEO. Others have debunked that.

Others say that Google only cares about the first instance of that url so in other words, so crawling a page's code from top to bottom, the header urls would hold more value than the sidebar urls, correct?

I'm wondering if I should not care and just let my site be or if I should change the url title to make each link unique. In other words, let's say the url in the header is going to /shop-widgets.html and that link is labeled WIDGETS but the sidebar url going to the same /shop-widgets.html url is labeled SHOP WIDGETS instead. Does adding SHOP to the title make it a unique link or does Google simply see two urls pointing to /shop-widgets.html?

Not sure the best way to handle this?

[goodroi]

When visiting a big website like Zappos or Amazon, it is usually wise to remember that your site is unlikely in the same position. What works for other sites might not be the best plan to follow especially if you are a smaller website with very few links & visitors.

Sometimes bigger sites are not doing the best SEO because they are juggling the demands of usability, SEO, corporate preferences and a bunch of other stuff that is then run through multiple committees.