Link Juice

[markdev]

Are all links on a page treated the same or does the order of links matter. For instance, will Google flow more juice to the links that are in the first paragraph of the story than the ones that are in the page footer?

[Tom_Cash]

I am of the understanding that text/links/images closer to the top of the page are considered more important.

I am also of the understanding that Google doesn't regard footer links as highly.

As for the "link juice" being passed to links based on their page position, I am unsure...

[piatkow]

Once people work out what Google is doing and start trying to game the algo then G will move the goal posts.

[wheel]

For instance, will Google flow more juice to the links that are in the first paragraph of the story than the ones that are in the page footer?

YOu've kind of asked two questions. You're asking on significance of page position (top/bottom) and incontent vs. footer.

For example, does a link in the first paragraph count more than a link in the second paragraph?

I'd say an incontent link makes more sense than a footer link, but worrying about first paragraph or second - that's a waste of time.

[Planet13]

I'd say an incontent link makes more sense than a footer link, but worrying about first paragraph or second - that's a waste of time.

On the other hand, I would definitely say that having a link in the first paragraph will drive more TRAFFIC than if it appears in the second paragraph.

I put a link in the second paragraph of my most popular landing page to another page. The clickthrough rate to that other page was around 15%.

When I moved it up to the first paragraph, the clickthrough rate more than doubled to 32%

I don't know why exactly this is so, but that is just what I found out from a single experiment. Your mileage may vary...

[Cruxo]

In general, contextual links in the editorial content of the text is always more valuable than sitewide links such as footer and blogroll links.

But then again you need to see it in context. A blogroll link on a major bank's website is more valuable than an editorial link from a junky blog.