How should I order my links ?

[Max84]

This post is deleted!

[Max84]

Just a link to expose the problem with anchor link: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/using-anchor-links-to-make-google-ignore-the-first-link

[Chris.Menke]

Here's a link to some more reading: First link counts

[CsmBill]

As per a Whiteboard friday on this site, you can add a #1, etc after a link and have both links count. Easy way to solve the problem.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Max,

Some good responses here. Let me add my 2 cents.

There are a few ways to get Google to index more than one anchor text on a page, but in general  worrying too much about it gives a low return on investment. I've never seen a site/page make significant gains in rankings or traffic by manipulating anchor text in this way. Any gains that are achieved are usually pretty small.

That said, I have done significant testing on this and it's clear that when the first link to a page is an image (with alt text) then Google will index both anchors. This is particularly useful on eCommerce sites with lots of product links that contain both an image and a title. The default practice is to make the image alt the same as the product title, but often this doesn't accurately describe the photo.

Like I said, I wouldn't expect a huge jump in rankings from doing so, and I wouldn't spend much effort on it, but it does give you an extra avenue of optimization if you choose to peruse it.