When trying to sculpt an internal link structure, is there any point in placing text links to top level pages that are already in the main menu?

[bittristo]

Does Google recognise a link in the content if there is already a link in the menu? My understanding is that Google only counts the first link it finds.

[EGOL]

Nobody knows exactly how google counts and values links in the navigation vs links in the body content.

If I was going to place my bets, google will consider both of them and consider them separately.  Links in the navigation define the structure of your website.  Links in the body content map connections to related pages of your website.

In a recent recoding of my website,  I am reviewing the articles and making sure that I have done a good job of linking to relevant pages in every article.  Also, we changed the CSS to make those links have a stronger font to attract reader attention.  Giving readers a better opportunity to engage your site and visit multiple pages is an important thing to do.

Why?  Google values visitor engagement as much, maybe more than the internal links that appear on your page.  I personally think that engagement is more important than either internal links or external links.  I am sure that some people disagree, but that is where my work and money is placed.

[MeganSingley]

Hi bittristo! Does this response help to answer your question or are you looking for more information? If you're good to go, please mark this as answered. Thanks!

[brettmandoes]

There is value. You are indicating to Google throughout your website with every link you place that you consider Page A or Page B to be more or less valuable than the other to your users.

We know that Google places different values on backlinks based on the the placement of the link. For example a link that is in the main body content will pass along pagerank and so will a link in a footer, but the value is modified as it passes through on the assumption that a link in the footer is of different value than a link placed in content.

I'm not sure where you heard that Google only counts the first link it finds. That's incorrect, and you can read any of the older articles from Matt Cutt's blog on how pagerank works to see why.

I believe the best case for you is to create links that go to content you value highly for your business and your users, and to place these links in logical places.

[bittristo]

Thanks for the answer Brett. I guess I was going off old information and maybe confused between page rank and anchor text. Matt Cutts said: "last time he looked, which was in 2009, they only counted the anchor text from the first link." which makes me think I must have heard it quite a while ago. Source: (http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718), although the video is not working for me so I can't double check exactly what he says here.

But anyway, many thanks. Extremely useful information for me