Links in body text

[CsmBill]

From a purely SEO /link juice perspective, is there any benefit to linking from body text to a page that is in a pervasive primary navigation?  The primary nav puts a link at the top of the HTML. With the tests done by members of this site, the "first link counts" rule negates the link juice value of a link in the body text if there is already a link in the nav.

Now I've also seen the data on using hash tags to get a second or third link, but ignoring that, it would seem that links in the body text to pages in the nav have zero effect.

This brings me to another question - block level navigation. If anchor text links pass more juice than links in the top navigation, why would you put your most coveted target pages in the top nav? You would be better off building links in the content, which would create a poor user experience. To me, the theory that anchor text links in the body pass more juice than links in the primary nav doesn't make any sense.

Can someone please explain this to me?

[Matthew_Edgar]

Hi Rahul,

I'll be curious to hear what others think about this. My reaction is that there is zero benefit to looking exclusively at a link on your site from an SEO/link-juice perspective. Taking that approach is going to get you into trouble.

The reason I say that is any link that falls in the category of "I have this link for SEO purposes!" and any tricks used to make links unique (like using hash tags or query strings) for link juice purposes, will probably be ignored or penalized by Google. If it isn't ignored or penalized today, chances are it will be in the future as Google moves more in the direction of quality-related metrics. Any link that is not put in specifically for great UX really isn't worth having from any perspective, including link-juice/SEO perspectives.

In regards to your other question, you would put your primary links in the top navigation and the body text because that is what users expect. If all of my users want to see my "Cool New Widgets" page, then I better have that link in the navigation. I probably should have that in the body of the page as well and maybe even in the footer. Will all those locations pass link juice? Probably not. But what is my main concern? Getting link juice or getting customers to the right page? I'll err on the side of getting customers to my page and having less than perfect link juice optimization because, in general, that is going to have bigger SEO wins.

So, that is my two cents anyway. I'll be curious to see other replies about this question.
Matthew