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Granted, this correction probably doesn't matter, but for posterity: *there's no distinction (in the video) between if it's the first followed link or no follow."

Hi Sebes, Good question. There's a lot of outdated information around the "only the first anchor text" count rules. In general, this is to believed true for text links. A couple years back a smart SEO specifically tested if the rule holds true when the first link is an image alt, and he found that the rule did not apply to images when the image was the first link. Unfortunately, this was quite awhile ago and I can no longer find the research. To my knowledge, it's high time for another experiment in this area, so I wouldn't say for certain whether this rule is true today or not. What I can say is that anchor text sculpting using the technique you described probably doesn't help much. In fact, by making the image link followed, you have the opportunity to vary your anchor text to your target page (if indeed Google does count both anchors when the first is an image). Like I said, we need more experimentation. But I would wager your clients traffic and rankings will not drop if they make those links followed. Keep us posted!

nofollow is a value assigned to an <a>element so assigning it to</a> <a>is incorrect.</a> <a></a> <a>You can read more here: </a>http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-nofollow

Hey Erica, thanks for your answer. What I need is a way to decide on-the-fly whether two pages are similar or not. If they are too similar I need to depublish or at least rel canonical one of those. Best solution would be an API that takes 2 pages, but it seems as if I have to build it myself then. Thanks for your efforts.

Cloaking is defined by Google as "presenting different content to users and search engines". I recall Matt Cutts offering a geo-targeting example to further explain this issue. It's ok to show users in Canada some content, and then users from the US different content. It is not ok (i.e. would be considered cloaking) to set it up to always show Google bot the US version. Google wants you to treat their bot as a normal user and not make any special changes for them. In your case, you are specifically showing Google bot something different then regular users, so yes it is considered cloaking. The two points to make in the case you brought up are: you are not altering "content", you are altering meta tags which the users do not see anyway and do not impact the user experience there is no malicious intent. You are not doing this to deceive users or Google. In short, yes it meets the definition of cloaking. Google specifically says offering "different" content represents cloaking. Even though you are showing "more" content, that would be a difference. If you didn't show users an H1 tagged title at the top of your page, but you showed it to Google, that would be an example where you are showing more to Google and would definitely be cloaking. My biggest concern would be Google's automated system detecting it as cloaking then removing your pages or site from the index. You would then explain your actions through the Reconsideration Request and then Google would either accept your explanation or require a change.