Does Google Still Pass Anchor Text for Multiple Links to the Same Page When Using a Hashtag? What About Indexation?
-
Both of these seem a little counter-intuitive to me so I want to make sure I'm on the same page.
I'm wondering if I need to add "#s to my internal links when the page I'm linking to is already:
a.) in the site's navigation
b.) in the sidebar
More specifically, in your experience...do the search engines only give credit to (or mostly give credit to) the anchor text used in the navigation and ignore the anchor text used in the body of the article?
I've found (in here) a couple of folks mentioning that content after a hashtagged link isn't indexed.
Just so I understand this...
a.) if I were use a hashtag at the end of a link as the first link in the body of a page, this means that the rest of the article won't be indexed?
b.) if I use a table of contents at the top of a page and link to places within the document, then only the areas of the page up to the table of contents will be indexed/crawled?
Thanks ahead of time! I really appreciate the help.
-
Howdy Spencer!
Whoa! Lot's of questions here. Let's see if we can sort this out.
There's a lot of debate around this, and for the most part most SEOs consider the use of hashes okay for user experience, but mostly minor when it comes to influencing search results.
Here's what we know. Google indexes the first anchor text in the HTML. This is not necessarily the same thing as the first anchor on the visible page, as the HTML/CSS can be arranged so that links appear above others on the page.
That said, folks have experimented and found ways to get additional anchors indexed, including the use of hash tags. That said, what we don't know is how much weight/authority these links pass. It's generally believed (and I support this) that they probably don't pass as much value to the page as previous links.
If you have a link in your navigation, and another in the text body further down in the HTML, Google will index the first anchor, but most likely not the 2nd in most circumstances. Does this mean Google doesn't pass any value through the second? There's a lot of debate about this (read the comments here:http://www.seomoz.org/blog/all-about-anchor-text-whiteboard-friday)
I find it best not to micro-manage your links and simply keep the following in mind: If you want a link to pass as much value and authority as possible, place it in the body of the page.
Certainly there's a case made for using named anchors (#). They're good for navigation and user experience, and we see search engines pick them up in search results, but the value gained by manipulating them for ranking purposes is likely negligible.
"I've found (in here) a couple of folks mentioning that content after a hashtagged link isn't indexed."
Hmm.... I've never heard of that, and it sounds fishy. Love to see any research that's been done.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google has deindexed a page it thinks is set to 'noindex', but is in fact still set to 'index'
A page on our WordPress powered website has had an error message thrown up in GSC to say it is included in the sitemap but set to 'noindex'. The page has also been removed from Google's search results. Page is https://www.onlinemortgageadvisor.co.uk/bad-credit-mortgages/how-to-get-a-mortgage-with-bad-credit/ Looking at the page code, plus using Screaming Frog and Ahrefs crawlers, the page is very clearly still set to 'index'. The SEO plugin we use has not been changed to 'noindex' the page. I have asked for it to be reindexed via GSC but I'm concerned why Google thinks this page was asked to be noindexed. Can anyone help with this one? Has anyone seen this before, been hit with this recently, got any advice...?
Technical SEO | | d.bird0 -
On our site by mistake some wrong links were entered and google crawled them. We have fixed those links. But they still show up in Not Found Errors. Should we just mark them as fixed? Or what is the best way to deal with them?
Some parameter was not sent. So the link was read as : null/city, null/country instead cityname/city
Technical SEO | | Lybrate06060 -
Google Webmaster tools Sitemap submitted vs indexed vs Index Status
I'm having an odd error I'm trying to diagnose. Our Index Status is growing and is now up to 1,115. However when I look at Sitemaps we have 763 submitted but only 134 indexed. The submitted and indexed were virtually the same around 750 until 15 days ago when the indexed dipped dramatically. Additionally when I look under HTML improvements I only find 3 duplicate pages, and I ran screaming frog on the site and got similar results, low duplicates. Our actual content should be around 950 pages counting all the category pages. What's going on here?
Technical SEO | | K-WINTER0 -
Changing your Anchor Text in 2014
Hello I have a series of question, There was a directory listing we submitted to and got approved. However we got 6 Links total with the same Anchor Text 3 from www and 3 from non www, which is also the Title of our Brand Name. However this is causing an unnatural link. 1. Does Changing the Anchor Text Bad? Does Google have a new way of detecting anchor text changes.
Technical SEO | | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT
2. Can I change the Title/Anchor to something more generic, so that the anchor text profile is more natural.
3. Since this is a Directory is http://obln.org/ - Does anybody know being on this directory bad?
Or should I just remove this links altogether or Disavow 5 Links and just keep one, because they have a PR5 and has trust flow, losing all the links may not be good as well for ranking. Thanks For your Insight.0 -
Pages removed from Google index?
Hi All, I had around 2,300 pages in the google index until a week ago. The index removed a load and left me with 152 submitted, 152 indexed? I have just re-submitted my sitemap and will wait to see what happens. Any idea why it has done this? I have seen a drop in my rankings since. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TomLondon0 -
How do I get google to index the right pages with the right key word?
Hello I notice that even though I have a site map google is indexing the wrong pages under the wrong key words. As a result its not as relevant and is not ranking properly.
Technical SEO | | ursalesguru0 -
Too Many On Page LInk
The analysis of my site is showing that I have a problem with too many on-page links. Most of this is due to our menu, and wanting users to be able to quickly get to the shopping category they are looking for. We end up with over 200 links in order to get the menu we want. How are other people dealing with a robust menu, but avoiding getting dinged for too many links? One of our pages in question is: http://www.milosport.com/category/2176-snowboards.aspx
Technical SEO | | dantheriver0 -
I have 15,000 pages. How do I have the Google bot crawl all the pages?
I have 15,000 pages. How do I have the Google bot crawl all the pages? My site is 7 years old. But there are only about 3,500 pages being crawled.
Technical SEO | | Ishimoto0