Does links on the same page have equal importance on Google?

Every blog has links al over the page, We have links in the content, we have links on the sidebar, we have navigation links, footer links…all that. So does Google see all these links the same way with equal weightage or differently ? That’s the question.

Well, technically its easy for us to get it wrong. Normally webmasters and SEOs see links based on PageRank and traffic on a site. Almost every link exchange request I get request me text links on the sidebar or above the fold, with the typical “contextual link with a few lines of text”.

I’d like to clarify that “a few lines of text” is not actually being contextual. You bought single keyword text links – Google found it – screwed your page rank. And now, you’re repeating it. Not good.

In my humble opinion, “Contextual links” are the ones that are present in the textual content, in the real copy or the article. Both you and me can easily find out what’s contextual and what not. And Google bots are equally intelligent.

So just adding a few lines of text before and after your “bought link” doesn’t make it contextual.

Coming back to the topic, does all the links placed at different places on the same page, have equal importance ? As you might have already figured out, No.

Links at the footer, or the header, are probably navigational links or copyright/TOS links, as the majority of websites uses it that way. And Google bots know this.

They’d like to give more importance to links that appear in the content/article. So footer links / sidebar links are likely to get less importance by Google whereas in-the-content links would be considered more important.

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