One SEO professional asked John Mueller during the submitted Question and Answer segment about links in different sections of a page.
More specifically, the SEO pro mentioned that John recently reiterated the importance of internal linking to signal to Google how important specific content on a site is. They want to know: are links within certain sections of a site treated differently?
For example: if a page is linked within a header or footer, and therefore included on every page of a site, does Google view these links differently than links within the body of the page?
John answered that they don’t really differentiate there. If things are linked in the footer of the page, and they are linked from across the whole website, then from Google’s point of view, you have those links from across your whole website.
It’s not the case that Google would say “Oh, links in the footer have less weight, or they are not as useful, so we will go ahead and ignore them,” or anything like that.
From that perspective, when it comes to links, Google just sees them as links on a page.
It is slightly different when it comes to text in there, though, in that Google does try to understand what the primary content on the page actually is.
When it comes to actually ranking the page, Google will focus primarily on the actual primary content of the page.
Links, from Google’s perspective, just help them to get a better understanding of the site structure.
Whether they are in the header or the footer, or the sidebar, or the main content, this really doesn’t change all that much for Google.
This happens at approximately the 45:11 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John Mueller (Submitted Question) 45:11
Let’s see: you recently reiterated the importance of internal linking to signal to Google how important specific content on a site is. I want to know, are links within certain sections of a site looked at differently? For example, if a page is linked within a header or footer, and therefore included on every page of a site, does Google view those links differently than links within the body of the page?
John (Answer) 45:34
We don’t really differentiate there. So if like, things are linked in your footer of the page, and they’re linked from across the whole website, then from our point of view, you have those links from across your whole website.
It’s not the case that we would say, oh, like links in a footer have less weight, or are not as useful, we will ignore them or anything like that. So from that point of view, when it comes to links, we essentially just see them as links on a page. It’s slightly different when it comes to text in there, in that we try to understand what the primary content is of the page.
And when it comes to ranking relative to the other content on your website, we’ll try to focus on the primary content section of the page. But links from our point of view just help us to better understand the site structure. And whether they’re in the header or the footer, or the sidebar, or the main content, that doesn’t really change anything for us.
