I have a question regarding optimizing anchor text to the index page, primarily for internal links but this would apply to incoming links too. There's the adage that first anchor text to a link on a page is going to trump the anchor text for other links to the same page. My question is in attempt to figure out what best to do on my blog - I have a header with a graphic that links to the home page. The alt text for the image is treated as anchor text but isn't as strong as if it were a link text with that anchor text from a few sources I just looked at. As it stands, I don't link to the home page anywhere else on the site, and was contemplating putting a text link in the footer to it with the anchor text I want. Question: With respect to the 1st link anchor text rule, is linking to http://www.*domain*.com/index.html (.php/.asp/whatever) any different than linking to http://www.*domain*.com? In other words, can the 1st link anchor text rule be worked around for the index page by linking the first link to http://www.*domain*.com/index.html and the second to http://www.*domain*.com? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated as I'm starting to move up the rankings for my target phrase and want to keep the momentum going and do everything I can to improve my chances of reaching 1st page.
What I'm asking is if I were to make the first link to the home page including index.html (or in my case .php) and the second link direct to the .com, would that get around the 1st link anchor text issue (i.e. would the first link anchor text not technically count for direct to the domain?). I ask this because I see enough times SERPs containing /index.html which makes me wonder if Google treats links containing that separately from direct to the .com.
People still misunderstood what I was saying (or just not clarifying why they're saying what they are :/). Okay, if it's true that the anchor text of the first link to page XYZ of your site is the only thing that google counts in its algorithm (i.e. the anchor text of all future links on the page to page XYZ are ignored) and if it's true that image links are treated as weaker than text links, then the first link in your code should be a text link if at all possible. So all I'm asking is if Google sees linking to domain.com/index.html the same as linking to domain.com/index.html with respect to that anchor text rule - because if so then it might be worthwhile to link my header image to index.html instead so that the text link on the page to the domain gets seen as the first link to it and thus it's giving more strength. It may not seem big but it's every page of the site, so as the site grows the on-page linking SEO is that much more important - which is why I'd like to get it as right as I can now vs. later. For what it's worth, I just jumped from 120 to 53 for my target keyword phrase, so I'm happy at the moment! Not going to mess with anything while it's going up, but still would like to hear from someone that might know about this, and please not another "just link to domain" without any explanation. If you're going to say that and mean it towards what I'm asking, say "Google doesn't treat them separately" or "The first link anchor text rule is false" or "image links are not weaker than text links anyways" or something and THEN say that.