First Link Priority, #'s and JS buttons to avoid diluting authority

Hey everyone,

I’ve been doing some deep research on internal linking and PageRank distribution, and I wanted to get your thoughts on a strategy I'm looking to implement.

As far as I know, Google’s "First Link Priority" rule means that if you have multiple links on Page A pointing to Page B, Google will pass PageRank through all of them, but it will only process and attribute the Anchor Text of the very first link it encounters in the HTML.

Here is the thinkg: on my homepage, I have a "Go to Services" button right in the Hero section (which is great for UX/CRO but has a terrible generic anchor text). Later down the page, inside a contextual FAQ section, I have a highly optimized contextual link.

If First Link Priority is strictly applied, Google is ignoring my optimized FAQ anchor text and only associating my services page with "Go to Services", right?

To bypass this, I’m thinking about using Link Obfuscation for the conversion buttons. Essentially, turning the Hero button (and other secondary CTAs) into <span>&lt;span&gt;</span> or <span>&lt;button&gt;</span> elements with a <span>data-link</span> attribute triggered by JavaScript on click, so they remain fully functional for users but invisible as traditional <span>&lt;a&gt;</span> tags to Google's crawler.

This way, the only HTML link Google sees pointing to my services page is the highly contextual one inside the FAQ.

Am I missing something here? Does this strategy still hold up, or has Google's rendering became smart enough to bypass this type of JS obfuscation and consolidate them anyway?

Would love to hear your thoughts or if anyone has run tests on this recently!

Thanks for reading!

BTW, does Google interpret /services and /services#headache as the same?

Google will render the javascript only on a second pass (a deferred Web Rendering Service call), and so will see the unobfuscated link first. However, you're massively overthinking all this. Having 2 internal links to the same page is not going to hinder you in any way, no matter their anchors. Your time is much better spent on other activities.

s666chez said:

BTW, does Google interpret /services and /services#headache as the same?

Click to expand...

Yes its treated as the same url, because it is. The #headache anchor might be used as a jump link/sitelink in the SERPs, depending on how much Google trusts your site.

I would not worry too much about first link priority. Google is much smarter now and hiding CTA links with JS usually is not worth the effort.
Keep UX first, use clear contextual anchor text and focus on strong internal linking. Services are generally the same URL with the fragment just pointing to a section on the page.