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Determining Link Positions

Updated over a year ago

📘 This article provides information on how to determine the location of links on your pages using URL Explorer.

Overview

To effectively assess the SEO value of your page linking and efficiently address potential issues, you need to know where links are located on your pages. This is also important since search engines perceive content links as more valuable than navigation and footer links. You can easily determine your link locations in Botify's URL Explorer.

Link Position Fields

The "Link Main Position" field was added to URL Explorer to help you determine link locations starting with crawls launched after September 5, 2022. This field is based on HTML Semantic Elements, which define the type of content. This field can have the following possible values:

  • Navigation: Links are within the main <nav> element, usually the main menu.

  • Header: Links are within the <header> element, usually at the top of the page.

  • Aside: Links are outside the main content, often used for callout boxes and sidebars (<aside> element).

  • Footer: Links are within the <footer> element at the bottom of the page.

  • Content: Links are within the main body content of the page (<section> or <article> elements).

  • N/A: There is no HTML Semantic Element to identify the link location.

linkposition.jpg

If more than one link position is detected, only one value is stored in the Link Main Position field, using the following order of priority: Navigation > Header > Aside > Footer > Content.

Determining the Location of Inlinks

To determine the location of inlinks for URLs in URL Explorer:

  1. Click the Manage Columns link.
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    linkpos_managecolumns.jpg

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  2. Add the following fields from the "Inlinks (Full Link Graph)" section:

    • Internal Inlinks - Anchor Text

    • Internal Inlinks - Link Main Position

    • Source: Full URL

  3. Click the Build your table button.
    ​

    linkpos_inlinks.jpg

Determine the Location of Outlinks

To determine the location of outlinks for URLs in URL Explorer:

  1. Click the Manage Columns link.
    ​

    linkpos_managecolumns.jpg

    ​

  2. Add the following fields from the "Outlinks to Internal URLs (Full Graph)" section:

    • Internal Outlinks - Anchor Text

    • Internal Outlinks - Link Main Position

    • Destination: Full URL

  3. Click the Build your table button.

    linkpos_outlinks.jpg
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