SEO of Home Page Return Links

[Andy]

For visitors it helps if you have a HOME PAGE link from inner pages. But if you include the text "Home Page" in the anchor text it is not a keyword.

The way I (think I) get around this is to link back to my home page with my main keyword in the footer of my template. But shock horror, I came across a tip that the 1st link to a URL that is found on a site is evaluated for keyword relevancy which makes sense for high speed evaluation of a web page by a SE algorithm and the others may be ignored.

But, using the nofollow attribute on the "Home Page" link may cure this problem. Possibly, but with a long page, the footer link may be too far down the code.

In the nav bar you have:

Code:

<a href="/" rel="nofollow">Home</a>

And in the footer you have:

Code:

© 2009 <a href="http://www.keyword.com">Keyword</a>

It seems like some creative SEO template design is called for here.

Of course this is an attempt to help the SE's understand your topic better and not get confused by finding "home" in the anchor text and maybe think your site is about Real Estate.

This kind of stuff needs to be tested but who has time for so many tests? About.com maybe?

What do you do/think about this?

[jbladeus]

Interesting.
How about "following" both the links so that the SE can know that its both the home page of your website and your primary keyword?

[Andy]

How about "following" both the links so that the SE can know that its both the home page of your website and your primary keyword?

I think the word "home" will be treated as an irrelevant keyword. Plus, your web root is the home page and the search engine knows this (that's why we try and avoid linking to the actual home page file). And, I think the spider may only follow a link once for efficiency reasons, so ignoring subsequent links to the same destination.

[bosmolskate]

That is a very good point.  If anyone knows if the SE alogrithm only looks at the first link that would be great.  then we would know that we need to fix this problem asap

[rachelbles]

If many sites are using these the word home as keyword, you'll probably have lots of competitors and you might not get to your desired ranking.

[MarcusWrite]

I think it is always better to have keywords in URL than having- "HOME" up there.
I am reading about splitting of signals does your question relate to that too ?