SEOers in recent years have debated to what degree does first link priority exist. While you’re on your own to decide that for yourself, you should at least get a better understanding of what is first link priority and the concept behind it.
What is First Link Priority
First link priority refers the idea that although two or more links may exist on one page which all link to the same second page, search engines will only give link juice to the first link which they come across on the page, ignoring the rest.
You may think that this isn’t a big deal, that is until you remember that not all on page links are created equally. Say for example that on Page A you have an image at the top of the page which links to Page B. You ALSO have a hyperlink with your keyword as the anchor text on Page A linking to Page B.
The image will not supply nearly as much valuable link juice as far as Google is concerned as the hyperlink would. This is because the hyperlink tells Google exactly what that linked to page is about and is that much more valuable. Even using your keyword as the Alt Text for that image wouldn’t provide the same effect. So Google sees the first image link and gives it the link juice. It sees the second textual link, recognizes that it is pointing to the same page as the image, and Google ignores it.
The most common first link priority issue which you might have is when you want to link to another page on your site using anchor text but you already have an image above your anchor text pointing to the same page. By the rule of first link priority, search engines would ignore the more preferable anchor text link in favor of the image which came first on the page.
If this ever happens, a simple solution is to rearrange your page to allow for the text link to appear before or in place of the image link which again is worth less.