Originally Posted by johny_d

Of course the links are inportant for ones site, but more important than them is the UNIQUE content of your pages; if you know the basics about SEO, you must know that; also, it's a well known thing that search engines give more importance to the information at the beginning of the code and less importance as the code goes to bottom;
so, in your oppinion: if you have 10.000 pages of articles on your site and all off your pages have the first 500 rows of code almost identical and only the rest different is better than having all those pages different and filled with interesting content close to the first lines of code and than the repeating links?
It is true that search engines will only parse a limitted amount of links on each page (arround 100), but who says that those links have to be on top of page to be paresd???

devesh9392 - a good way to see how search engines "see" you page is to remove the CSS formating and see how your pages look without it. The search engines don't mind the visual layout of your page but they really mind the "layout" of the content behind your page.
Also, remember that search engines try to bring in front those pages that are more likely to be liked buy your potential site visitors. What this means? this means that, after removing the CSS formating of your pages, look at them as you would be a visitor to your site; without the page formating, you are left with only the links (navigation) and the main content of the page (article, post etc.); now, you, as a visitor navigating your site, what would prefer: on each page to see the same 100 links in the beginning and have to scroll down in order to read what's interesting or the vice versa? on each page, first you find the content that brought you to that page and than, after you have read that and decided you want to see more pages, to find the links to other pages?
Think about it! Search engines like to "see" content first and, if they "think" the content is good, give importance to the links from that page to anonther and so on... They like to see your site like a common visitor to your site would like to see it.
Remember, unique content, close to the beginning of the code;
and, if you don't believe me, try to search on google about SEO, unique content and best content placement on page; you will find thousands of forums and blogs that support what I said

Search engines don't see code as duplicate content. They see content as duplicate content. Newbies don't understand that search engines don't rank code. It's the content that matters. Also, every site has a ton of duplicate content on it. It's called the site layout.

if you have 10.000 pages of articles on your site and all off your pages have the first 500 rows of code almost identical and only the rest different is better than having all those pages different and filled with interesting content close to the first lines of code and than the repeating links?

stymiee, if you weren't so full of what you know and so convinced that everybody else is a newbie, you would understand that I wasn't talking about the code of page as the "html tags" but rather about the full text version of the page (tags stripped), which is what search engines see, as opposed to the visual version of the page.