How do links affect other pages on the domain?

[myrrh]

In all the linking discussion I've read, I've never heard this discussed.

If an inbound link links to the home page, what effect does that have on the ranking of the other pages on that site? Do all pages on that site get an equal boost?

Also, if a home page leads to a "red widgets" page, a "green widgets" page, and a "blue widgets" page (with each of those leading to a group of sub-pages), will an inbound link to the "red widgets" landing page have any effect on the "blue widgets" sub-pages (I guess one may call this "lateral effect")?

[MrFishGuy]

It doesn't directly affect the sub-pages. If enough pages link to the main page to raise it's pagerank, then the main page's pagerank is trickled down to all the other pages the main page is linked to.

The sub-pages get benefit, but not the same as if they were linked to directly.

[Keep]

I've got a guys web site with the URL of my site on his index page, but the acual link to my site like 3-4 pages in.

Dudes got some info about my site on his page to..more like key words realy and his site has nothin ta do about soccer BAHHHH!

Now when you do a search for the key words that I need you get his site and mines nowhere to be found.

BAHHHHH!

[Robert Charlton]

Hi Keep - Welcome to WebmasterWorld.

Now when you do a search for the key words that I need you get his site and mines nowhere to be found.

Either you're not getting good inbounds to your site, and/or else your site may be new. On Google, a new site can take 6-9 months, or longer, to rank. How well you do for your own site name can depend on how unique a name it is.

About the original question of inbound link credits helping pages removed from home, there have been discussions from time to time of links "grandfathering" down... ie, that the anchor text to your home page might boost the ranking on a page one level down from home. I've imagined from time to time that I've seen this myself, but it's really hard to pin down anything this subtle. These days, with the delays in application of link credit, and the great many factors that go into a ranking, it can hard to observe the boost of a specific link just on home page itself.

[topsites]

Personally, I link my pages for the benefit of my visitors and I let the engines worry about the rest on their own. After all, it is up to the search engines to provide me the traffic for that is their job, my job is to provide a site built for my visitors.

Anything beyond this may be considered influencing the results (Translation: spamming).
One thing I learned over and over is let it happen, just let the engines do their thing ... Yes it IS possible to get a little more traffic but at the same rate my time is as well spent worrying about the site as far as the visitor is concerned, adding content and fixing code, this results in better retention which over time, is far more rewarding than a few extra (and possibly undeserved) clicks.

Worst-case scenario, go too far in the influencing quest and find yourself all over the results pages ... This is what happens when one day you conduct a search and suddenly this one domain occupies several spots on the first page, sometimes for just about every single search you conduct ... These results will get a flurry of initial traffic but people are not stupid, once they figure out the spam is not what they were looking for, they will leave at once and they will not return, pointedly ignoring those result(s) in the future.

I speak from experience, both as webmaster AND surfer.