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External Linking help or hurt?

         

RussellC

2:23 pm on Mar 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have a couple of external links on the main page of a site will it affect the Pagerank of that page? Should I use javascript to link to the pages instead?

Thanks,
-Russell

BigDave

11:10 pm on Mar 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Google likes external links. Their crawlers NEEDS external links on sites for their system to work. Therefore I believe that they will show some favor to sites that link out. I have absolutely no proof for this belief.

Now if you are worried about PR leak from your site, just make sure that all your pages have a lot of internal linking. Every one of my pages has 18 standard navigation links. Very few of the pages have anything less than 5 other additional internal links. So if I put 2 external links on that page with 23 internal links 92% of the passed PR will go back to my internal pages and the 2 external pages will get 4% each.

The only pages that will pass a large percentage of their PR to external sources are my links pages, and I only have 4 of those out of 3000 total pages. All the links on those pages are sites that I actually want to support, so I do not see any problem with sending some PR their way.

If your internal linking is done right, there is no reason to avoid external linking.

doc_z

11:30 pm on Mar 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



BigDave

I agree.

I'm not only focussing on PR and, of course, I have external links. Also, I'm not worried about my PR, since my linking structure is build very well. I also know that external links can improve the ranking and I already said this (see msg #6).

I just want to show that external links decrease PR - nothing more. Exactly this was the question ("will it affect the Pagerank of that page?").

BigDave

12:21 am on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



doc_z,

You guys are all generally arguing the same point using different semantics. I was ignoring all that.

My post was aimed at RussellC and the question that he *should* have asked. As for the PR drain argument, as I've stated before, technically, both sides are right. And I have no desire to get into that discussion again.

businessezines

12:36 am on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have a site where every page has 18 links - all pointing internally to different pages on my site. I have two pages(my links pages) where I have placed external links from sites I have solicited reciprocal links from. My intent is to continue to add as many external links with reciprocating sites as I can (with similar sites in my industry). My question is will this structure help or hinder my site ranking? I know page rank fits somewhere in the equation, but am more concerned with my site coming up high for the keywords I've selected. Can anybody help?

[edited by: Marcia at 2:48 am (utc) on Mar. 23, 2003]
[edit reason] no URLs, please [/edit]

hbirnbaum

1:05 am on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



This debate seems to go on and on. PR decreasing based on the number of outgoing links on a page just doesn't make sense. No one would link out if PR is lost. Look at Google and Yahoo. They link to hundreds of thousands of web pages, and their PR is still 10. If there is a site that has lost PR from outgoing links, I would like to check it out. I personally run a site w/ about 4000 outgoing links (on related topics) on my links page, and my PR shot up two in the last update.

rfgdxm1

1:21 am on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



You don't understand hbirnbaum. If a ton of pages link to the home page of yahoo.com, it will be PR10. Even if the home page of yahoo.com has 1,000 links to other sites, it will still be PR10. However, if Yahoo adds 1,000 links to other sites on the home page, then all the other pages on yahoo.com will drop dramatically. PR is on a page basis, not a site basis.

hbirnbaum

1:36 am on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



So if my links page is say 3 layers deep, then I will only loose PR of the actual link page w. 1000 links? My PR on the homepage will remain the same? If that is the case, I really don't mind loosing PR on a links page if the rest of the site is still fairly balanced.

As for distributing PR: I have built quite a few reciprocal links to my home page. Should I work on building links to deep pages as well? Or is simply linking to a deep page from my homepage enough? Any detailed threads on the best way to distribute PR through a site?

BigDave

1:47 am on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



hbirnbaum,

Would it be a safe assumption that your third level page with 1000 links also links to your home page?

If so, it is passing PR back to your home page. If it has 5 links total it is senind 20% of the PR it passes to your home page. If it has 10 links it is sending 10% to the home page. If it has 100 links it sends 1% of the PR it passes back to the home page.

The more internal links you have compared to external links increases how much you "vote" for yourself. Just remember, PR is not the only thing to consider.

As I do not participate in reciprocal linking I cannot help you with any questions regarding that subject.

rfgdxm1

2:43 am on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Assuming the home page has lots of links to internal pages, the loss of PR back from the reciprocal links page is insignificant. As for getting links from others to deep pages, if this is the only way better than nothing.

steveb

6:20 am on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



"Please, next time use the word "nonsense" more carefully."

You didn't address what I wrote. Your statement is plainly nonsense as I showed. External links can lead to a great boost in domain PR.

Your circular logic doesn't make your argument make sense. As people have told you, linking off a page doesn't hurt the PR of that page. The effects on a domain are entirely different, and as I showed you having external links can be a huge benefit.

If you just want to make the trite point that if you put a link on one of your site's hundred pages to irs.gov then that won't help the PR of the other pages on your site, fine, but again that's a nothing point. Water is wet.

The answer to the original question is that external links won't effect the rank of the page they are on. Issues of domain PR and linking are more complicated and challenging, and understanding that external links can dramatically improve PR is fundamental.

Clever

7:11 am on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



@RusselC

i think links like this are even not followed:

<script language="JavaScript">document.write('<a href="http://anysite" target="_blank">');</script> anysite <script language="JavaScript">document.write('</a>');</script>

- the link looks like a standard link
- the linktext itself stays on the site and is still visible for searchengines
- the link is not followed
- no javapopupwindow
- text in statusdisplay looks like a standard link

doc_z

8:54 am on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



steveb

you missed the topic.

The question was if external links "will affect the Pagerank of that page". And in case of a 'normal' linking structure the answer is yes (as showed in detail before). Also PR of the other pages are lowered.

The question was not about the ranking of the search results. Also, I have mentioned twice, that external links improve your ranking although the PR is lowered.

Your are talking about internal links. Of course, these are important and influendec PR (I agree in that), but that was not the question. (And as I already mentioned simple calculation will show you that the main benefit is just reached by adding one page, assuming that you have high incoming PR.)

Also my example (adding the large number of outgoing links on my site) was just for disproving the theory that PR is not lowered (nothing more - nothing less). And exactly this is shown. I won't say anything about the amount of transferred PR to the other sites.

May you should read the messages before claiming other posts as nonsence.

steveb

9:13 am on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



"Your are talking about internal links."

Don't you know what "internal" means? You keep wanting to confuse domains with pages when it suits you and vice versa so this is just a wste of time.

doc_z

10:20 am on Mar 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



steveb

although I'm not a native speaker (and, of course, I'm making a lot of orthographical and grammatical faults) I know what internal means. I also know that the original PR algorithm is based on pages not on domains. I believe everbody knows that (no need to mention such obvious facts).

However, people (and especially RussellC) are interested in having a high PR on the pages on their domain. Therefore, calculating effects on PR for the pages on your domain, you have to distinguish between internal and external links.

Don't claim other people are confused when you are missing the point.

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