User Navigation vs Page Rank

Having a great deal of in site cross links for users affecting page rank.

[tenerifejim]

Dear all,

Just thought I'd bring up a topic that I'm sure has been mentioned before, but I can't find anything out there.

Basically the quandary is this. I want to have a more directory style site (for my own reasons, not because G seems to favour these now).

My initial concept was to have quite a hierarchical structure any many of the subsections of the site will not cross to other subsections. For example: home/subsection1 will not link to home/subsection2 directly. They will have to return to the home page first.

This is with the intention of increasing Page Rank of the home page. However, after discussions with my ever aware Graphic Designer, he suggested making the user experience by introducing a greater amount of cross linking. But I know this will decrease inital Page Rank.

Now, I know PR isn't what it was, but would it be possible to do both? If I used Javascript links that google can't read (is this possible?) for the crosslinking and standard href for the home page (and other important pages) would this be a way to solve both problems.

Any thoughts?

Jim.

[HarryM]

I have a site divided into themes. The visible navigation allows the user to move around within each theme, or move to another theme via the home page. This is what the SE also sees. However the human user can also click on a javascript function call which displays direct links to the other themes. No problems with it so far.

[Antonsen]

If it makes sence from a users perspective, it shouldn't be a problem. I guess Google are that well made - it can't penallize something like that.

If it doesn't make sence fro a user, I'd advice you to be careful.

But then again... I see that Google itself links back to the homepage on every single sub-page.. so...
why not just do that?

[europeforvisitors]

I suppose you could try JavaScript links for the crosslinks, but I wonder if it's worth obsessing about. Consider:

1) PageRank is no longer as important as it once was, as you yourself mentioned.

2) Some of the PageRank that gets sent from dir1/page.htm to dir2/page.htm will get sent back to the home page from the linked page's "Home" link. So it isn't as if you're throwing buckets of PageRank overboard by linking within your site.

3) Over the long term, it's probably wiser to develop sites that are "organic" instead of being driven by SEO considerations. Unless you're doing SEO for a living (and unless you're one of SEO's smarter practitioners), focusing on the user's needs is likely to be more productive (and to require fewer changes over time) than trying to outwit Google.

BTW, if it's of any reassurance, I have crosslinks all over the place on my site, and my home page ranks at or near the top of the SERPs for some extremely competitive keyphrases. Just as important, my Google search rankings and referrals have held steady or improved through update after update. Why? I suspect it's because an "organic" site is less susceptible to fluctuations caused by tweaking of the Google algorithm from month to month.

[tenerifejim]

Thanks for the advice guys.

The reason I am 'directorising' (what a great new word) is because my site has out grown it's original scope and become a too large to manage using the original format.

From my point of view I have restructured based on the concept of directories/ themes to better manage the whole project. I am just trying to keep all parties happy with the new results- me, the user and the search engines.

I just want to get the right mix. Afterall, it may be ok to have a great site for users, but if I have no users what's the point. Unfortunatly the 'if you build it they will come' no longer holds as true as it did.

Anyway, rambling now. I'll go down the JScript cross linking route and see what happens. I'll let you all know what happens.