Do Links to Deep Pages Help the Home Page?

...if someone searches keywords which are only on my index page...

[jrodegheri]

I mean, suppose someonse looks for <blue widget> and my main page (example.com) is all about these keywords but has such low PageRank that doesn't show up in the first result pages.

And then I get my other ("sub") page example.com/folder/page5.htm - which has nothing to do with <blue widgets> - indexed in lots of high PR sites...

After that, when somebody looks for <blue widgets>, will my main page improve its position on the results because one of the sub-pages (which has nothing to do with the theme) got a high PR from having lots of indexes?

[edited by: ciml at 7:28 pm (utc) on Mar. 22, 2005]
[edit reason] Widgetised and Examplified [/edit]

[Wizard]

Deeplinking on main index helps for keywords, which belong to the deep page. For example, if all site is about widgets, but main index don't say much particularly about fluffy blue widgets, makin a deeplink to /folder/fluffybluewidgets.html, with proper anchor text, and on-topic deep page, helps for ranking of main page under term 'fluffy blue widgets' and, as well, it helps main page to rank under 'widgets'.

Google likes links to pages with good, on-topic content. I noticed many examples where such links helped in ranking. It looks almost like there were 'backward PageRank' involved, however, I'd bet it's rather all about relevant outbound links factor.

[kryton]

yes, because a link deep into your site will increase your PR for that deep page in your site, which in turn will give more pagerank to your front page (provided the deep page links to the front page). Remember Pagerank is not lost, it distributes through links.

[jrodegheri]

Wizard, the "fluffy blue widgets" would be only on my main page - "page5.htm" which would have lots of external links to, wouldn't be about them widgets at all.

I will include a link from "page5.htm" back to the main URL as suggested by Kryton.

Thanks both of you for the advice.

Now, since both pages are in the same (own) domain, will the PR "page5.htm" gets be wholy transferred to the main URL, or just partially?

[jtbell]

Now, since both pages are in the same (own) domain, will the PR "page5.htm" gets be wholy transferred to the main URL, or just partially?

Google calculates PR on a page by page basis. The domain is irrelevant, only the linkage structure matters.