Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I mean, will your home page PR increase? Or does is the link better served going to the home page?
Also, would it be better linking to an established trusted page with PR, or linking to a new, fresh page with new origonal content.
To figure out how much of your real PR you are sending out with each link, count the number of links on your page. Take that PR that you added up in the last step and divide it by the number of links going out of that page. That is basically the amount of PR that each link "votes" for the page that it points to.
So, it would be best to have fewer, thus more important, links going out on high PR pages in your site, right? Because that makes the outgoing links carry more PR to the pages they link to. A home page with a PR5 with 35 links on it won't be able to distribute as strong PR as the same page with just 15 links on it. Is that right?
Ok let's look at this from an Occam's razor approach. And to BigDave i did specifically mention outbound links, the more you have the more dispersed the PR is. That is why if you garner a high PR link in, you want to be careful about sending it back up the track.
First
Do a keyword search on a high frequency keyword. Notice how every single one of the top listings has high PR?. Also notice that the only way a PR4 can beat a PR6 is to have the keyword in the domain.
Second
SandPetra has it right. Look at the in bound links of the sites that rank well for a High Freq keyword like "general relativity. The links are on topic.
Third
BigDave is also right. Toolbar PR is a representation of PR at some point in the past. But it's usually fairly close to actual and predicted PR.
Fourth
You can use Toolbar PR (and thus PR)as a rough guide to predicted success, but you still have to create a page with SEO in mind. In other words, A PR9 site about Abe Lincoln won't rank for General relativity.
Occams Razor?
If you are targeting a high frequency keyword, have the keyword in the domain name.
High PR is better than low PR, but only when all else is equal. (The page is high quality and on topic)
And I promise this is the last time I'll say this. If you think in-bound links and anchor text don't effect rankings, why then do Google bombs work?
Thus, if the number of inbound PR 1 links goes up by 1, the TBPR sure doesn't go from 1 to 2. Even if the total amount of inbound PR increases 4-fold, you still may not see any change in the TBPR (even after a long lag).
I wouldn't do anything drastic to the content of the page receiving the PR8 link, unless you want to tweak it a little to make it even better for the sort of users who are likely to arrive over that PR8 links.
The only other thing I would suggest doing is adding a couple of internal links from that page to a handful of particularly important pages on your site -- ones that you want to make more visible in the SERPS, and which you think could benefit from a PR boost. It's that simple.
Is there a definative thread anywhere that people know of that explains internal linking. I'm not talking about the detailed formula's and stuff....but instead a "general principles" type thread which has a simple example ie something like Pages A,B,C,D have 4 links on each page A.a, A.b, A.c etc - and then a general recommendation on a good way to setup your internal link structure to funnel PR to different pages.
I've read a few threads on the net - searches on "page rank explained" and similar bring these up - but in 99% of cases they get way too involved, and don't keep things simple. I know we're not allowed to post any external links - but can someone give any pointers on where to find such a page or thread - or should we kick off a new thread?
Topics like site-wide footer links, and whether these are an effective strategy to funnel link juice to a few footer linked pages would be heaps easier to get my head around if there was a good, simple, overview with a few examples.
For example, in BigDave's explanation, he didn't cover the very common situation where A links to B but there is one or more link path [of any length at all] from B back to A. This sets up a voting circle A > B > A > B > A.... and that looks like it could run off to infinity. In fact, if PR votes merely added up, it would. But the "damping factor" in the Page Rank formula keeps the PR total from running off to infinity.
Because of the damping factor, as the PR calculation continues to go 'round and 'round the circles of the web for many "iterations", the actual PR for a given page stops changing very much. When a condition of "no-further-change" is reached, up to a certain number of decimal places, then no more iterations are needed and the calculation can stop. In this way, Page Rank has been "damped".
You mention using a few select run-of-site footer links. Yes, clearly from a pure Page Rank point of view, that is one way of ensuring that certain important pages get their appropriate share of PR. Of course Google evaluates all links from other angles than "just PR". That can make the answers to practical questions get quite a bit fuzzier than simple "black and white".
From a pure PR standpoint, the formula does not address where on the displayed page the links occur, or whether the links point internally or externally. It just looks at links and urls. There's no content or anchor text issues, no domain related issues -- those are all taken up in other areas of the Google algo.
To get a PR1 (or PR4 or PR8) a page needs a certian number of points. A page gets points from incoming links. The PR value on the toolbar is a logarithmic representaion of the points a page has.
Here's a chart that shows how points relate to toolbar PR. (Note, these are not the actual numbers Google uses of course, just the basic idea)
1 - 10 points: PR1
11 - 100 points: PR2
101 - 1,000 points: PR3
1,001 - 10,000 points: PR4
10,001 - 100,000 points: PR5
100,001 - 1,000,000 points: PR6
1,000,001 - 10,000,000 points: PR7
10,000,001 - 100,000,000 points: PR8
100,000,001 - 1,000,000,000 points: PR9
1,000,000,001+ points: PR10
So, if page B gets a link from a PR8 page (page A) which has 50,000,000 points, and it's the only link page A has on it, then page B will get 50,000,000 * .85 = 42,500,000 points assigned to it. That will make it a PR8 according to the made-up chart above.
It's rare for a page to only have 1 link though. Let's say there are 25 links on page A. The points will be divided between all 25 links equally. So now page B will only be getting (50,000,000 / 25) * .85 = 1,700,000 points which will make it a PR7 according to the chart.
Let's also say that page B is a sub-page and has the usual navigation linking to the homepage and several other pages. The same rule will apply. If page B has 16 links on it then the homepage will get (1,700,000 / 16) * .85 = 90312.5 points, and so will the other 15 pages making all of them PR5's.
That's the basic gist of it. HTH
(*Assuming page B is on a site with no other inbound links)
The challenge is that trying to make the explanation of Page Rank "simpler" it can easily become less true. That's how many SEO myths get started.
Not so. SEO myths are not created by attempts to simplify things. SEO myths are generally created by people that can't be bothered to learn how things really work, just deciding that they know how they work.
In the case of my post, I point out:
Don't worry about the "damping factor" because it only has a real significance when trying to calculate exactly what is happening. It is not important to understanding PR.
Which is true. In the case of figuring out a single page, instead of calculating a network of pages, the damping factor only complicates the explanation.
If someone is unwilling to read the PageRank papers because of the hard math, there is little chance that they will ever have a need to understand the purpose of the damping factor because they won't understand the circular reference issues.
In fact, if PR votes merely added up, it would. But the "damping factor" in the Page Rank formula keeps the PR total from running off to infinity.
Well if we are going to be picky, the PR votes for a page do "merely add up". The damping factor affects the value of the votes going out, not the votes as they are added up. The damping happens before the division by the number of links on the page. :-P
But I still don't think it is necessary to understand it unless you are calculating for an entire webgraph.
cigjonser that means I can bring down PR of high PR pages by linking to them from my low PR pages?
I've never had a site where I wanted the home page to rank for anything. The deep pages are much better suited for ranking.
I'm confused on this. I do understand that deep pages usually have more focused content and it would be nice if they could all be PR5 instead of the homepage. But people tend to link to the homepage if they like the overall content of the site. So it would be natural that the homepage would have the highest PR.
It's also usual to link back to the homepage from all the deeper pages so that visitors can find their way 'home' easily.
I like the idea of giving my content pages more rank but am not sure how to go about doing it without taking off all those links back to 'home'.
I'm confused on this. I do understand that deep pages usually have more focused content and it would be nice if they could all be PR5 instead of the homepage.
More focused content doesn't *need* PR5, it only needs as much as you can give it. PR is still important, but for most things a page that is PR3-4 is all you need when combined with other important factors.
But people tend to link to the homepage if they like the overall content of the site. So it would be natural that the homepage would have the highest PR.
Of course the home page will generally have the most links and have the highest PR. But suppose a professor at a major university, who is also a nobel prize winner, decides to link to a specific internal page of your's. That one link could easily carry more PR weight than your entire site had before.
When my review site was new, before I had the ODP links, a manufacturer linked to a review of one of their products. All the little links gave the home page a PR4, but their review had a PR5. I suspect that much of that PR4 came from the link back to the home page from the review.
At this point it would be hard for a single deep link to a review to pack more power than the home page holds.
It's also usual to link back to the homepage from all the deeper pages so that visitors can find their way 'home' easily.I like the idea of giving my content pages more rank but am not sure how to go about doing it without taking off all those links back to 'home'.
Don't take that home link away, that would be foolish. What you want to do is have more internal links from those deep pages to other nearby pages. This is where things like breadcrumbs come in. You have a link home, and you also have a link to every directory level between the content and "home". The directory one level up gets the same vote from the content page as does the home page. This directory page is able to spread its votes more directly with the neighboring content.
Adding more internal links also reduces the amount going all the way up to the home page. Remember the vote going out with each link is the PR divided by the number of links. If your only link was to the home page, it gets all the voting power. If you have links to 9 internal pages plus the home page, only 10% of the vote goes back up to the home page.
One thing I do now is to link all the pages in a section to each other. I don't do this for PR and I would think it wouldn't affect PR as it is just a matter of passing it around equally to all the pages.
I do this to encourage visitors to explore related pages. My concern is if this in any way dilutes the PR. Is there some secret ingredient in there that I am missing?
So have I been doing for the most part (themed sites), particularly on two sites that I've been testing with for several months - though with one there's cross linking between a couple of related sections and WAY too many links on the homepage.
Based on my experience and observations with those sites (and some others), unless it was somehow important or valuable for the particular interior page to have a direct authority link to it, I'd take the PR8 link to the homepage in a flat second, and work on "importance distribution" from there.
