Page Rank Funnel

[MadeWillis]

Dilemma:
I have a ecommerce site where the homepage is bouncing around anywhere from spots 6 to 12 for it's biggest keyword (a 4 letter single word and is found in the domain name as apart of a two word phrase). The homepage rankings change almost daily(I'm not logged into G) and other sites rankings remain the same. The main category pages don't rank very well for their major keyword either.

Background:
The homepage has total around 300 outbound internal links and maybe 5 or 6 external links. Around 2/3 of those links are contained in a list 5 columns wide ( a big box of links) with links to subcategory pages(these are subcategories 2 levels some even 3 levels deep). Basically each link in the main nav has a section in it with links to all it's subcategory pages. There are only 8 category links in the main nav. There is also a what's new box on the side nav that has about 50 links to specific product pages.

In my eyes, this is excessive linking.

More Details:
-The homepage has around 10k IBLs and PR 5.
-Domain is 6+ years old.
-7 out of 8 of the main category pages (all links in the main navigation) have PR 3, the other one has PR 4.
-All pages with links in the “big box” have a PR 3.

Questions:
Would this insinuate that because these pages do not have a PR of 4 that the homepage PR is not being passed to it's maximum potential? Is the excessive internal linking taking away from the main category pages potential to rank? Could the excessive linking be causing the instability of the homepage ranking?

My Plan to deal with the excessive linking is to do one of the following:

Nofollow every link in the big box of links and the what's new section (probably 75% of all links on the page). This would reduce the link juice from going to all of these pages and send more to my main category pages. My concern is that by using nofollow on that many internal pages, it may look to Google like I don't trust those links. I do want those pages to rank, but I would rather pass more link juice to the main category pages so I can get those to rank better for major keywords.

or
Put them in iframes. By using an iframe I would not be telling Google that I do not trust the links. They would just appear to the bots as not being a part of the homepage.

My goal is to bring the link count down to 100 or less and ultimately get my main category pages to rank better for their major keywords. Which method would you recommend? Or any different thoughts? Thanks in advance for any suggestions:)

[daveVk]

Check what percentage of users enter via home page, category pages, 'big box' pages, other pages. What fraction of home page visitors go to category pages as opposed to deeper pages directly ? Trade off is that the big box pages may loose there PR3, are they important ?

[Shaddows]

Wow, THREE whole NF threads going simultaneously (plus the biggie thats still open for posting).

This seems to be a concept that has suddenly come of age.

As discussed in the first big NOFOLLOW thread [pubcon.com], MC of Google (among other googlers) has stated no stigma is attached to NF (it does not give any "negative trust"); it just drops the link from the graph. As such, its probably the tool to use.

That said, presenting 300 links to users might make them baulk at the prospect of successfully navigating your site. You might want to consider the usability situation along side the PR perspective.

One parting shot though... PR is not the last word in ranking. Relevancy in linking carries weight (anchor text and thematic correlation of pages), and content is king.

For gramma and speeling edited

[edited by: Shaddows at 10:11 am (utc) on Feb. 19, 2009]

[MadeWillis]

@Dave

Thanks for the response. These "big box" pages are important, but the main category pages have the potential to rank for keywords that would bring a lot more traffic. I still think the other pages will be able to rank just as well because there will be less competition for those keywords.

One parting shot though... PR is not the last word in ranking. Relevancy in linking carries weight (anchor text and thematic correlation of pages), and content is king.

I understand PR isn't the last word in ranking and I don't obsess over it. Instead I'm using it to judge how link juice is being distributed to my other pages. When the homepage is the most important page on this website, in terms of inbound links, wouldn't you think that by limiting the number of outbound links from 300 to maybe 50 would help pass more juice to those more important pages?

This question still stands:

Could having this many outbound links on a single page cause the unstable rankings for my biggest keyword?

[MadeWillis]

I should also add that I would nofollow the links found in the "big box" on the homepage only. On other supporting category pages, these links would be followed. So I would be nofollowing a link in one place and not in another. Thoughts?

[MadeWillis]

tedster, might you be able to provide any insight on this?

[tedster]

So I would be nofollowing a link in one place and not in another. Thoughts?

No problems with that - I've seen it done effectively in a number of situations. The idea is to limit, but not to eliminate, the PR that's being channelled to pages.