Huge difference in page rank distribution between us and competitor

[smithaa02]

Maybe somebody can shed some light on this...

Our page rank distribution looks something like this:

*****************************************************

Homepage: 5
Category page 1: 4
Category page 2: 4
Category page 3: 4
Category page 4: 4
Category page 5: 4
Category page 6: 4
Category page 7: 4
Minor pages...: 1 or 2

Our rival looks like this:

Homepage: 6
Category page 1: 1
Category page 2: 1
Category page 3: 1
Category page 4: 1
Category page 5: 1
Category page 6: 1
Category page 7: 4

Minor pages...: 1 or 2

*****************************************************

Question is why this could be the case? External links point to our internal pages? Too many internal links leaking juice for them?

The main issue is that they are trumping us for absolute key phrase 'acme widgets'...we do better with minor terms but 'acme widgets' is where the money is. Now for this term both of our home pages come up...because their page rank (if this relates to SERP's) is so much more consolidated onto their homepage...are they gaining an advantage here?

To what extent would pagerank sculpting help or hinder us? I'm not talking about nofollowing a bunch of pages...but maybe pruning more minor pages, consolidating select pages, limiting external links, adding more subcategory pages, adding a couple more steps to get to a external link, that type of thing...

Do boilerplate links leak page juice from the homepage to the category pages? Could a key strategy with pagerank sculpting be to move category pages on off of the boilerplate?

[deadsea]

The profile you describe for your competitor seems fishy to me. I've never seen a PR 6 homepage that didn't have PR 4 or 5 children linked from it.

As far as linking for a key phrase, the domain name often matters much more than pagerank. If your competitor is acmewidgets.com, there isn't much you can do unless Google changes its algorithm.

[smithaa02]

Yeah it blew my mind too...are they getting a huge advantage by having this consolidated page rank on their home age? (since in reality homepage results are what matter for the most part)

Ironically concerning the domain name is that we have a better 'match' then they do...

Anybody have any ideas on how such lopsided distribution could occur and if there is a way to duplicate it (if it is desirable)?

[walkman]

I agree with deadsea, at most I've seen is a loss of 2 from the frontpage to the next level.

[Simsi]

If your competitor is acmewidgets.com, there isn't much you can do unless Google changes its

From my experiences I would not entirely agree with that. Improving your internal linking and more importantly, your internal anchor text, can go quite some way to offsetting the benefits of a keyword domain. A good percentage of the keyword domain's strength comes from natural external (and possibly internal) links that by default include the keyword.

[smithaa02]

Simsi...interesting. I guess on one hand I would be very surprised if google really rewarded internal link achnor text as this is so easily manipulated. eg 'Contact Us' becomes 'Acme Widgets - Contact Us', 'About Us' becomes 'Acme Widgets - About Us', etc...how would google overcome such manipulation?

[Simsi]

Oh I'm pretty sure a 6-month penalty I picked up early last year was for over-optimising the internal anchor text on one site I manage. So yes I agree that you can overdo it for sure. A bit of LSA can help though.