Is This Page Rank Sculpting Gone Wrong?

[Planet13]

Hi there, Everyone:

My site doesn't have a ton of backlinks, so I wanted to sculpt what page rank I had coming into my home page so more of it would go to my products that are more profitable for me.

So back on April 24th, I removed about 30% of the links on my home page that were pointing to my "non-money" pages, such as the about us page, the shipping policy page, etc, as well as to some category and product level pages that don't make much money anyway.

For the money pages where the links have remained on the home page, SOME of them have increased in traffic over 30% (although sales of these products have NOT increased a corresponding 30%)

However, there is a small group of pages, that all feature the same keyword somewhere in the URL / product name (we will call it "widgets"), that have DROPPED around 15%.

Now, these are products / categories where the links to them REMAINED on the home page.

One other thing (and I didn't mention this earlier because I am not certain of this). It is possible that the title element of the home page DID previously have the word "widgets" in the title, and I MIGHT have removed it when I reduced the number of links on the home page. The home page title was a little long (like 115 words), so I took the advice of a you people who suggested I shorten it, and shortened it to only 8 words, with three of those words being the site's name / URL)

So if you have any experience about this, please let me know what you think.

[goodroi]

One school of thought is that those "wasted links" are actually quality signals to Google. Legitimate sites typically have a link in the footer to privacy policy, about us and other similar pages. The Adwords quality score can be influenced by those links. Also there are some laws that require those pages to be on certain sites. I would think twice before removing those links.

I also would not be surprised if you dropped 15% simply because you no longer mention your keyword in the title tag. That can hurt your rankings and your CTR.

[Planet13]

Thanks goodroi.

I am going to have to weigh the benefit of the 30% increase in some traffic with the cost of losing 15% traffic in other areas.

[Robert Charlton]

One school of thought is that those "wasted links" are actually quality signals to Google.

I agree with goodroi about these pages as quality signals. I suggest giving some careful consideration, though, to which of them do need to be on the home page (eg, Privacy, About Us) and which might actually be more appropriate to move, say, to product pages (eg, Shipping Policy). About Us can be an important branding page, and I'd use it as such.

With regard to the utility pages and how they may be affecting PR distribution or page weighting, review Google's "Reasonable Surfer" model, discussed here....

Google's "Reasonable Surfer" - Bill Slawski popularizes the concept
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4145397.htm [webmasterworld.com]

This is speculation, but I feel it's very likely, as Panda's "decision tree" becomes refined, that the importance of these informational utility pages will adjust along the lines of both the reasonable surfer and of the quality signals that Google was looking for when it seeded the Panda algorithm. Raw PR distribution will likely become less a factor as user behavior becomes more of a factor.

A prioritized product categorization structure from home, though, is important to pay attention to. You don't want to waste links from home on low priority pages. Your structure affects semantic signals, and not only division of PageRank, but also division of user attentions. It's important to think through carefully. I feel, though, that you shouldn't be continually tinkering with your nav structure, as I get the sense that you are.

PS - I also agree with goodroi about the removal of your keyword from the page title being a likely factor in your drop. You might want to check that before changing your navigation again.

[Planet13]

Thank You, Robert Charlton:

Could you elaborate a little bit more on this?

A prioritized product categorization structure from home, though, is important to pay attention to.

I assume what you mean is that it is important to make sure that products are in the right category (and that there is a clearly defined path from home -> category -> subcategory -> product page ) to help google understand the content of the product, the categories that it is in, and the nature of the site in general. Is that a correct assumption?

If that is a correct assumption, then are there negative consequences from having links from the home page DIRECTLY to certain product pages, as these will "bypass" the navigational structure otherwise created when you link from home, to category, to subcat, to product page?

And if it is ok to have links directly to products from the home page, is it important to make sure that those products which are linked to from the home page are CLOSELY related?

For example, if you sell widgets, foobars, gizmos and dingbats, but the main focus of your site is widgets, should you ONLY link directly to widgets on your home page? (despite the fact that foobarsm gizmos and dingbats still play a significant part in the site's percentage of sales?)

Also, if I understand your comment about prioritized product categorization, does that mean there are negative consequences of having a product appear in too many different categories (thus, having too many navigational paths to the same product). For instance, having a blue widget in the widgets category, and also having it in the bestseller category? And also having it in the "our favorites category?"

In short, are too many navigational paths to a product page bad? Maile Ohey (spelling) from google made a video saying to increase the number of internal links (and hence, navigational paths) to your primary products.

(Please note: I am not referring to canonical issues, since the final product page will have the same URL, no matter which category path is used to navigate to that final product page. Instead, I wonder if the fact that users can navigate to the same product page though more than one "path" will negatively affect rankings.)

Sorry, this post got real long. So instead of answering the questions one by one, it might be easier for the same of the forum to just sort of summarize a best practice, if that is possible.

Thanks in advance.

[Robert Charlton]

Planet13 - This is only going to be a very partial answer to your great many questions. We had pretty much a parallel discussion in this thread....

For Mega-Site SEO, Structure is King - not Content
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4238574.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Again, oversimplifying and talking about "top down" links from home only... just as I mentioned in that thread that linking to too many subcategories from home is going to reduce the link juice going to your main categories... this consideration is even more true when you link to your products from home. You don't want to send too much link juice to any one page, nor do you want to send too little.

For that reason, on a large site, I myself don't like to link to a single product page directly from home. You would be giving that page a disproportionately large amount of link juice. You should be saving that link equity for your category and subcategory structure, which feeds multiple and appropriate product pages.

That varies, of course, according to the size of the site, how "hot" a particular product is, how likely it is that the product page itself might attract direct links, etc etc.

And yes, the variety of products does enter into the semantic clarity I referred to... but beyond that it's basically a question of coming up with a structure that scales for an entire site. So, in general, linking to products from home is not an efficient or strategic way to distribute link juice on a large site.

If you've only got 10 products, link to them all from home. And occasionally I've run into large sites where, say, four products account for 50% of their sales. In such cases, yes, by all means link to those products from home.

But if you link to a lot of products directly from home and thus siphon off link juice from your main hierarchical nav structure, there isn't going to be enough link juice left for that nav structure to be useful.

You're also, of course, going to be trying to attract inbound links into your category or article pages, so you have to in effect turn your site on its side and think about other hierachical structures that might work from your inbound links to appropriately related pages. Different kinds of sites or products have their own particular demands, and each case requires a lot of thought.

[Planet13]

Thank You, Robert!

You're also, of course, going to be trying to attract inbound links into your category or article pages, so you have to in effect turn your site on its side and think about other hierachical structures that might work from your inbound links to appropriately related pages.

Yes, I believe I can see what you are saying about this. My interpretation is that in some instances, it might not be best to link to a product page, but link to a category / article page if that page will be more likely to attract inbound links. Then link from those category level / article pages to appropriate product pages (money pages) since that will be a more effective means of utilizing page rank.

Thanks again.