Re-allocation of PR within my site

[born2drv]

First I'd like to thank everyone for their help re: google, I've learned alot here, and my traffic is doubled over last month.

Anyhow, onto my question:

My main site has many inbound links but I've been trying desperately to get up to a PR6. I think the reason it is still PR5 is because many of my other pages are PR5. For example, my "about us", "contact us", "links", "shipping options", etc. etc.... all found in top and bottom footers. There are about 15 links that I think are acting like my main page just because they have the same amount of links and link structure (all pages pointing to all pages).

So what I'm thinking of doing is, rather than remove them, make some sort of redirect js code for all those links. Based on this, do you think it will have an impact on my main page by having all pages on the site link to the main page still, but not the other ones????

Thanks for the replies in advance :)

[skibum]

I think you would be better off getting more external links pointing at the site. It seems to take alot to get from PR5 to PR6.

[McMohan]

May I use this opportunity to throw some more light on related issues which born2drv raised. Comments are most welcome.

We all know, Google allots PR to each Page according to the directory structure, even to a page which is not indexed, provided the main URL is indexed. Ex: If www.URL.com has PR 6, then a page www.URL.com/abc.htm may have a PR of 5, www.URL.com/abc/xyz.htm may have a PR 4 and so on(a google guess). Now the actual PR depends on the inbound links each page has. Correct me if I am wrong, the ideal way of designing a site architecture is to make every page of the site a main page, by interlinking all the pages. That is assuming no external inbound links, the number of inbound links each page has is same. This way the PR of each page is equal or close to that of the home page. Now my concerns are -

- Is the above assumption right and is that the right way of doing things?
- Provided the site architecture (interlinking) is as mentioned above, will directory structure (no of obliques in URL) make a difference to PR?
- Having not linking all the pages with each other, will only minimyzing the no. of levels of directory structure, improve the PR? (I mean a page www.URL.com/abc/xyz.htm renamed as www.URL.com/xyz.htm with all things else being same, improve PR?)
- What you would have done if provided a free hand in designing the site architecture?

Please excuse me if I used a layman's language, as I am not a designer.

Thanx

[born2drv]

McMohan, I don't think it matters what your URL structure is, it is the linking structure. As some have said before, the "pyramid structure" works best, which is done naturally on a structure like you indicated.

For example imagine below that the length of the arrow is the depth, and that they each link one up....

main site PR6
-->main site/widgets PR5
----->main site/widgets/blue widgets PR4
----->main site/widgets/red widgets PR4
-->main site/wodgets PR5
----->main site/wodgets/blue wodgets PR4
----->main site/wodgets/red wodgets PR4
.... etc.

This is how my site is structured as well for my catalog content. BUT I have a totally other set of pages which every single page on the site is linked to (because of the header and footer links). So these pages are acting like the main page. WHICH IS GOOD if you want to "spread the wealth" of your PR from your inbound external links of your main page. But in my case, I don't want to spread the wealth to these pages, because they are not important to me to have PR... like my contact page, about us page, etc. For all I care, they could be PR2 or PR3.

So I am trying to find out if minimizing the linkage to all these links in my header and footer will help my main page retain PR. But if you want to interlink all your pages to average out the PR, then that's what it would do, to the best of my knowledge, I don't think you will boost all your pages to PR6, but rather get a happy medium of 5 or so, if they are all between PR4-6. This is part of the puzzle that I am trying to figure out...

Maybe someone wise Google-expert can reply to confirm if my using js links for my header and footer links would help increase my PR for the main page????? :)

[ciml]

McMohan, the problem with the your suggested architecture is that most of us want to concentrate our PageRank in our main pages, which generally compete for higher competition and more frequently searched phrases.

born2drv, Maybe you can concentrate a little PageRank elsewhere by keeping the unimportant links from counting in Google, but I don't see the advantage as significant.

[Chef_Brian]

I think some of the peps have hit the nail on the head, you will need more incoming links to make the jump to a pagerank 6. Before I went from a pagerank 5 to a pagerank 6 I had about 6 or 7 pagerank 5 pages. Keep working on incoming links, you will be glad you did once you make a pagerank 6.

Of course each website is different with diff key words and all. But my experiance has been there is a world of difference between a pr 5 and a pr6 in terms of traffic.

Good luck ;-)

Chef Brian

[JayC]

We all know, Google allots PR to each Page according to the directory structure, even to a page which is not indexed, provided the main URL is indexed.

Uh, no... we don't all know that! :)

A page that is not indexed has no PageRank at all -- how can it? PageRank is a measure of the links Google has indexed pointed to a page; they can't calculate that if they don't even know the page exists, and if they don't have the page in their database they can't have a PR for it there!

But, the toolbar shows an "estimated" PR for pages that aren't in the index; that's what you're seeing indicated at a level of one below the index page PR. But it's not "real" PageRank, and if that page does eventually get indexed it may well have a different PR.

Provided the site architecture (interlinking) is as mentioned above, will directory structure (no of obliques in URL) make a difference to PR?

No, it will not make a difference. PageRank is a measure of links, not a measure of obliques. The only thing that matters is the number of incoming links to a given page, the PR of those linking pages, and the number of links going out from those pages. Again, the idea of decrementing PR by one as you go a level deep refers only to the toolbar estimate of PageRank, not the real thing.

As you try to go from PR5 to 6, by the way, as other have hinted at it will get tougher. Remember that it's a logarithmic scale so it's going to keep getting harder the farther you go!

[MHes]

Hi
Do links out, whether internal or external, lower the pr value of a page? I thought it didn't. I thought the number of links out only effects the amount of pr carried by each link. So a pr5 page will always have pr5, with 1 link out or 50, it's just that each link will carry less benefit the more there are.

If the above is correct (I hope) then the sensible tactic is too have a site with say 10 pages, each targeted at a keyword phrase. The pages that are aimed at more competative key word phrases should have more links in from other pages. The pages with targeted keywords that have little competiton need only one link in (probably from home) and all their inherant pr should be sent to a page that needs it with a single link carrying maximim benefit.

or have I lost the plot?

[dantheman]

I'm trying to figure out how to do the same thing. From a usability POV, I've listed about us, contact us, site map, careers, etc on every page. However these pages all now have a PR of 6 (homepage is 7) which is a total waste. I think we could find an answer in some older threads that talked about preserving PR through javascript and other methods. I'm off to take a look.

[JayC]

So a pr5 page will always have pr5, with 1 link out or 50, it's just that each link will carry less benefit the more there are.

Essentially that's correct, but with one caveat: presumably among that PR5 page's outgoing links will be one or more to other pages within your own site. The PR which that page has to available to distribute will be divided among all of its outgoing links, so as you add more links the strength of the PR boost being given to the linked pages will be reduced -- including, again, those pages on your site. And some of those pages will be linked back to this PR5 page, so if their PageRank is reduced by adding links to this first page, presumably there could be a slight decrease in the PR of this PR5 page.

That effect would be very slight under almost all circumstances, but the point is that while there's not a direct formulaic reduction of a page's PR as you add links to that page, there could be a slight reduction as a residual effect.

[MHes]

JayC
I see what you mean... it gets mindblowing when you are disributing pr amoungst hundreds of pages!

So if I have 5 sub pages, all linked to and from the home page and then linked between themselves as follows:

Page A - link to page B
Page B - link to page A
Page C - link to page A
Page D - Link to page A

Page A will have the highest PR, then B and C&D the same and lowest. Meanwhile, the home page will suffer because of more links distributing pr sideways rather than strieght back.

Is this correct?

[born2drv]

Thanks for all the replies. Guess I'll just do everything!

1. Keep working on my inbound external links
2. Create more internal links to other product pages I want to boost PR
3. And do the js redirect for all important links that I don't want to have a high PR value.

PS. Anyone have a PR8 site/page related to jewelry/gifts they wish to sell an outbound link to??? :)

[Tapolyai]

I have pages that are never indexed by Google because of my robots.txt (plus it would need to log into the page) and it has a PR3. All my public pages also have PR3 (which is freaky in itself), and are in a meshed setting, i.e. A<-> B, B<->C, C<->A, A<->D, B<->D, C<->D, even A<->A, B<->B, C<->C, D<->D, etc.

I have several links pointing in from other domains, and several pointing out of the domain.

If I read correctly the public documents, the more outbound links I have the lower my PR is. Is this correct?

[JayC]

I have pages that are never indexed by Google because of my robots.txt (plus it would need to log into the page) and it has a PR3.

The meaning of PageRank value shown on the toolbar for a page not in the index has been the subject of some debate. Primarily, as I've seen it, there are two schools of thought: that it's some kind of "estimated" PR or is "inherited" from the index page, or that it's a sitewide PageRank value.

Here are a couple of threads with some of that discussion:

[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

What is certain though is that PageRank for a page not in the index, if it is "real," would be meaningless. It can't affect the serp position of a page that's not in the index, and so isn't ranked in any way.

[McMohan]

Thanx all, specially JayC. It indeed was an eye opener!