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I am thinking we should remove this hyperlink from the footers on the frontpage to our site though - am I right in thinking that this could use up alot of our PR from the frontpage? PR can only flow through so far into your site, so by having the PR from the frontpage flow through our the footer to the URL page which then carrys onto all 2 thousand pages, will this eat up our PR and dilute it overall? Sorry, this may sound like a "dumb question" but I am trying to make sure I have a grip on how this works.
Thanks in advance for your time..
CS
From what I understand.......(please anybody correct me if wrong!)
Having the link from only the home page IMHO is the best way.
Each page of your site is allocated an amount of pr to give away. It does not matter how many links out there are, so you can never "suck" pr from a page and lower it's pr. If a page is pr6 then it has x amount of pr to give out. If there is only one link out the page will lose all of x to that link, and remain pr6. If there is 500 links out, it will still only lose x but each link will only carry x divided by 500, however the page will remain pr6.
Now the tricky bit! If you have 2000 pages with a link to the home page, then each page is carrying pr back to the home page and helping it's pr ranking, by contributing tiny bits of pr. If you also have 2000 links back to your site map, then the pr benefit from each page is immediately halved. Your site map page will probably have a very healthy pr which is then being divided by 2000 and sent back into the site. But, there is little benefit in having a site map page with so much pr, as I doubt it is being used as a potential competing page in search results. It's real function is for spiders, so you are wasting pr from 2000 pages and sending it there. Your current site map is sending pr back into the site, but in small amounts to each page, so hardly worth anything. The trick to pr is to focus it on pages that are competing for positions in the search results, so sending as much as possible back to the home page is usually best.
By removing the link from every page to the site map, more pr will flow from internal pages back to the home page, and boost the home page pr. By only having one link to the site map, the site map will have a lower pr, and thus that pr will remain elsewhere in the site where it is of more importance.
The next step is to consider cross linking within the site. By carefully limiting the links out on each internal page, you can distribute the pr each page has to give away, and focus it on key pages within your site. So lets say you have 10 important pages and home. All 2000 pages link to home... good. On 200 pages you have a link to an internal 'blue widget' page. On another 200 pages you have a link to "red widgets" and so on. So,as each page has x amount of pr to give away, half x is going to home and half to one other inernal page, thus boosting that pages pr and it's chances of higher ranking in the search results.
The other factor is that the more pages a site has, the more pockets of pr you generate to direct to the home page or other pages within the site... hence big sites do well in google, because the home page is linked to by loads of pages giving it tiny bits of pr.
Also you mention to kick the PR back to the homepage. If I keep my hyperlink to home pages on all pages in the site and build that up, then only have links to 15 main sections from the homepage, is that wasting it or doing a good thing. My site has a main section called Panasonic lets say. On that Panasonic are 15 digital cameras made by Panasonic. If you click on one of those cameras, it will take you to another main section, this time for that specific camera though. So lets say you click on Panasonic ebs-32we camera. You will then see their hyperlinks that say Panasonic Ebs-32we leather cases, Panasonic Ebs-32we cf cards, Panasonic Ebs-32we batteries. If you click on the Ebs-32we this will again take you to another main section where you will see all leather cases for this camera. From this section you will then click on which case you are interested in and land on the actual product page where you can buy it. Question, since all pages link to the homepage and this main section "Panasonic" is only one of 15 hyperlinks off the homepage, will the PR then have more momentum and flow through to reach all the actual product pages? Also, on each product page, for example the Panasonic EBs-32we leather case page, should I make a hyperlink that leads back to the main section for that cameras accessories and call it something like "see more accessories for this camera" thus all product pages would link back to the main section of that camera thus increasing the PR for all the main sections of cameras?
Thanks again, your response was really pretty awesome but left me with these few questions.
Thanks again,
CS
Thanks again,
CS
I'm very nervous about giving advice!... we are all guessing to a certain degree. However, look at :
[blackboxgroup.net...]
(and take a close look at the site map bit)
Re yr questions...
"However will these PR travel far through those main sections, or will it follow through deep into these main sections?"
It will, especially if you have quick loading pages with hard links. I suspect dynamic pages get deep crawls only if the home page pr is high. Also, if the spider has to hang around waiting for pages to be created, it may leave. As the pr flows from one page to the next, it gets diluted. Ciml did a great piece on this at [webmasterworld.com...]
"Do you say it will be halved because it is flowing through to 2000 pages....." I mean that each page has an "x" amount of pr to give away. If there is one link out, it will all go there.... two links out per page, and the "x" amount is shared and thus halved betwenn the two links. So at present your home page is recieving half "x" from each of your 2000 pages and the site map is also recieving half "x". Take out the site map link, and all of "x" for each page goes to the home page.
"then only have links to 15 main sections from the homepage, is that wasting it or doing a good thing."
I reckon those pages will get a good boost. Also use the link text to maximum effect. Don't call your home link on all 2000 pages "home"... call it "widgets home" thus you get a good keyword and theme pointing at the home page.
"Question, since all pages link to the homepage and this main section "Panasonic" is only one of 15 hyperlinks off the homepage, will the PR then have more momentum and flow through to reach all the actual product pages?"
I reckon yes... the deeper pages will have less competition in the serps, so need less pr, but it will get there. Also you could arrang e links from other sites directly to those deeper pages, giving their pr a boost.
"Also, on each product page, for example the Panasonic EBs-32we leather case page, should I make a hyperlink that leads back to the main section for that cameras accessories and call it something like "see more accessories for this camera" thus all product pages would link back to the main section of that camera thus increasing the PR for all the main sections of cameras?" Yup, possibly. It will mean less pr from these deep pages will be given back to the home page, but will then be shared between home and product page. I reckon anchor text will be vital in this case.
"what is your opinion of putting 90 hyperlinks on the homepage to certain products?" I think it all depends on how competative these pages have to be. 90 links is a lot, but because they all come from the home page it could be ok. If your site is pr6 then probably all these pages will be pr5 and the next level pr4. So if you achieve top with a pr4, avoid wasting pr and giving it pr5. Restrict the links from the home page to key competative pages, and then link on from there. That way the first level pages may be a 'stronger' pr5.
Having said all this... it's all theory! I'm guessing and experimenting and have nervous reservations. Hope someone else contributes because I need to sort it all out as well! :)
CS
