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It's my first time in a webmaster's forum since I am not a webmaster :). I did launch a business content-rich web site 14 months ago and although I am not a web developer (I am the managing director but have some basic HTML knowledge though) I started looking for search engine optimization techniques six months ago.
I have read many articles and papers and yesterday I read the outstanding paper "PageRank Explained or Everything you?ve always wanted to know about PageRank" <edit>
that had some very interesting points to show me.
I would like to share with you our case study and request your valuable feedback.
Here are the facts:
Our web site (lets say it www.site.com) holds a PR6 and has currently 980 backward links in Google (about 70% from our site's internal pages). Now it holds the position #21 for a single search term that shows 2,800,000 results in Google - I hope that's not bad for a non-webmaster! :).
Our target is to move our site to PR7 or PR8 until the end of this year. Currently we are at the end of a reconstruction project. In the next few days, we will have about 4,200 static pages (news, papers etc.) while we used to have them mostly as dynamic URLs (with ?).
We also operate and handle 7 more sites (5 in .com and 2 in another country) that have an average PR5 but do have less than 50 static pages each. These 7 sites belong to companies related to our site's content (critical issue, don't you think?).
We would like to exploit these 7 domains in order to enhance the PR of our site by doing the following (??):
1. More indexed pages: We will use the Extensive Interlinking structure (as shown on the paper I mentioned above) for all the main sections of our site (approx. 20). In fact we will provide all our pages with a footer table with text keyword-rich links to all our main sections.
2. Not deep folders: We will not use deep URLs and certainly not more than 2 roots deep.
3. External links: We maintain a directory where companies from our industry may post their link (we do have many of them). We will use the Hierarchical Linking model for these pages in order not to decrease the PR of our site. Additionally we will use javascript links (I think they are invisible) for all the rest external links on other pages of our site (they are not many).
4. Exploiting the other 7 sites: We plan to publish all our news pages (around 3,500) as static pages on all 7 sites and publish links to all 7 home URLs on all of their pages. I hope that this will increase the PR of the 7 sites. We plan also to link all their pages to the home page of our site (www.site.com). Our site will NOT provide links to them in order not to decrease its PR.
5. The meta tags of the 7 sites (and all their pages) have been modified in order to match better our site content.
6. The text links that we will use for cross linking between the 7 sites will have the main keyword for our site (is also a keyword for the 7 sites as well).
The main questions that occur are (I know there are many more!):
1. Is the cross linking method a good way to increase the PR of the 7 sites?
2. Could the content exchange be considered as spamming by Google, although each of the 7 sites do have related content?
3. Is the Extensive Interlinking method the best way to increase our PR?
4. Some of the 7 sites do have some non-English content (i.e. on the home page). Does this matter for their PR?
This is our case! Since I am not an expert, I would appreciate to have your valuable feedback on such a structure. Let me finally mention again that all 7 sites do have content related to our site. So we are not trying to spam Google. I think that content exchange - I mean the publication of our 3,500 news stories on each of the 7 sites - is not considered spamming (or am I wrong???).
Look forward to hearing from you all... I would be pleased to share with you the results of our plans.
Aris
P.S. I should apologize for my English! It's not perfect but I hope you do understand our case.
[edited by: NFFC at 10:54 am (utc) on Sep. 8, 2002]
[edit reason] Url removed [/edit]
We plan to publish all our news pages (around 3,500) as static pages on all 7 sites and publish links to all 7 home URLs on all of their pages. I hope that this will increase the PR of the 7 sites. We plan also to link all their pages to the home page of our site (www.site.com).
With that, I'd say be prepared for a world of pain.
Dupicate content and heavey interlinking is just crying out for a spam filter to trip you up and give you the big PR0
Nick
We will use the Hierarchical Linking model for these pages in order not to decrease the PR of our site. Additionally we will use javascript links (I think they are invisible) for all the rest external links on other pages of our site (they are not many).
Linking out won't decrease your PR, (unless you make a bad linking decision and get a penalty). If I have a PR5 page and put 50 outgoing links on that page, it doesn't decrease the PR of my page.
It will, of course, add to the PR of the page you are linking to, and that might mean you are helping to increase the PR of a page that (if related to your topic) could be competing with you in the SERPs.
If that is your goal (to not add to the PR of those external pages), then yes, use Javascript links which at this stage are not followed by the SEs.
However, use of Javascript links will make it harder for you to get reciprocal links from webmasters who know about them.
It's kind of a coin-toss.
Personally I would not use the javascript links, and I definitely don't seek links from pages that use them (unless you are going to send some pretty incredible traffic).
:) Hope we're not raining on your parade. It's good to see you're putting so much strategic thought into your site.
Our news stories are based on press releases of companies. There should be hundrends of sites that publish the same releases, so have the same content... Furthermore there are currently two sites that take and publish our content on their pages (not just the headlines but the full content). Should they have PR0? Please notice that these two portals do not have any kind of affiliation with us.
In terms of the heavy interlinking you mention, I wonder if 7 external links on a page with several internal links would make a huge problem.
I would appreciate if you could share your experience with us.
Thanks again.
Nick
You say that "Linking out won't decrease your PR". If you read the interesting paper that I mention you will find that this is not true. Definitely NOT.
Regarding the javascript links, we will not use them for the directory links (which are mainly reciprocal) but just for some links on the other internal pages of our site. If you read the paper, you should have noticed the concept of the Hierarchical model and its usefulness for the directory pages.
Look forward to hearing from you more details for the duplicate content (check my previous post please).
Both Nick_W, and deejay are absolutely correct - you will most certainly be removed from Google with all that hard work done in vain.
PR development via crosslinking your control group of sites is not something you want to do without significant experience behind you and you should not duplicate content (verbatim) ever.
A second site with your news and article (all pages) linking to your primary site is a good start. Selected pages (primary site) that corresspond to content on specific news or article pages is a very good exchange as well.
As for the other sites (domains) find another purpose for these.
The best PR gainer is receiving independent links from outside your control group. Directories are a good choice, especially DMOZ.org. For every link you receive from DMOZ can turn into hundreds in a matter of months.
[edited by: fathom at 11:59 am (utc) on Sep. 8, 2002]
The article link was edited out before I had a chance to read your post. We try to avoid URL drops. :)
You're welcome to sticky me the URl of the article if you like. It will take me a day before I can read it, but I would be interested to see it. (midnight here - I'm about to call it a night).
'ditto' = 'I want to say exactly what that person said, but it is easier to just say "ditto" instead of type it all again'
Always interested in reading other people's theories.
Just a search on Google for "PageRank Explained or Everything you?ve always wanted to know about PageRank" will result the paper I mentioned on many different resources (I downloaded it in PDF format).
Really thanks for the feedback (but it's not enough for me!:) ).
Fathom:
If we take for right the fear for combining duplicate content AND interlinking than what would you say if I just provide the content to the other 7 sites with no links but just the internal ones? I think that this would improve the importance of each of the 7 sites and their PR as well (am I correct??).
Regarding your advice for directory listings, most of the sites are already listed on DMOZ in several categories. But this seems not enough for me... :)
Deejay:
Thanks for the strategic compliment. I am really doing my best to view search engine optimization as a strategic issue for every site. Don't forget that since I am not a webmaster I should have a more strategic view of these issues.
Under those conditions, your other ideas look like a recipe for disaster. If you go with your plan, then you'll end up with a structure where of all the incoming links to your sites, more than 80% (or even 90%) are originating within the same group. This is almost a texbook example of a "bad neighbourhood" as Google defines it.
There are no hard figures known. But unless you can make sure that at least half of your incoming links are coming from independent sources at all times, I wouldn't even think of such a cross linking arrangement.
If we take for right the fear for combining duplicate content AND interlinking than what would you say if I just provide the content to the other 7 sites with no links but just the internal ones? I think that this would improve the importance of each of the 7 sites and their PR as well (am I correct??).
Not really. Internal pages (links) do not improve PageRank. Although PR can be transferred from page to page it will not help you go up a level. Example: a 1 page web site with inbound links from other sites has developed a PR6 - adding a million internal pages to your 1 page site will not get that first page to PR7.
The first page will transfer some PR to direct linked pages and they will tranfer a little less to the next level and so on.
PageRank was developed as a means to establish topic authorities based on what others think of your site/page and/or content. The more independent sites link to you the more authoritative you must be to a specific topic or theme. Artificially inducing PR will get you at the levels Bird has indictated will most likely get you banned from Google.
Regarding your advice for directory listings, most of the sites are already listed on DMOZ in several categories. But this seems not enough for me...
There are many more directories Euroseek, whatuseek, seekon, vlib.org, to name a few. Also a reciprocal link campaign.
[edited by: fathom at 1:10 pm (utc) on Sep. 8, 2002]
Just get one link from a high 7 or 8, I would focus my efforts in that area, it is much less work than what you propose.
Maybe I am very influenced by the paper I read yesterday but if it is right, then your opinion for internal links and the number of indexed pages of a site is wrong.
Here is a copied paragraph of the paper:
<snip>
Thanks also for the feedback on directories. I will certainly need them a lot!:)
[edited by: NFFC at 1:30 pm (utc) on Sep. 8, 2002]
[edit reason] Let's respect people's copyright please [/edit]
<Added> I have 4 sites
1. 23 pages PR7
2. 22 pages PR7
3. 1 page PR7
the other 600 pages PR7
According to your reference my 1 page site should be... PR1
Many more page can produce higher PR but only by other site owners having that much more content to find and potentially wanting to link to you.
[edited by: fathom at 1:19 pm (utc) on Sep. 8, 2002]
I am sorry but as far as I know this not true. The PageRank is not based only on the PR of the page that you get a link from but it depends also from the number and quality of links on that page. I would prefer 1 link from a PR4 page with no other external links than 5 links from PR8 that host 20 external links.
Fathom:
I am not sure about the trueth of the paper but it seems to be a scientific ongoing project. It is the only kind of scientific work on PageRank that I have found until now. At least, it convinced me...:)
I think you are dangerously simplifying the concept I mentioned :). The number of internal pages is NOT certainly the only or maybe the main factor for PR. But it seems to be one of them. The models presented on the paper have different results on the PR of the home and deeper pages of a site.
It says that the Extensive Interlinking mainly increases the average PR of internal pages but the Hierachical model increases mainly the home page. It provides also some examples and countings for the PR.
I do have a deeplinked web page that has a few hundred independent links to it. I'm hoping that (at the rate of linkage there) it will beat the main page to PR8.
As before, the more pages you have (content) the greater change of picking up new links, and I believe it is far better to have many pages in a site receiving PR and tranferring around to other site pages than attempting to get the home page up to the next level only so it can transfer it from one point.
I'll take the links from the PR8.
It says that the Extensive Interlinking mainly increases the average PR of internal pages but the Hierachical model increases mainly the home page. It provides also some examples and countings for the PR.
Extensive interlinking will allow more pages to receive a high transfer of PR and those will transfer again.
But if you have multiple pages with multiple independent PR coming in then PR transfers can superimpose allowing the greatest amount of site pages to share the highest PR.
The PR scale is most likely logarithmic, so the link from a PR8 that has 20 external links will be worth significantly more than a link from a PR4 page with no other external links.
2. Not deep folders: We will not use deep URLs and certainly not more than 2 roots deep.
i think you might have gone the toolbar trap. the google toolbar sometimes guesses PR for new or dynamic (i.e. unindexed) pages. it does this guesses mostly by taking the frontpage's PR and counting down 1 for each directory level. however this has nothing to do with real PR. your directory structure doesn't (exceptions see below) influence PR, only the link structure does.
exceptions: the length of the URL could (many believe so) influence your likelyness to get indexed or even your PR. (i.e.:take short URLs). also dynamic URLs are less "liked" by google, especially if they have many variables and long strings. details unknown.
fathom vs. aris:
in my opinion both of you are somehow right. aris is right because the theory says that each page has a starting value which it can pass on to other pages (multiplied by decay factor, in aris' paper being 0.8). this means that more pages also mean more total PR in the system.
fathom is right because in practice many pages don't really help (unless they themselves attract new incoming deep links). reason: google decides on crawling depth based on PR. sh*tty pages simply won't get indexed, so don't count in the paper's theory.
take myself: i have a site where 4.6 million users have their own personal website (comparable with WebmasterWorld's profiles), with up to 20 pages each. makes 10 million+ pages. however only 120k are in the index so only these 120k backlinks to my frontpage count in terms of PR. i'm now starting a campaign trying to make my users link their own page on my site from their personal homepages to get in new PR.
bottom line: it pleases google what pleases the users: good content, good usability, no tricks.
The meta tags of the 7 sites (and all their pages) have been modified in order to match better our site content.
meta tags won't help you much on google. google to my knowledge ignores the meta keywords totally.
aris, your list of to do's contains some good measures but i wouldn't focus too much on PR. (and if, i'd do it the way NFFC says.) PR is heavily overestimated, also in these forums. see the thread "100 variables [webmasterworld.com]". i would rather follow brett tabke's advice in "26 steps to a successful site in google [webmasterworld.com]".
muesli
[edited by: muesli at 2:33 pm (utc) on Sep. 8, 2002]
Unfortunately, we've just had to do the third edit in this discussion. We'd like to keep it open rather than remove it or close it, but we can only do so if there are no further edits necessary. Links to previous discussions here or to recognized Google Page Rank University papers are the exception.
Thanks for your help and cooperation.
There are not many of those around.....and with PR only being part of the logarithm, I would more than assume that PR8's, though simply having more PR, will have some king of extra authority based on it's arrival to that sort of PR.
DMOZ ain't PR10 for nothing, neither is Google. The information is trusted with its authority
Main page has say PR7 -- 10 million page of your complete site were actually indexed in Google each having a link back to the main page but none have there own developed PR (inbound links), their PR is only from a transfer.
Even if all 9,999,999 had a direct link from the main page so that the most PR could be transfer, I don't believe you can increase to a higher PR level (PR8) because the external influences are not there to support.
In this case all you would need is one link from DMOZ and just keep adding web pages and eventually you would become a PR10.
Unless maybe the google index itself provides some kind of influence...
Interesting.
[edited by: fathom at 2:50 pm (utc) on Sep. 8, 2002]
I haven't read past the first page of the paper you seem to be basing your strategy on. However, if you read this first page again it should give you a clue as to where your strategic efforts should be focused. Look at what it says about the Order of Ranking in Google:
1. Find all pages matching the keywords
2. Rank accordingly using 'on the page factors'
3. Calculate inbound anchor text
4. Adjust the results by PageRank scores
So according to the very paper that you are basing your strategy on, PageRank is only fourth in Google's Order of Ranking. Your first priority therefore should be (2) 'on the page factors' <snip>. Your second priority should be (3) the anchor text used in inbound links (this is where you CAN benefit from your other seven sites). Efforts to boost your PageRank (4) should only assume third place in your order of priorities (according to the paper).
You say you have just finished a reconstruction project which will move most of your pages from dynamic to static URLs. Thats the way to go. Now I'd suggest looking more closely at on-the-page optimisation techniques for this content (plenty of clues here on WebmasterWorld) rather than jumping on the PageRank (PR) bandwagon.
Putting all your eggs in Google's PR basket is a recipe for disaster. You only need to read through the various PR0 threads on these forums to know that Google doesn't always operate logically or even 'play fair' with regard to spam policies and penalties (doesn't matter how scientific your research paper is if Google decides to change the rules mid-game).
And even if you do manage to gain an increase from PR7 to PR8, there's no guarantee that your position in Google's SERPs will rise. Again, reading through Google threads on these forums should demonstrate that the algo is tweaked every month - some months PR will be more important, other times it will be page title or keyword-in-domain name, or some other factor. The bigger picture seems to be that PageRank is gradually decreasing in importance in the Google algo, so are you sure you are focusing your efforts in the right places?
[edited by: NFFC at 2:42 pm (utc) on Sep. 8, 2002]
[edit reason] Let's keep general and not focus on a specific paper [/edit]
The PR of a page can never be higher than the highest PR page that links to it. If you want to be a PR8 then you need at least a PR8 linking to you.
Reciprocal links from a multitude of lowish PR pages is a strategy deader than disco, imho.
