Diluting Page Rank across 'unimportant' pages.

Do you need to link to copyright disclaimers on every page?

[jamie]

Hi,

read an interesting point by figment88, in which he said

Don't funnel lots of pr to other worthless pages like terms and conditions, privacy policies, about us, etc.

we have a footer bar on every page which has a link back to the home page (with prime keyword in it) a link to the site map, a link to about us and a link to legal notice

underneath is the copyright notice.

do we need the link to legal notice on every page - is there some sort of 'legal' justification / need (similar to needing a copyright notice)? or are we wasting valuable pr?

i will add that our site does get copied quite a bit.

if there is no need for it on each page, is it ok just to have one link going to it from the about us page?

cheers

p.s. the same probably applies to the about us link as well, which appears anyway in the top 'dropdown' navbar anyway. i simply included it as a text link, because the dropdown navbar is non-spiderable. but if what figment88 suspects is true, i added it there for exactly the wrong reasons! ;)

[born2drv]

I have links in my header/footer as well...

For unimportant links like contact us, about us, shipping information, privacy policy, security, etc... these all use javascript links... as a result they all have pageranks of 1 or 2.

For more important links like the "links" page, sitemap page, etc... they use regular links, and enjoy a healthy pagerank 5-6 :)

This way you get the links you want where you want, and the PR-allocation of your choice.

[union_jack]

One plus point to linking to non relevent pages I have found is that the non relevent pages usually are in your backward links, so they still work for you in some way.

of course it would be better if a more relevent page had the extra PR.

[vitaplease]

Using normal links for your unimportant pages can often lead to another side effect, they very frequently get stamped with the Fresh date ;)

[Jimmie]

vitaplease could you please explain more about what you mean about getting stamped with your fresh date....or someone explain that and is it a benefit or not....

I also have another question....in some of my incoming links from other sites, I have a link to my homepage and one to a sample page...meaning a quick peek at what I offer...I see that sample page is showing up in SERP's when my homepage is not...I am new and freshbot has me everywhere...is this practice of mine bad for any reason?

[born2drv]

Union Jack, If you think about it, my "self-penalized" PR1-2 pages still contribute to the site's overall PR and link scheme... It's just that since they are under PR4, they dont' show up in backward links or carry as much weight for link text.

I'd rather allocate my PR to my other more important pages. A PR6 privacy policy page to me seems wasteful, but that's just me ;)

[vitaplease]

Jimmie,

Do a Google search for: feedback form

and you will see many Fresh dates: 22 jan 2003

Those pages frequently get crawled by the Google Freshbot.
The day or next after, the pages show up with most recent content.

You might wonder what the benefit is of revisiting feedback forms every day,
but it seems that one of Google's ways of checking for topical content is looking at what pages recently got fresh new links towards them.
(how else can they detect new pages)

Check this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

and do a WebmasterWorld site search on Everflux.

[fathom]

A thought against the argument.

Don't funnel lots of pr to other worthless pages like terms and conditions, privacy policies, about us, etc.

PageRank is but 1 of 100 conditions for good ranking on your most important pages.

My take - the link anchor back to which ever important page, receives relevancy weight from worthless pages but only if Google can crawl them/find them.

If Javascript links are placed this doesn't happen thus less relevancy. And we all know that a PR5 can beat a PR7 in results, right?

If you do decide to go the JavaScript route - try feeding at least one page using normal links - and build a link corridor so googlebot can update periodically threading its way through all pages that are redundant to searching users.

[union_jack]

Another point I thought I should mention, if you have your links page on most of your sites pages you would have to agree it will be one of your more powerful PR pages and I know if I have a links page with a PR of 4-5 people will fight to swap links with you and you can be a bit more selective if you wish to be.

However if you have a links page of PR 1-2 most are not that interested. 'Im not!'

I get good quality link exchanges with this method.

[annej]

I see that sample page is showing up in SERP's when my homepage is not

I had this problem with a forwarding page a while back and put a no spider meta tag on it. It took a month or so but it isn't showing up in the serps anymore.

Of course if the sample helps people find your site you may just want to leave it in. How does your home page do in other search phrases or is is just not showing up with Google at all? Remember you aren't just optomzing your home page. You want folks to find lots of different pages through many search phrases.

Anne

[Jimmie]

Thanks anne..very helpful...I think I have no index..I better check, now that I think about it, obviosuly I don't or it wouldn't be showing up in google...lol

[Jimmie]

I forgot to answer if my homepage was showing up at all...sure, if I type my title verbatim, so I have zero competition...I come out #1...so, I'm in there...just now for my keywords, when I was at number 15 right after update.
Even the first week my site went onlin in Dec. (9th), I was never lower than page 8 in SERP's..but now I disappeared...even though I have more links, ect. It seems, I should have improved, not disappeared.

[wingslevel]

interesting discussion... for me, I don't want freshbot crawling my shipping terms page every other day (when he could be on my product pages). Also, there are so many necessary pages that link off of each page like about us, shipping, return policy, privacy, contact us etc. We went to one link for info - from here you could reach all of these pages. It works for pr, but, more importantly, it frees pages up from clutter and I think it makes the site navigate more efficiently.

[fathom]

I don't want freshbot crawling my shipping terms page every other day

A better or added option:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="Monday, December 31, 2004 23:59:59 GMT">

Googlebot will crawl and not fresh until after the expiry date.

[jamie]

fathom

that sounds like a great idea! didn't realise the expired meta was any use.

cheers

[Marcia]

You can link only to a main information page and then to the info sub-pages only from that one. All could then link back to the homepage and/or main sections of the site. That way the navigation and PR distribution is closer to being reflective of what's actually of most value for visitors, and there's the advantage of more instances of link text within the site.

The same principle can apply with outbound links pages. They're of value, or should be if they're on the site, but have less significance for the site itself than actual content or product pages.

It's assigning a hierarchy of importance, and while it affects PR distribution it's not manipulative because it's also accurate from a visitor standpoint.

To be honest, I prefer to have pages cached for all to see. I try not to walk on the edge, and the first thing I do when I see pages not cached is get suspicious and start digging. Some use no-cache for philosophical reasons but most don't get that pedantic about it.

[jamie]

after mulling around, i think we are actually going to leave the links in there.

we enjoy telling people 'about us' - the fact that they can trust us, that we have so much experience. reflects well on our online clients.

and we also get mighty annoyed at people copying us ;-) so the legal notice stays on there too ;)

good input though. thanks.

p.s. sometimes i think too much google is a bad thing - makes you start questioning all your motives.