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I'm new so please flame gently. ;-) I've been lurking for
a while and am quite impressed with the amount of
information and professionalism on this forum.
I've seen numerous posts proving and disproving that the
number of outgoing links on a page inversely affects PR.
My most troubling site to get ranked is an online directory
with a page for each state in the country. The page content
is identical for each state except for a table containing
the links.
The states with more links get lower page rank, going all
the way down to zero for the biggest state. Seems to me
the PR should be going in the other direction.
Conversly, my "site map" page is huge and has a PR 3.
My highest -- home page is PR 4. Abysmal!
My link tables have a link to the city for each row.
This means a city with 100 targets will have the
city page linked 100 times. Could Google consider this
spam? It would be inconvenient for the visitor, but I
could move the city links out of the table and only link
once, but that seems counter-productive. Why would a SE
want my page to be less usable?
Any Ideas?
-GT
Outgoing links are not part of a page's PageRank score (if you can show me otherwise please do).
Your PR scores are determined by the pages that link to a given page. Inbound links to a page are what matter. Analyze your internal linking structure, and that will tell you why you pages PR scores are what they are.
For example, if you had two PR4 pages, one with 1000 links, and one with 2 links, the pages linked from the 1000 outbound link page would probably be PR 2 or PR 1. The pages linked from the page with only 2 outbound links would be either PR4 or PR3.
Outbound links divide up the amount of PageRank that one page gives to another. It does not have any effect on the score of that page itself.
However, for a typical multi-page web SITE, the # and location of outgoing links can and do have an impact on the total PR for the site, as well as individual web pages within it. This can even result in changes to the PR on the same page containing the outbound links, due to PR feedback effects!
The reason for this is that some of those inbound links for a web page are going to be INTERNAL links from other pages of your web site.
For example, consider a sub-page whose only outbound link is to your home page, resulting in all of the PR credit from that page going to your home page. That link is also an inbound link for your home page, and just like any other inbound link, contributes to your home page's PageRank.
Now, add 9 outbound links to that sub-page. This results in the outbound PR credit from that page being divided-up equally among all of the links, and the amount of PR being passed to the home page from that page being reduced. The contribution of that inbound link to your home page decreases accordingly, resulting in a reduction of PR.
GamblinTraveler, there are ways that you can structure your site to "re-distribute" your total PageRank across your site, as well as to minimize any PR loss.
A "flat" structure with a lot of outbound links can cause the problem you are describing, try adding more "depth" to your site's structure, and moving most of your outbound links to pages that are farther down in your site's structure. Limit the number of internal links to these pages. You may also want to limit or eliminate any links to outside sites from your home page.
Once you undestand how multi-page PageRank interaction works, you can optimize and contol where your site's PageRank goes.
While what you say is true, new users must furst understand the truth behind what egomaniac said.
I highly recommend reading the original pagerank documents and checking out the simple diagrams.
You have to walk before you can run, and when it comes to pagerank, most people are still crawling.
Heck, most people think PageRank refers to your position in the SERPs.
I agree, BigDave. My PageRank discussion was more for egomaniac's benefit. Unfortunately, the invalid belief that outbound links cannot effect a site's PR is a common misconception, one that has been repeated so many times that many SEOs assume it must be true.
The second half of my post was addressed to GamblinTraveler. It seemed that his site's structure might be the cause of his current problems, and I wanted to provide him with some advice on how he might improve his rankings.
I agree with most of what you said in your post. We're all trying to help each other out on understanding things here. There is one thing you said a couple of times that I want to clarify for readers. PageRank scoring is about individual PAGES. There is no such thing in Google's algo as a PR score for a "site".
I fully agree that a collection of pages can and should be viewed as a "system" with PageRank flowing in, around, to and from each of them. But Google never scores PageRank for a group of pages just because they constitute the same "site" within a given domain.
Now I don't think you believe that either as you show a very good understanding of how to use PageRank. When you use such language as the following however:
> the invalid belief that outbound links cannot effect a site's PR is a common misconception.
> the total PR for the site
... it is confusing to people who are trying to learn about PageRank and Google.
PageRank scores individual PAGES only. [repeated for emphasis to new readers]
There is no such thing as a PageRank score for your "site". The PageRank for one's homepage is the PageRank score for that PAGE. It is not the score for one's site (because there is no such thing).
Your advice about optimizing one's linking structure to direct and control the PageRank flowing within one's site is spot on. I have advocated that before here at WebmasterWorld and it can have powerful effects on the rankings for individual pages.
Outbound links do affect the PR score of other pages. That's what PageRank is all about. For purposes of calculating PageRank score, the pages pointing at any given page are all just pages, irregardless of what domain they are on.
There are other elements to Google's algo. It is widely speculated that another important factor is whether inbound links pointing at a given page are internal to your site or external to your site. I believe that this is probably a factor in how Google ranks pages for a particular search. It has nothing to however with a page's PageRank score.
PageRank is about individual PAGES. We must also keep in mind that while PageRank is one of a handful of important variables in Google's algo, it is not the only one.
<<the total PR for the site>>
<... it is confusing to people who are trying to learn about PageRank and Google.
PageRank scores individual PAGES only. [repeated for emphasis to new readers]>
PR is assigned only to individual pages, but the PR of a site can be calculated by simply adding together the PR (not the toolbar PR, but the PR in the background that we don't see) of the site's indexed pages.
The site's total PR (probably) doesn't have anything to do with an individual site showing in the SERPs, but knowing that a site with a greater total PR has more ability to focus that on a single page or set of pages, which can be important information for a webmaster.
First off, I would agree that those just learning about PageRank should start with the basics.
However, I do not think that means we should limit all of our discussions to the least common denominator, for fear that anything beyond that might "confuse" a beginner, particularly when the discussion is relevant to the problem at hand.
That idea reminds me of the middle ages, when knowledge was reserved for the elite, as they did not want to confuse the "common folk" with things like reading!
This site has some of the sharpest members of any of the SEO forums I have seen, that is one of the reasons I enjoy coming here. I expect that at least a few of them already know how to "walk" and might enjoy seeing something more advanced once in a while.
To address your comments -
Total PR for a site is just what it says, the total PR of all of the pages on your web site.
Total PR is an important concept when you move beyond the simple single-page PR model (walking) and are trying to improve the rankings for a typical multi-page web site.
It is like gold, it is the total amount of PR you have available. You can do things to "shift" your PR around between your pages, increasing the PR of certain pages on your site in order to increase those page's rankings (i.e. - moving your gold around). However, the total PR (total gold you have to work with) remains the same.
However, there are ALSO things you can do that can change you site's total PR, which can cause an increase or drop in your rankings for your entire site!
For example, the structure of you site and placement of your outbound links can cause the total PR of your site to drop. (some of your gold gets stolen). This can result in a loss of rankings for your site.
(Just to clarify, such changes that effect your site's total PR are the result of the site-wide increase or decrease of the individual PR's of most/all of the pages on your site.)
Note that is this case we are not just talking about shifting PR around, but an actual increase or decrease in the ranking of our entire site!
Naturally, if we can design out sites to minimize this effect and maximize our total PR (and thus our rankings), this would be a good thing to do. That is why it is good to get beyond the simplistic single-page analysis and learn to understand the interrelationships of your site's PR as a whole.
"I've seen numerous posts proving and disproving that the number of outgoing links on a page inversely affects PR."
aspdesigner, I agree with your ideas. I figured the same things out for myself awhile ago and have used those concepts to great benefit in my rankings.
I think that those ideas though are off-topic to this particular discussion thread, which is why I made the comments above that I did.
If you want to start another thread about managing the flow of PageRank in, out, and within a site, then I'll happily participate.
Sorry to hear of your ranking problem. As other member have suggested there could be many reasons why this has occurred and we may not have the exact information to truely address the specific problem, however based on what you have provided here, here are my comments
My most troubling site to get ranked is an online directory
with a page for each state in the country. The page content
is identical for each state except for a table containing
the links.The states with more links get lower page rank, going all
the way down to zero for the biggest state. Seems to me
the PR should be going in the other direction.
Assuming you mean outgoing links (off site)- this is unlikely to be a direct cause to the PageRank problem.
Your site link structure is more likely transferring PageRank to specific pages but because there is limited PageRank to go around only certain page appear to receive it at least to a degree that you can see it.
Conversly, my "site map" page is huge and has a PR 3.
My highest -- home page is PR 4. Abysmal!
hmmm... according to Google your site map is the most important page of your site (the bot can reach every page from here) - and depending on how your actual link structure is depends how the remaining PageRank from the home is shared.
I suspect from the site map only a very small amount of PR is actual transferred to each individual page (from here anyway).
However, if all pages point to the site map as well then your developed PageRank can be streamed evenly through your site (at least to these important pages).
My link tables have a link to the city for each row.
This means a city with 100 targets will have the
city page linked 100 times. Could Google consider this
spam? It would be inconvenient for the visitor, but I
could move the city links out of the table and only link
once, but that seems counter-productive. Why would a SE
want my page to be less usable?
Spam probably not at all.
Ok - first - don't confuse PageRank with Ranked Position. PageRank is but one variable of 100 to determine the order of ranking in results.
The best thing you can do right now is determine which pages are the most important ones to get ranked. If this happens to be your homepage make sure all pages of your site link back to the homepage.
If the state pages are the second most important pages have all pages of that state link back to the main state page. This will help to evenly spread your developed PageRank around so top level pages get the most PageRank going to them.
If you have pages like "contact us" and "policy pages" etc. and these have PageRank -- JavaScript all links to them ("on-click" type links") except for "one" and then ensure these pages link out to important site pages so the PR within these pages get to somwhere important.
Once you have completed this - start requesting links to your site with highly relevant anchors - this will help develop more PageRank and more relevancy to your keywords and better ranked position.
Oh BTW - make sure your on site anchors "link text" mostly indicate the theme "keyword" of the page it links to.
I guess we can all agree with both points.
GamblinTraveler, do you have more than 100 links per page? Having too many links on a page is an easy way to loose some PageRank.
I understand the difference between serp listing placement and page rank, and this post is strictly PR related.
For a little more detail, I have 33 state pages that point to an average of 5 cities each (168 cities total) plus each target (cross-link) in that state. The biggest state page has over 500 cross-links plus another 100 off-site links. 56 of those cross-links point to one of 14 cities in that state.
56 cross-links to the same page is convenient for the visitor, but may look suspicious to the SE. Herein lies the crux of my post. Mind you, this is the state page with a PR of zero.
All pages link back to the home page. All city pages also link back to the state page. All target pages link back to the city and state pages.
Well, 500 is certainly more than the magic number of 100 that I've seen referenced for max links. In light of this, I understand many replies in this thread say 500 links dilutes the PR for each link and so the page is not sharing any of its PR. That's fine, I'm prepared to pay that price, but I see no reason for this page to have a PR 0 unless it's because of the number of links -- or some programming mistake -- has triggered the spam-alarm.
One more clue pointing to penalty is that this site gets 10 times more traffic from MSN than Google.
Again, thanks to everyone for your feedback.
The biggest state page has over 500 cross-links plus another 100 off-site links. 56 of those cross-links point to one of 14 cities in that state.
Cross-link infers that a link is leaving a domain to another domain (or sub-domain) and the "linked-to" domain is linking back. I don't think you mean this -- but not sure.
You should reduce this "500" links by at least 1/5 as ciml suggests. If we forget about PageRank for the moment - visitor usability is the greater issue.
A choice of 500+ links is a bad practice to get into. Few people would even wade though that many... and believe you are losing much more than PageRank.
A tab design may be more fitting (depending on how the site is design now).
I would highly recommend reducing to 25 - 50 links per page and have a "1-click" access to each subsequent page of links. This would be much more manageable for both visitor & PageRank.
In addition, I doubt a penalty has been applied - you really haven't said anything that would justify this distinction.
Reducing the link count per page and adding more pages would improve your situation greatly.
From what you have descibed, it sounds like virtually none of your PageRank is being re-circulated in your site.
Following are a few specific suggestions to help improve things for you -
* Remove those 100 outbound links from your upper-level (state) pages. Make a new page (Statewide Links) to hold them, one for each state. Place a SINGLE link from your main state pages to the corresponding new page. Do NOT cross-link to these new pages.
* Get rid of those 500 cross-links, they are causing the bulk of your PageRank to flow down and out, rather than re-circulate. Place only a SINGLE link from a state page to each city page for that state.
* If you MUST have all those cross-links (as a convenience to your visitors), then implement them using a non-spiderable approach (like javascript), so that Google doesn't follow them.
* Link to all of your upper-level state pages from all of the pages on your site. This will help re-circulate your PageRank.
* Consider adding more upper-level pages (pages linked directly to from your home page), such as About Us, etc. Link all of your other pages to them.
These changes should improve things considerably.
