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Internal linking strategy

and PR distibution to internal pages

         

Marketing Guy

6:10 pm on Mar 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Anyone have good theories for this? :)

From what I've seen on a typical heirarchal navigation structure, is that the top level page (index.htm) has xPR.

Then each directory down has x-1PR.

This can be attributed to PR calculation algo (I don't recall the specifics, but bascially a page gives it's own PR*0.9 to a page it links to, or thereabouts).

But, we have all seen examples where the top level page and the next level pages see the same PR.

There could be a couple of things that could account for this:

1. Internal pages are directly linked to from other sites - therefore boosting the PR of that page.

2. Just a numbers game.

For example, index.htm (PR 5.9) will have a PR5. Then a page it links to may have a PR5 also (PR5.9 * 0.9 = PR5.3).

3. Internal linking structure.

It's entirely possible to design a linking strucure in such a way as to more evenly distribute PR throughout your site.

This is why I started this thread - just to chuck around some ideas.

===My own method (shhh! dont tell anyone)================

I make it up as I go along! ;)

Seriously I do! :)

The Google algo is based on logic. It's spots spam because spammers conform to a certain pattern - text colour / BG colour same, network of sites interlinked, etc.

It cant cope with random actions.

The problem is, neither can your users, so a happy medium can be met.

I have a site where the homepage, all of the main section pages, and several (around 10%) of the content pages are all PR5.

There are no inbound links to these pages that I can tell. Granted, I could just have a high PR5 homepage that could be giving the other pages a low PR5 (who knows?).

I have mixed the traditional linking methodology (main nav at top, side and bottom) with the inclusion of random (well, not random, but semi targetted links) and a selection of alternating links (I change from time to time).

This combined with an on-page linking strategy (related content, forum threads, resources, etc), I have been able to achieve a fairly consistent PR throughout my site.

*****NOTE*****

One exception to this is the discussion forum, as it doesn't really lend itself well to my *plans*. :)

There are other basic things you can do as well - sitemap noteably - that also help out.

Does anyone have any random or actual theories on Internal link development? Found anything to be particulalry useful?

Scott :)

Marcia

9:48 am on Mar 29, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Scott, is it primarily PR you're looking at as the foundation for the linking structure? If so, it's not at all incompatible with good, user-friendly navigation.

It would be mainly Google we'd have to consider, since internal distribution of PR is strictly a Google concern. ciml started a great thread a while back on just this subject. I'll try to dig it out so that we can reference it to re-open the topic.