PR of homepage when other pages have more lniks
-
This is going to sound like such a newbie question. I don't know how I've been doing SEO all this time and haven't come across the answer.
It's usually true that a homepage will have the most backlinks, but what if it doesn't? What if an internal page has more links? Is it possible for an internal page to have a higher PR than a homepage?
Additionally, if I do on-page SEO for many internal pages of my site, will it only help those particular pages or will it give the whole site a boost, thus making the homepage rank higher in the SERPS?
-
Its not just from backlinks. I've got blogs where the homepage is PR1 but posts are PR3, due to social signals and shares of the post. This seems to be happening more recently.
-
No Panda problems. It's a legitimate business whose website I'm just trying to make as optimized as possible. www.stadriemblems.com
Most of our product pages only have about a paragraph of text in them like this one. I was hoping by adding five or six paragraphs of helpful information to all of those pages like this one that Google would consider the whole site more helpful rather than only the page.
I mean, individual pages have to count in some way toward the quality of the overall site in Google's eyes. I've always heard that it's a good thing to have a lot of indexed pages--as long as they're good. So if it's only individual pages that matter, then what's the difference between a site that has 1,000 quality pages vs. a two page site as far as home page ranking goes?
Is having 1,000 indexed pages only a good thing because you have 1,000 chances to rank for 1,000 different terms, and has no bearing on the homepage?
-
Great points Doug.
-
If those pages you write attract their own inbound links then the link-juice that flows into your site, into those pages, will also flow to the other pages on your site giving other pages on your site a boost too.
Don't just think of link juice as something that flows down from your home page.
Adding more (quality) content will also help your website rank for all those lovely long-tail keywords.
Just remember that it's not JUST about links/link-juice. The pages should have a purpose and be written for the audience you're targeting. Make sure you're thinking about answering their questions rather than your own, and provide them with the information they need.
-
Ingeneral (I have not seen your site or know what problems it might have), if your site was hit by panda then adding great content to all your pages would probably help your homepage rank better for your targeted keywords. However, I don't know if you are having a panda problem or just need to do more link building to your homepage and optimize it. A panda penalty can reduce the rankings of all the pages on a site.
Also, adding quality content that helps the user is never the wrong choice to make. However, if you are trying to get your homepage ranking better for a specific phrase and you don't have penalties/filters on the page. Then I would probably focus on link building and doing on page SEO for that page and funneling the link juice from the other high PR pages on the site to my homepage more efficiently.
I hope this helps.
Thanks,
Jason
-
So if I devote a lot of time to adding a lot of quality content to my site--lots of text and helpful information about our products, Google doesn't view the site in general as better and more informative, thus ranking the home page higher? All that extra text helps is just the page it's on?
-
Marisa,
Yes, it is possible for an internal page to have higher PR than the hompage. Sometimes a site will host a viral piece of content (infographic, quiz or an awesome blog post etc..) that will dramatically increase that pages PR. This is not a bad thing, but can be a very good asset.
On to your last question, depending on how you have your internal link structured the link juice coming into the site will help all your pages rank more aggressively in the SERPs. ingeneral onpage SEO will only help the page that you are optimizing ranking more aggressively. However, if you are optimizing your internal links to other pages, this will help those pages rank better too. So in short, it depends on what you are doing. If you are just optimizing the Title tag, meta description, H1 tag and keywords on the page. You are really only helping that page rank better. However, if you are linking to other pages from within the body copy and optimizing your internal links to pass more juice. That will help all your pages rank better.
Remember that google doesn't rank site, it ranks pages.
I hope this helps.
Thanks,
Jason
-
All those deep pages that have lots of back links also pass on page rank via their links too and I bet that in most cases pages on a website have one or more links back to the homepage...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What should I name my Wordpress homepage?
I work almost exclusively in wordpress now. And I always hesitate when it comes to naming a site's homepage. I have to give it a name - right? I usually pick the business name or /home. And then that is identifies as the site's static homepage in the Wordpress settings and it works just fine. But I've started to get warning that it is an issue because it creates redirects. For example, I just ran the Ryte service analysis on a website and it warned me about "Non-indexable pages with high relevance" and it's basically my homepage that has 29 incoming links that "passes all pagerank to https://ourdomain/home But what am I supposed to call my homepage if not "Home"? It's not like the old days where anyone has to type it in. The root domain loads the homepage just as it should. Can anybody advise me regarding best practices for what to name a Wordpress homepage for good SEO? With thanks in advance for your help.
Technical SEO | | Dandelion0 -
Why are only a few of our pages being indexed
Recently rebuilt a site for an auctioneers, however it has a problem in that none of the lots and auctions are being indexed by Google on the new site, only the pages like About, FAQ, home, contact. Checking WMT shows that Google has crawled all the pages, and I've done a "Fetch as Google" on them and it loads up fine, so there's no crawling issues that is standing out. I've set the "URL Parameters" to no effect too. Also built a sitemap with all the lots in, pushed to Google which then crawled them all (massive spike in Crawl rate for a couple days), and still just indexing a handful of pages. Any clues to look into would be greatly appreciated. https://www.wilkinsons-auctioneers.co.uk/auctions/
Technical SEO | | Blue-shark0 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Content > Wordpress Comments Page
Hello Moz Community, I've create a campaign in Moz and received hundreds of errors, regarding "Duplicate Page Content". After some review, I've found that 99% of the errors in the "Duplicate Page Content" report are occurring due to Wordpress creating a new comment page (with the original post detail), if a comment is made on a blog post. The post comment can be displayed on the original blog post, but also viewable on a second URL, created by Wordpress. http://www.Example.com/example-post http://www.Example.com/example-post/comment-page-1 Anyone else experience this issue in Wordpress or this same type of report in Moz? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | DomainUltra0 -
Micro-sites for Landing Pages?
We are working with a site that is difficult at best to update. The client intends to re-do the site in 18 months or so but needs to start generating more traffic (and sales) now. What are thoughts on creating landing pages as micro-sites that point to the current site conversion page as a stop gap? Beyond not sharing authority is there any known penalty? By the way they don't have tremendous ranking right now - often bottom of page two - and the micro-site won't duplicate any content.
Technical SEO | | InformaticsInc0 -
Testimonial pages
Is it better to have one long testimonial page on your site, or break it down into several smaller pages with testimonials? First time I've posted on the forum. But I'm excited! Ron
Technical SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
Determining When to Break a Page Into Multiple Pages?
Suppose you have a page on your site that is a couple thousand words long. How would you determine when to split the page into two and are there any SEO advantages to doing this like being more focused on a specific topic. I noticed the Beginner's Guide to SEO is split into several pages, although it would concentrate the link juice if it was all on one page. Suppose you have a lot of comments. Is it better to move comments to a second page at a certain point? Sometimes the comments are not super focused on the topic of the page compared to the main text.
Technical SEO | | ProjectLabs1 -
New EMD update effected my mom's legit author page? From page 1 in SERP to nowhere for her name
I think my mom's site, MargaretTerry.com was hit by this update for her name "Margaret Terry". Went from bouncing around the first page on google.com and .ca all the time to nowhere on the index. The results are now very strange, a mix of Youtube, linked in, and small book stores that she has done events at recently to promote her first book. I was checking after some of my SEO buddys were freaking out about their EMD's getting hit on Sunday. She is an aspiring author with a book coming out this month. There is obviously no ads or spam content on the site... I have never done SEO for it either except a bit of on page I guess. It sucks that people might be grabbing her book soon and when they Google her name nothing shows up. This couldn't have really happened at a worse time. Not to mention the hours spent building the site to her liking, free of charge of course 🙂 Is there anyone I can contact there to help me out? Shouldn't and EMD that is someones name still rank when you search their name?
Technical SEO | | Operatic0 -
Too many on page links
Hello I have about 800 warnings with this. Example of one url with this problem is: http://www.theprinterdepo.com/clearance?dir=asc&order=price I was checking and I think all links are important. But I suppose that if I put a nofollow on the links on the left which are only for navigation purposes I can get rid of these warnings. Any other idea?
Technical SEO | | levalencia10