Do external links drain PageRank?
-
Example: A page has 100 links, 90 internal links and 10 external links. The page has a Google internal PR of 1000.
The question is: Is the pagerank that flows to the internal links being calculated taking into account all links on the page (internal + external) or only the 90 internal links? E.g. is the PR that flows to the internal links 1000/100 or 1000/90? Are links to external sites "votes" that do not affect the internal PR flow?
Disclaimer: I understand that the maths behind the PR algo are more complex. This simplified example only serves to explain my question.
-
Agreed.
I believe it is important to have a "natural" link scheme in order to rank well. Sites that only receive but don't give might look unnatural. There must be some kind of "reward" in Google's algorithm for sites that link out to relevant, quality resources.
-
Yes, I agree that it cannot be in Google's interest to "penalize" a site for linking out to high quality, relevant resources. Google's algorithm is based on sites linking to each other so why should they discourage people to do that. So, thumbs up for high quality, relevant, editorial, ext. links; thumbs down for low quality ext. links.
-
Ah, the classic unanswerable question.
Many people have asked - and many people have guessed at the answer. There are numerous ways people have approached this "problem" - some nofollow outbound links, some use javascript to hide the links entirely from bots.
I keep coming back to the advice - what would you do if there were no search engines? Building your site to make sense for people is still the advice that google offers.
Personally, I like linking out to relelvant topical sites from my ecommerce sites. I'm not being stingy with links to helpful places. I do however nofollow all my comments - for obvious reasons.
-
Dear Florakel,
Google clearly mentioned couple of times that PR will be distributed equally to all links.
so to go back to your math, PR will be divided by 100 (1000/100). I encourage to link out to authoritative sites, because it will also tells google to which neighberhood you belong to.
-
According to your example, external links drain page rank.
Every link, whether internal or external gets the same juice to it.
Theoretically
EDIT: Better show my working since it didn't save last time
Whiteboard Friday - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-juice-is-loose
No Follow advice (but has nice diagrams to help you understand) - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-maybe-changes-how-the-pagerank-algorithm-handles-nofollow
Bonus thoughts - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/pagerank-link-patterns-the-new-flow-of-link-juice
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
-
Wordpress #comment links?
We just started our trial account and have the results from our first Moz Pro Site Crawl. It's showing that we have a large portion of our pages have 'Too Many Links' and I'm trying to determine exactly what this means and how to fix it. The article referenced is from 2011 and doesn't fully address what I'm looking for. Here are a few questions: 1. Can we lower the 'link count' by adding a 'no follow' or does too many links, count links regardless? The question being, is the only way to solve this by removing links or are their no follow or no index options that will prevent us from having this issue moving forward? 2. Comment Links: Our site is in Wordpress and I just recognized that each of the comment links are followed: https://screencast.com/t/b0CIKVafWw. These aren't links from our users, rather these are links within Wordpress and are structured like this: https://mysite.com/blog-post/#comment-6970. From my screenshot you can see they are highlighted as 'followed links'. Is there a setting within Wordpress to turn this off or is there another option I should consider? Should we just make these no index, no follow links? Will that solve the 'Too many links' problem? I searched through the Q&A's and couldn't find an answer directly to my question. Most were around people leaving links in the comments section, which isn't what I'm looking for. Thank you for any help you can provide.
On-Page Optimization | | FabulesslyFrugal0 -
Internal links are not indexed of the website
Some internal links are indexed and some not of the same page of the website, what is the so and what is the reason behind?
On-Page Optimization | | renukishor10 -
Thoughts on these footer links
I have a site that has about 20 footer links. A main Category and 4-5 links under each. The site is very large, so I feel they do have some value for navigation, and they don't blend in with the background at all. I know penguin was cracking down on footer links, but I don't feel theses are "spammy" links. Will it hurt long-term to leave these links, or should we pull them?
On-Page Optimization | | netviper0 -
How do you avoid getting hit for too many links with an ecommerce site?
On my campaign for www.fourcolormagnets.com one of my warnings was "too many on-page links". Is there any thing to do for ecommerce sites? and also, my page www.fourcolormagnets.com/rectangle-sizes.php is listed as having 744 links but, I count nowhere near that number. And idea where this comes from?
On-Page Optimization | | JHSpecialty0 -
Anchor text on outbound links on a blog, relevancy detrimental or positive?
We have a blog related to computer support, and we have been using guest posts and promotion of those posts to boost freshness and rankings of the blog. We have been restricting outbound links to prevent words such as 'computer repair, 'computer support' etc, because we were under the impression that if we want to rank for those words, we should only allow INCOMING links with that anchor text, and that outbound links from the page, would rob the other parts of the site of the link juice this page provides. My question is, is this wrong? Should I freely allow outbound links on my blog page that contain anchor text that I my self am trying to rank for? Or was I correct initially? Current the anchor text is in 'related' industries, such as mobile apps, technology news, etc...things that google might think are 'related', but not exactly what the site is about.
On-Page Optimization | | ilyaelbert0 -
Internal link to the home page
When building menus and other internal links, should the link to the home page be http://www.domain.com/ or http://www.domain.com/index.html or does it matter? Best,
On-Page Optimization | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
SEO Value of Within-Page Links vs. Separate Pages
Title says it all. Assuming that you're talking about similar content (let's say, widgets), which is better: using within-page links for variations or using separate pages? I.e., do we have a widget page and then do in-page links to describe green, blue, and red widgets, or separate pages for each type of widget? In-page pro: more content on a single page, thus more keywords, key phrases, and general appearance of real content. In-page con: Jakob Neilsen says they're confusing. Also, for SEO, you only get one page title, rather than a separate page title for each. My personal bias is for in-page, since I hate creating dozens of short pages for what could be on one page, but my suspicion is that separate pages are better for SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | maxkennerly0 -
Social media links/buttons - best practices
Has anyone tested social media buttons, to see which types, styles, and placements get the most clicks? Should they go at the top of an article, or are they OK at the bottom? Should the icons definitely have labels? Display # of tweets and Likes? How big should they be? My preference is for discrete buttons with a smallish, plain icon and a label. I don't display tweets or Likes, unless it's a healthy number. And I still think a "share by email" icon is important. I put them at the bottom of the article, to keep the home page uncluttered and lead the eye into reading the article. I'm also concerned about leaking rank from the homepage, especially for a site that's still establishing itself. But if moving buttons to the top gets more shares, that's probably better. Is there a Wordpress plugin that you really like? (I haven't found one yet - I'm still hardcoding my social media buttons.) Opinions are great, but test results are better! Can anyone share?
On-Page Optimization | | mattotoole1