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
-
Filter pages - Shopify
Hi there, /collections/living-room-furniture/black
Technical SEO | | williamhuynh
/collections/living-room-furniture/fabric Is that ok to make all the above filter/tag pages canonicalised with their main category /collections/living-room-furniture OR I keep them as it is, so /collections/living-room-furniture/black can rank for filter keywords, example: black living room furniture, /collections/living-room-furniture/fabric fabric living room furniture etc. Also, does it needs to be noindex, follow as well? Note - already removed the main category content from filter pages, updated meta tags as well. Please advice, thank you0 -
What to do with old conversion pages
Hey folks! I have a ton of old conversion pages from past trade shows, old webinars, etc that are either getting no traffic or very little. Wondering if I should just 404 them out? Here's an example: http://marketing.avidxchange.com/rent-manager-user-conference-demo-request-2015 For the pages getting traffic (from PPC, referral links, organic) my presumption is to keep those. The only problem is we have multiple instances of the same asset (prior marketers would just clone them for different campaigns), so in those cases should I 301 them to one version? Looking for advice on best practices here for future instances. Such as future trade shows, after we use the conversion pages at an event, should I just delete/404 them? Cleaning up old pages should I just delete/404? They don't have any value really and they're annoying to have hanging around. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Bill_King0 -
Google showing https:// page in search results but directing to http:// page
We're a bit confused as to why Google shows a secure page https:// URL in the results for some of our pages. This includes our homepage. But when you click through it isn't taking you to the https:// page, just the normal unsecured page. This isn't happening for all of our results, most of our deeper content results are not showing as https://. I thought this might have something to do with Google conducting searches behind secure pages now, but this problem doesn't seem to affect other sites and our competitors. Any ideas as to why this is happening and how we get around it?
Technical SEO | | amiraicaew0 -
Unreachable Pages
Hi All Is there a tool to check a website if it has stand alone unreachable pages? Thanks for helping
Technical SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
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 -
Should i Change On Page Optimization ?
Hi, PC monitoring and computer monitoring software are our targeted keywords. Around 5 weeks ago, We created a page for pc monitoring software (home/pc-monitoring-software) and did some bookmarking and guest posts targeting PC monitoring software keyword. Now we are in Top 15 on Google for PC monitoring software keyword . Initially we were thinking to change content of around 2 year old home page to adjust computer monitoring software keyword and do SEO for this keyword. But few days ago, we noticed that our pc-monitoring-software page is already ranking in early fourties for computer monitoring software keyword as well. May be Google is giving advatage of being synonym of PC . Now we are thinking that we should optimize the PC monitoring software page for both computer and PC software keywords like adding "computer monitoring software" in addition to existing "pc monitoring software" in title and similalrly do other on page related work for Computer Mnitoring Software. We are also thinking of doing 301 redirect of existing pc-monitoring-software page to new computer-monitoring-software page which will be optimized both for PC and Computer. Please suggest me if it will help to get good ranking for both PC and Computer Monitoring software if we make above mentioned changes or we should not change the existing pc-monitoring-software page and shall stick to earlier plan of changing the home page to adjust for computer monitoring software.? I'm new to SEO, so want to make wise decision with your help instead of learning with failures. Thanks, shahzad
Technical SEO | | shaz_lhr0 -
Minimum # of words on a homepage?
When I design sites for clients I try to keep the homepage clean and simple. As a result, I usually end up with very little actual content. For SEO purposes. What is the minimum # of words that I should have on any given homepage to avoid being penalized by Google? Does it have to be at least 150 or something like that? Even though my internal pages have plenty? thanks, Martin
Technical SEO | | RogersSEO0 -
Ranking above PLACE PAGES
What does it take for results to show up above Place Page results. It seems like Google Local gets a lot of emphasis . Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | musillawfirm0