Pagerank sculpting best practices for e-commerce websites
-
What is currently the best practice to not let pagerank flow to policy, contact and other less important pages on an e-commerce website? Pages have to be visible on the home page, (currently in the footer) so unfortunately they cannot be moved to a "single" url.
How likely is that a PR5 home page can sculpt PR4 first category pages if the # of outgoing links are at a reasonable number and structured well?
Currently the home page is PR5, but category pages are only PR3 - and not structured properly...
-
Rand wrote an article about footer links some time ago that still stands up well today: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/footer-link-optimization-for-search-engines-user-experience
I'd say if you are duplicating links, it's a good time to re-examine your navigation.
-
I have to agree with most of what Stephen is saying. The whole concept of PageRank sculpting can quickly can quickly fall into a murky debate filled with dangerous half-truths and misguiding answers.
The simple answer is to make sure your less important pages are less important in your navigation. Google will still assign a certain amount of PageRank to these links/pages, but other link signals such as placement, context and relevance will more than compensate.
The real question is - how do you get your category pages to rank higher? In the days of Penguin, higher PageRank via sculpting through site-wide navigation links probably isn't the way you want to go.
I'd try to bolster the category pages with natural, in-body links contained within great articles/content on my site. For example, whenever we talk about link building here at SEOmoz, we often reference the link building category. This category is not linked to in the universal navigation, except in the sidebar of the blog.
By using links like the one I just inserted, I can not only vary the anchor text, but I just added relevance and context to the link, giving a possible boost to the ranking signals.
Regardless, I hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!
-
I'm confused about this as well. @Stephen, are you saying that at this point it isn't a best practice to nofollow, hide, or otherwise limit the number of internal links leaving an important page?
I'm in a similar position as Dancing Webmasters: one of the sites I manage has a lot of navigational footer links that are also shown in the header and side navigation bars. My first instinct was to simply remove most of them, knowing that the standard nofollow PR sculpting techniques have been dead for years. Are you saying that at this point it doesn't matter how many links are on any given page, in terms of page authority?
I already know that PR isn't a top factor anymore, but it was my understanding that the overall authority of a page would be diluted by having a large number of links on that page. That's not true?
Thanks
Kyle
-
Hi Stephen,
Thanks for your reply. I understand your message, and I am not that concerned about PR. However when you compare search results (urls that are ranking for certain keywords) PR is still a ranking factor. I know it is only one of the many, but it is still there. Now I can also see that sites with good internal linking structure have better "toolbar" PR breakdown, than sites without it (I am comparing sites with no external links to these deep links).
So if there is no pagerank sculpting, why do these pages have PR in the first place?
Also what is the current situation with "nofollow" links in terms of the above?
-
There is no advice, page rank sculpting died a while back.It was replaced by decent keyword research and strong IA
You can combine pages into a single page if you like. Links don't have to go to unique pages, they can go to anchors within a page
The way you are using PR, I don't think it means what you think it means. Forget about PR really
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
-
How do stop lost backlinks from website?
I have checked my backlinks through ahref tool. Daily some backlinks are removed bases of ahref tool, so how can stop removing backlink of my website. Please suggest me.
Link Building | | surabhi60 -
What to do with high-traffic pages that are not related to e-commerce?
Hello folks! We run a webshop selling wine and spirits, which obviously serves the purpose to generate revenue. To add further value to our customers, we have a section on the site, suggesting food recipes. The main purpose of that section is to inspire and educate about how wine and foods can be combined. Rankings are getting higher on "important" keywords for our business, in terms of products and product categories. However, the recipe pages, which are less important, are getting much more organic traffic. So here comes my question: Having "less important" pages that do not convert in terms of purchases, but however do get loads of organic traffic, what could I do with these pages, in terms of SEO? Could they be used to pass link juice to other, more "important" pages, that we actually want to rank on? Thanks!
Link Building | | jyskvin0 -
Links on Charity websites?
Do links on link pages or home pages work on unrelated sites, I know if a site is unrelated and the content is related it puts a similarity in the link to helps it's worth but with just a link on a links page (5-10 other links not a directory) does this pass any power or is it a bad idea.
Link Building | | BobAnderson0 -
The best way to spend 4 hours/day on offsite SEO?
I have an assistant who is able to do 4 hrs of SEO work for me every day. I don't have much onsite SEO work for him to do, and he's not skilled for social media management, so I'm thinking the best thing to have him do is manual link building. So far I've had him create a spreadsheet of more than 1,000 blogs and directories that relate to the subject matter of our websites, and had him include the domain authority of each and if they use the "nofollow" attribute on their links. Next I will have him start adding comments/submissions that include links back to our sites, starting with the highest DA sties and ones without the "nofollow" attributes. Do you agree this is the best way to have him spend his time? Are there other tasks you would highly recommend? Ryan
Link Building | | GreenHatWeb0 -
Best SEO Link Building Company (textlinkbrokers.com or thinkbigsites.com) ?
We are looking into outsourcing the bulk of our link building. And, so far, I am looking at two different SEO Agencies. textlinkbrokers.com and thinkbigsites.com Has anyone had any experience in working with either of these companies? Has anyone had any great results with a different SEO Link Building Company? Thanks!
Link Building | | FSS0 -
Best way to get more keywords to rank
I have a flash site and have been very successful at getting my keywords that are in my site title and also in the text of my page to rank well. What is the best way to get additional keywords to rank without increasing the text on your page. Is it just getting more anchor-text backlinks pointing your site with the new keywords in the text?
Link Building | | photoseo10 -
What is the best way to seek out good incoming links?
I get "form letter" type requests for links all the time from companies whose product has absolutely no relationship to mine. I always decline them. But I really want to build up link juice, and I'm wondering how to begin. Is the "form letter" all right to send or should it be more personal? I sell tablecloths; I assume I should go to home decor companies? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | go4linens0 -
How do I link specific keywords to a specific URL on my landing page? i.e.-Cloud Computing
Example keyword Cloud Computing California. How do I link this keyword on SeoMoz to a specific URL on my landing page?
Link Building | | SteelsmithGroup970