PageRank Simplified: Part 2

In Part 1 of this series on PageRank: Simplified we talked about the purpose of PR and why you should care about PageRank.  We touched a little bit on the importance of linking…but didn’t get into the why or how of it…that’s what we’re going to do here.

Go back to PageRank Simplified: Part One

Designing and Implementing a Strong Linking Structure

A strong internal linking structure will ensure that your website (or collection of pages) will achieve maximum PageRank (PR) in the right places.  In other words – your website has a certain amount of PR it can pass around to itself, and by strategically connecting your collection of pages you can allow important pages to achieve a higher PR than less-important (non-landing pages).

The maximum amount of PageRank that any given collection of pages can attain is equal to the number of pages in the collection.  So a 5 page system can only achieve a maximum PageRank of 5.  It is possible to fall short of this maximum value if your website is not linked properly.

Diagram 1 shows a solid linking structure that is able to achieve the collections maximum PR value of 5.

As you can see the linking structure in Diagram 2 has one page that is hanging – unconnected to the other pages in the collection.  This will negatively impact the PageRank Value of the entire collection.

Link Sculpting

There is difference between a well linked collection of pages, and an optimally linked collection of pages that is designed to achieve specific goals.  Link sculpturing ensures that your websites PageRank is passed to the appropriate pages and that none of the collections PR is wasted on less important pages within the collection.  So while EVERY page within your site may seem important not every page is intended to be a landing page, and therefore not every page should be treated equally.

In diagram 3 you see a linking structure that is designed to provide the maximum amount of PR to Page-1.  In this example Page-1 would most likely be the sites homepage and would link directly to the other 4 pages in the collection.  Page-1 then receives 4 links in return (one from each page) increasing its PR value within the collection.  While this example is oversimplified for the purposes of this article, this type of linking structure is typical of hierarchical site navigation schemes.

Diagram 4 gets a little more complicated – showing a linking structure that is similar to that of diagram 3, but includes – not only a homepage – but also what could be perceived as an optimized landing page within the site collection.

By carefully considering which pages within the collection link to (or vote for) each other you are able to pass PageRank strategically and achieve your desired results; and by not wasting PR on less important pages (that would not be targeted though organic search anyway) you are allowing your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on your collections optimized and targeted pages to reach their full PR potential – resulting in your pages ranking higher in relative Google Search results.

So take a look at your site linking structure and figure out where there is wasted PageRank being passed, and direct that waste towards your targeted and optimized pages.

It shouldn’t take long before your pages are ranking higher and showing up in more search results.

This blog is Part-2 of the series PageRank Simplified.

Tagged as: PageRank, SEO