Discussion: Internal Pages and PageRank

[David]

In case anyone has any questions or anything to add, I've started this thread to discuss Internal Pages and PageRank (http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/articlescript/Internal_Pages_and_PageRank.php).

[schmo]

I only have two main categories, so my home page is quite lonely. Should I raise the limit on featured listings/subcategories that show so there will be more words on the front page, or?

[David]

From a pure pagerank standpoint, if you have a low pagerank now, I would not add more links. However, adding more content is a good thing. You might want to investigate using the Main Content Area (I think that is Admin > Settings > Site) to add some text there, or even find some other methods to add useful content.

[Mary Hinz]

I agree. Having read many articles regarding page rankings, most of them pointed out that good content will really give much value to your page. Even if your page is simple but with interesting content, viewers will no doubt stay and take time to view or read what you offer or present.

What I do not know though, is how long does it usually take for your rank to move up. Is it also wise to seek help from SEO geniuses to help you get good content?

[David]

What you can't do is predict exactly how fast google will make changes. What you can do is keep making your content more and more worthwhile while you wait for better results.

As far as SEO geniuses, they are like politicians. You don't always know who you can believe. :)

[boblord666]

It's pretty hard to predict what Google does about anything. Following on from this theme I checked out a PR6 directory to see if and how PR was passed down. The major categories I checked had content but no links and had a PR5 so that may prove the content theory.

The next level down had no content, just links. A couple of them had PR4 with very few links but out of a small sample most had no PR even when they had more links. Why PR is passed in some instances and not in others only G knows. I'm thinking that site age has a lot to do with PR though.

[David]

In some cases (unfortunately) people buy their pagerank. Hopefully the case you spoke about is not one such case. My interpretation of that is similar to yours. It spreads in cycles over successive updates. More internal links to empty pages or just generally too many will bleed it off faster and unnecessarily. The only way to truly retain the internal pagerank sitewide involves getting some externals pointing to your internal pages, and to do that effectively involves building a site people love. If you look at webmasterworld, they literally have several hundred thousand pages that have pagerank, and I think everyone could benefit by studying their structure.

[boblord666]

Content visible to registered users only.

That is a service that we, as directory owners, can provide (fortunately) - one-way backlinks. And whether we like it or not, that is, in a very large number of instances, the only reason for our existence :rolleyes: .

The case in question no doubt has gathered a huge number of reciprocal links by some clever marketing. ie "you may have a link in our PR6 Directory by paying a few hundred dollars or by having a link back to us on your home page and only your home page."

[David]

As long as google lets sites like this keep their visible pagerank, regardless of how they got it, there will be a market for it. I realize I don't have to like this, but at the same time must accept the current reality. What is a little unfortunate is the people that buy the links without the knowledge their purchase will be for naught.

[mrrbob]

Page rank does not just "bleed down" from your index page. It also "Builds up" from your listing pages.

I own 2 business directories with over 15k page each. These are static, they are not based on any cms or dynamic system. Because they are static I have had to pay close attention to my menus, links and structure so the directory can be navigated by visitors and SE's coming in for indexing.

These are organized by category in one directory and by state for the other directory as one is city based and the other is category based and covers the entire USA. On the one that covers the entire USA I have each listing page linked back to the state index page. Each state index page is then linked back to the home/ index page.

My state index pages are all page rank 2 or 3 for a few of them. This has nothing to do with any links to them from outside sources [there are none], it is all a direct result of internal linking by hundreds of static business listing pages for each state being linked back to that state index page. My "up linking" structure was not always done like that. After I changed it to that style is when my state index pages got their page rank.

I am not sure this would apply to PHP Link directory but I assume it would as why not?

I do not claim to be any kind of expert on this I just wanted to throw it out there so any one building a PHP Link directory may benefit by my experience and my results if that is possible.

The page rank of my home page for these sites have never got passed 2 as no one really has ever linked to these site's home page even in almost 10 years they have been up.

This is why the page rank is not "bleeding down", it is "building up" for my state index pages.

I don't mean to contradict the article as I do believe page rank does also bleed down. You can build your page rank from the "bottom up" as I have done with proper up linking if all of your internal listing pages have the proper "link up" structure to your category index pages. I would guess the listing pages would all have to be indexed for this to work.

I would also make the claim this link structure goes a long way in helping SE spiders to navigate your site as the little buggers need a place to go after landing on your listing pages. Why not make it easy for them to "climb back up" then go on to the next listing page? Works very well for me.

Where I to build a new business directory using PHP Link directory I would try to structure it so the links from each business listing page links back to the state index page or maybe the business category page if the directory covered more then one business type. I would also want a home page/index page link available on each listing page header.

I also use a PHP based banner serving system that works to serve adsense text links and graphic banners on each listing page in every spot - top, bottom and sides as needed. If I need my other sites indexed I can pop over to my banner admin and get a link out to my new site and get spiders over their in a few minutes. Stay away from java for these types of systems as you may well know SE's prefer static links not java based links.

I do prefer to segregate my business directories into a single business category and not try to do a yellow pages thing and cover more then one category for every state.

I am interested in building more directories using a single business category and PHP Link Directory in the future. I need to look in to this and how exactly it could be done.

If I do it I hope I would have the option of controlling my "uplink structure" from each listing page. The other big thing would be the capability of importing a data base directly into PHP Link Directory.

Right now I have a good system for building static page directories but need to research and see if this could be done reasonably with a dynamic system like PHP Link Dir.

These 2 business directories have been the basic building block of my entire online portfolio as I have literally thousand of SE spiders on these directories every day. I can place a link to any site and get it completely crawled and in google/yahoo etc in a few days. No, links are not available, don't ask.

I have one install of PHP Link Directory being used as a private text link management system now. It has a mod done so it is all password protected and does not allow public viewing of any listing. The categories are able to be viewed publicly but I have these done as numbers so no one knows what the numbers mean. The RSS system is used to pass links to my other sites via a simple RSS system that displays links and text from each link description. This way I can make accounts for link buyers if they want or just log in and do the link management myself.

I have a few sites people bug me for links on all the time so I use this system as a nice easy way to control and manage everything [text link sales] from one spot for all my sites.

In the future I want to install PHP Link Directory as an article directory a link directory and a business directory. Just need to get the time to build all these new sites.

Bob

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[mrrbob]

Page rank does not just "bleed down" from your index page. It also "Builds up" from your listing pages.

I own 2 business directories with over 15k page each. These are static, they are not based on any cms or dynamic system. Because they are static I have had to pay close attention to my menus, links and structure so the directory can be navigated by visitors and SE's coming in for indexing.

These are organized by category in one directory and by state for the other directory as one is city based and the other is category based and covers the entire USA. On the one that covers the entire USA I have each listing page linked back to the state index page. Each state index page is then linked back to the home/ index page.

My state index pages are all page rank 2 or 3 for a few of them. This has nothing to do with any links to them from outside sources [there are none], it is all a direct result of internal linking by hundreds of static business listing pages for each state being linked back to that state index page. My "up linking" structure was not always done like that. After I changed it to that style is when my state index pages got their page rank.

I am not sure this would apply to PHP Link directory but I assume it would as why not?

I do not claim to be any kind of expert on this I just wanted to throw it out there so any one building a PHP Link directory may benefit by my experience and my results if that is possible.

The page rank of my home page for these sites have never got passed 2 as no one really has ever linked to these site's home page even in almost 10 years they have been up.

This is why the page rank is not "bleeding down", it is "building up" for my state index pages.

I don't mean to contradict the article as I do believe page rank does also bleed down. You can build your page rank from the "bottom up" as I have done with proper up linking if all of your internal listing pages have the proper "link up" structure to your category index pages. I would guess the listing pages would all have to be indexed for this to work.

I would also make the claim this link structure goes a long way in helping SE spiders to navigate your site as the little buggers need a place to go after landing on your listing pages. Why not make it easy for them to "climb back up" then go on to the next listing page? Works very well for me.

I do have one install of PHP Link Directory and plan to build some more sites using it in the future, specifically another business directory and need to research how I can import a csv list of business listings into it if that is possible.

Bob

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[David]

Yes, it absolutely does bleed up (including recursively). I was more speaking in terms of where the water spigot starts. But in essence if we have an imaginary 30% bleed off from the homepage, as the pagerank was recursively returned, there would be additional bleed off. To truly bleed up you need external links pointing to internal pages.

Thanks for sharing your insight and keeping this conversation going. We need more of this sort of thing, and we will all grow together. :) And I always invite respectful contradiction of my theories. That mean we are exercising critical thinking in a good way! I don't claim to have all the answers, just of of questions.

(on the import, we can usually do it for about $30 for you)

[mrrbob]

Content visible to registered users only.

Certainly any directories I build in the future will have external links pointing to the main category or state index pages to help the PR. There is certainly no question about that at all.

I do think for the future of my existing directories I should try and gain some external linking to the main category or category index pages.

I do have lots of external links pointing to my business listing pages but they are all from SE's. No website is just going to link to one of my business listing pages.

Not to contradict you but these SE links have got to be doing something for me here. I also think that traffic has a lot to do with this. People with the Google tool bar and maybe the Alexa tool bar are surfing these business listing pages and I think that translates into credit with Google.

Then there is Googe Chrome, don't know if it phones home but I would guess it does the same as the google toolbar would? Does Chrome have the Google toobar built in? I don't use it so I don't know. I did hear it is gaining ground and lots more people are using it.

I don really know how else to think about this as the listing pages on the business directory don't have in coming links pointing from other websites [except for the SE's] so....??

Bob

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