[Cheat Sheet] 4 Rules for Making More Money with PageRank
Un-learn what you THOUGHT you knew about PageRank. Learn PageRank the RIGHT way and put it to work for YOU for a change!
It's a "pure content" day today. This marketing jewel of wisdom comes to us from StomperNet faculty Leslie Rohde, from his article "Precision Guided PageRank" in Volume 1, Issue 2 of "The Net Effect" monthly action journal.
In those pages, Leslie gives the best and easiest-to-follow explanation I've ever seen for what PageRank actually IS. But that's not what I'm here today to share with you…
No, today, I'm going to tell you the 4 Rules for Making More Money with PageRank, and the beauty is, you don't even have to KNOW your own PageRank score.
Because no matter what, it's going to IMPROVE if you follow our rules. You can forget worrying about that little green PageRank bar in your toolbar ever again – it's time to focus on what REALLY matters.
Rule #1: Make More Pages.
As Leslie explains in his original article, links do NOT create PageRank (no matter WHAT you may have heard otherwise). The only thing that creates and holds PageRank is a web page.
See, there's only a finite amount of PageRank available to share among all the pages in Google's search index. Think of Google's index as a tasty pie. (I like apple, but you can think of your own flavor…) 
Every single new page that gets added to the index is like cutting the pie into one more slice. Now with billions of webpages, we're talking about some really tiny pieces of pie – but all the slices of the pie still only equal one pie when you add them up.
This is important, because more pages in the index means a bigger chunk of that PageRank Pie is yours to control and profit from.
Here's another way to look at it. Even if you don't know how many total lottery tickets have been sold for a particular drawing, you still know that every lottery ticket you buy improves your chance of winning.
Web pages are the same way. The more you have, the more PageRank you possess. But that doesn't do you any good unless you have ENOUGH PageRank to matter.
But how much is enough? How much PageRank do you need? How many pages do you need to make?
Rule #2: Your competition dictates how much PageRank you need.
That was easy. Research your competition – see how many pages they have in the search indexes by using "site:" searches for their domains on both Google and Yahoo.
Going to Yahoo may seem strange since we're trying to rank better on Google, but Google's page-count numbers are known to show as much lower than what the true number of pages Google has indexed.
Yahoo shows a much higher (and more accurate) estimation for the number of pages it has indexed from a particular site. You can use that to "guesstimate" how many Google has, because chances are, if Yahoo has indexed a page, Google has as well.
Once you know how many pages your competition has, you have a target to aim for. It's time to get to work, and the goal is: MORE. Generally speaking, you want to try for more pages than any of your competitors.
But only as many more as you need to beat them – there's no special prize for winning by a mile. 1st place is the best you can do, so aim just above whoever is there now so you don't overwork yourself for no return.
ADVICE: Put some effort into these pages – there's no point in putting trash pages into the index just to have "more" – you want the content on these pages to be WORTH linking to, and WORTH finding in the search engines.
Every page you have is a potential entry point for a possible future customer. Keep that in mind, and you should do fine.
Rule #3: Improve links between your pages.
WARNING: This is NOT about getting external one-way links to your pages. That's great and all, and WILL improve your PageRank, but we want to focus on pages you actually control: your own.
So we know that every page in Google has a little bit of PageRank assigned to it just by existing. But the real MAGIC of Google is that any page's PageRank score can be manipulated using links.
To use that "pie" example again, incoming links will make a page's "slice" of the pie bigger, but any outgoing links will make the "slice" smaller.
(Ok, the way it really works is a bit more complicated than slices of pie, but the metaphor will make you money, even if it won't get you a PhD.)
The bigger a slice is, the better it will rank in the index, and the more links coming into any given page, the bigger that page's slice of the PageRank pie will become.
That's why we wanted to make so many pages in Rule #1.
Once we have all these slices in the big pie, we can actually manipulate the size of each slice by controlling how we link between them.
Here's the right way to do it:
Internally, we make sure that all our least important pages ALWAYS link to our most important, money-making pages. But ALSO make sure that your most important pages NEVER link to your least important pages.
In this way we "sacrifice" the PageRank on unimportant pages only to boost the PageRank where it matters. Once we "fatten up" a page with all that sacrificed PageRank, we want to keep it there.
By now, some of you may be thinking that building a website with all these crazy link structures and limitations might be hard. After all, how is a customer supposed to find your stuff if you link to some stuff and not others?
For example, SOME non-money pages should obviously still be LINKED to, but really shouldn't get any of your precious PageRank. Pages like "Privacy Policy" and "Terms of Service" come to mind.
Obviously, you want every single page on your site to link to those for customer usability. But how can you do that without also "leaking" precious PageRank juice?
Fortunately, this is really easy. You simply use the rel="nofollow" method in the "a" tag on any link that you don't want passing PageRank.
Ex. http://stompernet.com" rel="nofollow">Click Here
That HTML would allow both human visitors and search spiders to follow it to StomperNet.com, however none of the PageRank from the linking page would be passed on to the linked page.
If you do NOTHING ELSE from this report, DO THIS:
Go through every page on your site and "nofollow" any link that doesn't point to a page that can make you money.
Check your menus, your footers, your headers, and you can even nofollow all external links that would make a visitor leave your site.
Rule #4: Balance your time and effort between 1 and 3.
While this rule doesn't require any actual "work" from you, it will certainly help you keep your sanity (and keep more hair in your scalp).
As Leslie pointed out in the original article, you don't need to worry too much about your internal linking if your website only has 12 pages. You just don't have enough "juice" to make too much difference.
However, if your site has 2000 pages indexed and you haven't ever taken a look at your links for nofollow opportunities, you're WAY past due.
Look to your competitors to see if you need to start building pages. Once you've closed the gap, then you can worry about optimizing your links to tweak your PageRanks and funnel it to your best pages.
Remember, we want to work wisely here. Running an online business can be a lot of work already, so there's REALLY no sense in wasting effort on something that won't return maximum benefit, right?
And that's why we're here.
StomperNet is not just out to tell you about the next big over-hyped money-getting thing – we're here to share time-tested, proven methods that we've gathered in REAL marketplaces with REAL businesses. Most importantly, we're about getting REAL results.
We've hired all the geniuses and scientists and engineers to understand all this stuff and work on the math and technical bits. You can just sit back and be the business owner who can actually FOCUS on their own BUSINESS.
And that's when you start making REAL money, so let's go there together.
Stick with StomperNet, because I'll have several more "Jewels of Wisdom" from our Faculty's favorite articles, right from the pages of "The Net Effect" – our monthly action journal for online businesses.
Just keep your eyes peeled, and look for our next report coming very, very soon!
Until Next Time,
Keep Stomping
~Andy Jenkins and the
StomperNet Faculty and Staff
P.S. The report above is just a small part of a much longer article by StomperNet Faculty Leslie Rohde. If you want a more complete understanding of PageRank and exactly how it works within your site, who better to learn from than one of the first guys who ever reverse engineered Google's search engine.
That article, "Precision Guided PageRank" is from Volume 1, Issue 2 of "The Net Effect" and if you want to pick up this back issue now and get INSTANT ACCESS to the digital version, or even just see what other articles we packed into that issue:
"The Net Effect" isn't just a trade newsletter or thinly veiled product catalog – this is a REAL periodical, with exclusive content provided by some of the best minds in the internet marketing field.
You owe it to yourself to check it out – your business and your bottom line will BOTH thank you!
Comments
107 Responses to “[Cheat Sheet] 4 Rules for Making More Money with PageRank”Trackbacks
Check out what others are saying about this post...-
[...] ?????StomperNet ??4 Rules for Making More Money with PageRank?????????????????????????????? [...]
-
[...] [Cheat Sheet] 4 Rules for Making More Money with PageRank | StomperNetHere's another way to look at it. Even if you don't know how many total lottery 87 Responses to “[Cheat Sheet] 4 Rules for Making More Money with PageRank” [...]
-
[...] Read the rest here: [Cheat Sheet] 4 Rules for Making More Money with PageRank | StomperNet [...]
Speak Your Mind
Tell us what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
@jay I have noticed with the latest google changes this year (mid jan2010) that google is now placing more emphasis on pr and stragely it appears they are assuming that if you do not have a buying modifier in your search terms you are only browsing and that they now show the manufacturers websites at the top of the SERPS
well,it's really useful.I just know buid backlinks to improve the page rank of my site before
I heard pagerank has no direct effect on actual rank. it's so hard to figure out what the truth is lol
I dont understand the discussion about having more pages, I dont understand much about PR but I think is nex to useless when it comes to rankings,also having many pages is not important, you can rank for a term with a one page site, the only reason to want more pages is to target more keywords, but you only need as many pages as keywords you want to rank for, and of corse you can target many keywords specially longtails with the same page.
cool article about page rank. Thanks for this.
These are all good points. We have implemented a few techniques to build a larger number of indexable pages, and gathered inbound links to some of the subsections which has worked well.
PR is indeed importent and the higher it is the more money you can make of it. Their are so many ways to make money.
Researching is is all part of the plan as well, checking how many backlinks they have en then working hard to try getting even more then your competition.
Great post.
Really very nice information. We blogger work hard for get link to our blog. For expose our blog from the big crowd we have to work hard for build better link to our blog.
Great article. It was helpful and informative. hope to see more greats posts like this.
Link building is changing these days, I think on the new year we should have to more careful on building link.
Ahh, the rule #1 makes sense now why the big sites with lots of content ranks well, even when the pages may not have many external links
I make money from pagerank for 2 months and generate $100 profits weekly, thank you for your great rules in pagerank.
I found your post informative, helpful, and easy to digest.
You have got my best recommendation on this.
Keep this coming!
Awesome post! I am going to use this info and use it into my blog. I hope i get good page rank!
We worked on our internal linking after reading this issue of The Net Effect, I know for a fact this magazine has made me a ton of money!
Stomper membership is highly addictive!
Thomas
Now, I understand thoroughly how internal linking helps in increasing my blog PR as well as controlling the number of outbound links so as not to sacrifice my PR.
Thanks for the post and I'm looking forward for your next helpful posts!
I'm curious how you would reply to this, Leslie!
One of my staff members wrote:
I checked out a few Page Ranks (of our own and key competitors' websites):
our site – 4/10
competitor #1 – 4/10
competitor #2 – 3/10
competitor #3 – 5/10
Then, I went to Yahoo’s site search as they suggest. And I entered:
our site – 9,902 pages / 6,053 inlinks
competitor #1 – 6,319 pages / 573 inlinks
competitor #2 – 863 pages / 230 inlinks
competitor #3 – 6,546 pages / 88 inlinks
…in sum: Unless the fact that all of our links that have no "NoFollow" tags
completely outweigh the fact that Competitor #3 has almost no links–this report
is very, very wrong.
Simply superb.
I think I must use this method to increase my site's page rank.
Useful article. I'll increase my site rank from 2 to 3.
Thanks for sharing this superb tip.
Very useful information.
I liked the way you explained the importance of always linking your least important pages to the most important to improve page rank of the ones that matter. And never link from your most important pages to the least important.
Using the 'no follow' method sounds like a great tip.
thanks for this great data. I follow nofollow tricks.
This was a real interesting and potentially very useful article. I am one who has not sculpted a web page for PR yet. This is about to change!
I have been a bit stuck on understanding the NO FOLLOW attribute
I find the tip in rule #3 about adding the nofollow attribute helpful, assuming it works. But what I don't understand is one of Stompernet's founders owns myweddingfavors, which they use as an example quite frequently. If you go to that site, you will notice they have nofollow, noindex in a meta tag on ALL pages of the site. This I do not understand!
Utilized the advice to have the NO FOLLOW atribute on all links that point to non-money pages. My postion on Google for my three primary search terms jumped a full page position in three days.
Thanks again for the great advice!!
Andy/ Leslie,
I have been a bit stuck on understanding the NO FOLLOW attribute added to links that don't allow PR to be passed. From what I understand from Stomper 2.0, that NO FOLLOW prevents PR to other pages if placed in the links of the content and footer, but not in the header area. SO the header links need a redirect (with Disallow robots.txt) or image button in addition to prevent PR passing.
If I did understand this correctly, why wouldn't the links in the other content areas need a redirect also to withold PR passing?
Thanks
I run a blog and have created hundreds of content blog pages but most of them has no Google PR. I hope to get some pr for these pages and perhaps implementing 'rule 3: Improve links between your pages' is going to help me.
Hi,
Great info, but seems like my site bucks the trend. It has 2000+ more pages than the sites above it in Google and higher PR. What's gone wrong here?
Seems I always have to do things different.
Jane
Loving your work Stompernet!
I've implemented the nofollow attribute across my site where applicable and we've made it onto page 1 of Google for our most competitive search term after being stuck on page 2 for 3 years!!
Thanks Guys.
Best to all.
Bradley
Do you guys have any hard data on how much adding indexed pages will affect a site's position? Perhaps something like the following test: Chart the number of pages for the top 30 results for a given term. Get a site indexed and mark an initial position. Then add enough pages to pass the site directly above in number of pages and then wait until they are all indexed, marking down the new position. Repeat until the site has more indexed pages than all other sites for that search term. I realize that there are a lot of other variables that could taint the results, but I would find that data very interesting.
Another great post, prompted me to go back and read the articles in net effect 1 & 2.
Highly recommend the subscription.
Off to work on Rule #2, something i have not yet looked at.
thanks again
Good stuff Andy.. thanks! Can your explain the correlation between SE Rankings and PageRank? When or how often do you think Google updates the Page Rank, rankings? (is that 3/10 number fairly accurate within a week, month?)
Hey Andy,
You mention here to help increase page rank I need to increase the number of pages on my website. What about a Wordpress blog? There's just so many pages you can have on a blog. So my question to you is this method of creating more pages worth while when it comes to blogging?
Later,
Jeff Sargent
Time to start creating more pages
Leave it to you guys to slam what we have been told for so long.
Thanks for giving us the Straight Talk!
Dave Hale
The Internet Marketing Professor
http://www.drdavehaleonline.com
From what I've seen past to present with you guys is TALENT the kind of talent that should be recognized and shared. You guys are definitely about real results from what i've noticed with just enough insight and a bit of background, makes for the perfect copy! I hope to have people like you all when the time come to expand the business.
I am pretty much ready to take off after about a years worth of knowledge expansion in this industry. I have a ways to go, yet I hope to be big contributor in the Internet Marketing Community.
I have enough things going on the web through my server but there is a lot of tweaking to be done before I really start promoting them. I was really interested to know about the on site linking structuring you talked about. Using the "no-follow" for the less important pages was a new one for me to learn, that could make a huge difference in and of it self. Thanks!
Keep up all the good work and I plan to keep up with you!
Henry V.
Awesome post, I agree with you 100% and I still wonder why lots of people don't get this pagerank thing. Well, for me, I don't think one should bother too much about it, just listen to experts like you and Leslie and do what you guys say – no point reinventing the wheel,
You Rock Andy!
I have never seen this explained is such a simple way, that actually makes sense. Page Rank is an interesting thing for many of us….We know its what we want, but fully understanding how we get there is another story. Get links….we know that, internal linking…understand that too….but putting it all together and actually understanding how one thing relates to another…now I understand this much better.
Pie….mmmm I love pie
Jeromy
Thanks To All Y'all,
{All Y'all, that's plural for Y'all, for those who are not from the South !-)}
When you cease to improve, you begin to fail!
I'm not going into a lengthy post, but I will say the people at Stomper Net really rock! I know that is an understatement, but how can anyone put into simpler words.
I look forward to the day when I get to meet with all of you because it is just a short ride for me.
To Success,
Jack Bradley
I'm been hearing a lot of great stuff in my email lately, however the amount of time it takes to follow all the good advice I'm getting seems quite overwhelming, even to the point of giving up an online business. I had trouble for months publishing just one or any web site with go daddy and never made it. Then I went to yahoo small business and got a very primitive web site up only to discover from the advice I been getting lately I done it all wrong. I guess I'm just not cut out for this highly technical business of internet marketing. There's just a ton of details that I would never be able to manage.
Hi StomperTeam,
Another great post, confirming something I new and had been using for a while on workoutbox.
Quick question: I have a dynamic menu on my site which means most of my pages link to each other. Obviously this isn't great, and to stop it happening I'm thinking of nofollow'ing the whole top menu and sculpting page rank from the left hand nav alone.
From what i have read there seems to be mixed opinions in the SEO community about the use of nofollow for page rank scultping. See this post: http://www.searchenginemarketing.co.uk/blog/sem/pagerank-sculpting/
If i go ahead and nofollow my whole main navigation could this be seen as blackhat SEO and possibility encounter penalties?
Dear Stompernet!
You rules comes at the right time!
I have a question: I have 2000 webpages at my site. All these pages have links to my main page. But not all of them are indexed by google. How can i introduce them to google? sitemap?
Great article! Thanks a lot. Wished I had known these very useful info some months back…but yes, I will take the time to do what you have suggested.
Great information as usual guys. I love all of your tips and try them all out. Thanks heaps.
Great Article.
I have never really attached much importance to the 'nofollow'. Will certainly be going through my website over the weekend to see about diverting some PR to the more important pages. Very interested to see the results.
I used to think along the same lines but all my recent experience says otherwise.
My 20-40 page sites rank at least as well as my 6K-7K page sites and, most importantly, are fully indexed by ALL the search engines. Heck, I've got zero page sites (a completely blank home page) that rank #1 purely on the basis of incoming link text.
Having lots of pages simply gives you the opportunity to rank multiple times for certain key phrases. In my own experience it has zero effect on the ranking for your home page and I think the reason is that there is a PR 'threshold' below which it just doesn't count, in the same way that distributing articles to the lesser directories has virtually no PR benefit. Even worse, any site with over a 1000 pages is bound to have most of them 'buried' away from the home page and all my experience says that a long term link from the home page is the best value on any site.
If you 'big up' certain pages through external linking then yes, that will have a beneficial effect, but internally linking thousands of 0PR pages for PR circulation TO the home page sounds right, but I've yet to see any actual positive evidence of it for the average site.
Internal linking for certain keyphrases absolutely DOES work though and that's where there's real value in the effort, even on 0PR pages.
Thanks for this one. I've been overwhelmed with all the linkbuilding and this one was right under our noses and our control.
Glen Woodfin
This is super! Thanks for sharing the info. We will be implementing them asap.
Great information, starting to add more pages to my blog to get more pagerank. With low competition, you have more bucks for the effort.
This is stuff I can work on right away. And my sites are small enough that it should be tough. Oh wait, I'm supposed to make the sites larger too (Rule #1 – More Pages). Well, I'll start tommorrow, but that's going to take a while!
Any idea how much content is needed to create a page that sticks in google? Bad example, but what if one on a quest to get more indexed pages to link to a money page one just broke up each paragraph of a privacy policy into a separate page with next/prev links at the bottom.. more pages created to get more internal linking juice from… but would they stay indexed with only a few sentences per page or would they fizzle and drop out of the index… any magic character number we should aim for?
Well, I 'm a little embarrassed asking this considering all that has been written here, both with Leslie's article and peoples' comments, but as a newbie, i just gotta ask……..
I recently saw a young guy who promotes clickbank products by just creating ONE sales page sites with the affiliate link at the bottom. Now granted, his copy on the sales page is pretty darn good and quality-oriented, but this guy makes an absolute killing with these one-page websites and he's not paying for any advertising!!
So how can just one page do so well, as opposed to many on a typical site as he's just using a certain group of keywords, as you only have limited amount of space with one page, and his conversions are through the roof? Just one page?? I'm absolutely stomped! I mean 'stumped'! Any insights from any of you would be great, including you Leslie- Please!
You guys are a constant inspiration not only in SEO but even more so in IM. You bring new meaning to "move the free line". thanks.
Man, this is great stuff. I love to get nuggets that can be implemented right away. As always you guys provide solid info.
Thanks,
Andy
Great straight forward info – Thanks. My sites are still small so it shouldn't be too overwhelming if I start now.
Is there a was to alter the linking structure in a wordpress blog?
Great stuff, and man, all in one place. Thanks for putting this valuable info together. do we put the nofollow on links to the site map or do you want to pass page rank to that page. I am guessing no but am just not sure. thanks again, gracias.
A few weeks ago my site showed more pages in google than in yahoo. Now it's the other way round.
Some obvious links that drain a lot of PR which are usually found on each and every page of a site:
- Contact US
- TOS
- Privacy Policy
- Disclaimer
- Affiliate
need to be rel nofollow.
Philippine Business Registration
What is the best way to accurately see how many links you actually have?
Thanks for the great tips.
Thank you for such great information, it is much appreciated. I have just launced a new book..My Own Plan, and I'm a novice on anything to do with SEO. This is a wonderful and timely opportunity for me to work on some page ranking for the book.
http://www.my-own-plan.com
Great stuff
Thank you so much
Kirsten Plotkin
Great article Leslie. I like how simple and clearly laid out the StomperNet articles are. I have some work to do in improving my internal linking (stopping Page Rank bleed) and getting more pages up.
Appreciate the tips, thanks,
Luke
Great stuff, I've never heard one guru ever explain internal links in such specific and clear detail. My questions, because you mentioned that you should put up trash sites just to get links, is this: Does pages with duplicate content… say an article on the page that is found a 1000 other places on the web offer more page rank or less page rank than a page that is original content? Is the page rank effected if these pages are internal or external links?
unless google has changed the rules I got slapped last year when i tried to use the nofollow tag on my pages. I later concluded that the slap happened due to the fact google thought the site did not have enough information as i directed the majority of the internal links to 4 different pages(from 20 pages). After reading more it was mentioned that the use of nofollow should only be used when you have a fairly large number of pages and the pages are significantly different. it is just as easy to leave the links as is and crosslink related articles in the actual article
OK, this makes a lot of sense.
I've already added no follows to unimportant pages like TOS and Privacy Policy.
Next I'll add a link on every page (via the footer) to my main money making pages.
And then to see how many pages my competition has and to start creating more content
So many Web sites, so little time
Good tip! BUT…
I looked up my site it has 1793 indexed pages. My competitor has 5439!
What the heck do I do now…
I know what you're gonna say… "get started"
Any good advice on how to build quality content fast?
Thanks!
http://www.uncleflag.com
Great article! I found all four tips to be quite useful, even if a couple of them served to reiterate to me what not to forget when running SEO on a site.
Thanks for sharing!
Glenn Andrew
http://glennandrew.com
Once again, Leslie shows he is the master page rank getter, i know bad English, but i have seen drastic movement upward in my rankings using Leslie's technics.
All hail the master of page rank!
If you are using WordPress, using the Headspace2 plugin provides you the control needed for the PageRank sculpting discussed here. There is a great technical discussion on its homepage on how to use it, and it appears far and above the best plugin available.
In addition, while page count can be important, there are some pages you may simply not want indexed. While robots.txt allows you to control over directories, its a blunt tool to attempt using on a page-by-page basis. If you are using WordPress, Headspace2 also provides you with excellent meta tagging tools – and if you have something else, you want to use the meta robots tag attribute to "noindex" certain pages. For example, thank-you pages, your 404 page, copyright, terms and conditions, DMCA, login, and even your contact form probably provide no value and should not be indexed.
Conversely, you do not want a page that may have multiple URLs (for example an archive page) getting you penalized for duplicate content and sucking up link juice. For this, you need to use the canonical link tag (see http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html). Again, there is a great WordPress plugin by Yoast called "Canonical" you can use. Without WordPress you are dependent on whatever content management system you use – or hardcode it into you pages.
Thanks for the great introduction to this complex subject – luckily, its not *difficult* math!
The article is great. But I'm slightly confused about adding more pages. If they aren't going to be "money" pages should internal links to them include rel="nofollow"?
James Kobzeff
http://www.proapod.com
I have been linking between the internal pages on all my sites without the no follow tags so it's time to change up. I always thought as a rule all pages should link to your money pages not just through a menu link but a relevent link of some sort. You just have to be creative about it. It's worth the extra time.
Great tip. There's so much stuff on SEO on the internet, it's good to know that stompernet can discuss these techniques, and explain them in an easy to understand way. Thank you.
Joe
Fresno Mortgage | Refinance | Real Estate
This is a great way to increase page rank. I used it on high volume real estate pages. But is it possible to increase page rank on low volume websites. Also I have noticed a lot of blogs with lower page rank index higher then regular webpage’s with twice the page rank. I assume this is due to relevant content.
Andy/Leslie – I am always amazed at how great you are at breaking a subject down into clear, easy to follow information while still keeping the articles very interesting and fun. Keep up the great work and keep the info coming.
Thanks again,
Ken
http://www.creative-eknowledge.com
Thank you for the great information. This posting makes sense, and it reminded me to keep looking at the site from the stand point of my home buyers and home sellers. The more information – organized correctly – the better.
Just like to say thanks for the info on PageRank. This is my first time at your site I will definitely be coming back here often.
From what you guys are saying a huge web site with say, thousands of pages has a huge advantage over one with hundreds, all other things being equal. Is that right?
So by focusing the pr you can sort of level the playing field.
Cool.
As always thanks for sharing great info.
I really applicate the work that you guys are doing, and always look forward to receiving my goodies in the post. There is no substitute for hard copy.
Has Google updated the page rank algorithems recently?
Hey Andy,
What I woudn't give to join Stomper net, the information I receive is just incredible,
chock-full of bankable, useful wisdom, and solid facts.
I Look forward to the free tips you send us, especially the videos, I can feel the excitement, and passion you guy's generate.
Someday I hope to meet you and the stompernet staff. And I know I will. My site is pure content with aff links. This latest post "4 Rules for Making More Money with PageRank"
I just keep building and using your info, even though I'm in a very competitive market, and never gave much thought when I started this project. But I want to give the big dogs some more competition.
Thank for the great stuff
Cheers,
Jim Novak
This is a very good article. As always you guys over deliver on content which is why I don't mind giving you my money. By the way Stomper2 is the shizzle
Kenetra "CashFlow Queen"
http://kenetraonline.com
http://marketingpodcastshow.com
Thanks for the info.
Great Tip about the Footer links – I would have never thought!!
Small but very practical and easy to apply tip
Thanks Again
You know some days just don't go to plan..
Well I was having one of those days, Until reading this!
Can't thank you guys enough! even if I only manage to use 10% of what you publish and teach – the fact that you continue to inspire and give me enthusiasm whenever it starts to wane is worth more to me than anything.
Keep it up!
Hi Andy
The information you provide is really good, however this article has me confused – I am not sure if I am misunderstanding.
It talks of leaking out the page rank:
"To use that "pie" example again, incoming links will make a page's "slice" of the pie bigger, but any outgoing links will make the "slice" smaller."
Can you confirm that a page with page rank will not lose any of it, just because it links to other pages. However the amount of page rank juice that can be passed on (as new page rank juice) is limited, and so should not be wasted to unnecessary links.
As an analogy, I see page rank like knowledge held by a parent. As that parent passes on knowledge to a child the child can benefit and gain knowledge themselves, but the parent does not lose the knowledge they had by passing it on.
However if there are lots of children to pass the knowledge on to, each child may get less of the parents individual attention, and so less knowledge than if they were the only child.
I am sure previous articles of yours have made this point (but not in the same way), but now this article seems to contradict my previous understanding.
Thanks
Eddie
Eddie, thanks for your great question.
The problems with metaphors is that they are, by definition, wrong … just "close". What PageRank so hard for webmasters to use effectively, makes it hard to teach, and makes its study addicting for me
, is that it is based on some fairly subtle math with sweeping (and often surprising) consequences. So with that "disclaimer" aside …
In the context of internal linking, which is the focus of the article, PageRank has to be understood in the context of the entire site, not just individual pages, so let's try a different (also wrong) metaphor to help clarify the previous one. Playing on your parenting example, suppose your site is a family of pages and each of the pages has a certain amount of money — better than pie already. To make this work, the money has to be awarded equally to all pages at birth. Then, when the pages pay each other to wash the dishes, mow the yard or for rent (for those older pages that won't leave!) the wealth of the family moves around, but the total does not change.
But what happens when a family member (page) sends money (PageRank) to a different family? Does the other family "pay you back" or do they keep the money or even send it someplace else entirely? This decrease in the total wealth of the family is analogous to what we call a "PageRank bleed". Continuing this example, the family member that does the most chores and pays the least to the rest of the family accumulates the most money. This is precisely "PageRank Sculpting".
Notice that no money is created by moving it around — the total is conserved — so the only way for the wealth of the family to increase is to have more kids. Yikes! Epic metaphor failure
or to get some other family to pay someone in the family money.
Now this explanation, like the first one, has the same little detail wrong with it — when a page gives money to another page, it no longer has the money — and you are correct that this is not how PageRank actually works.
Links out a page do not actually decrease the PageRank of the page. But understanding this answer can really only be done from the math, a very poorly paid profession, so you're far better off with metaphors!
Please bring back the PRINT version of The Net Effect. It's a great publication … or make it real easy to read online. Please!
Hi Brian,
You'll be happy to know that the print version is still available as an upgrade option along with the digital. It's an option in the shopping cart at checkout.
Hope that helps!
As always you give great information. Just love what you do and keep trying everything you suggest. Thanks
Wintergreen
This was one are that had a big positive effect on me when I went through the Stomping The Search Engines videos and the Net Effect.
It takes time but I was horrified at how much I was draining away in affiliate links that took page rank away from my sites.
I saw a big jump in my traffic when it was re-indexed.
But then I tried to be too clever, lost too many of my internal links and dropped pages from Google's index which created a bit of a downward spiral since fewer pages passed less page rank to the pages I was trying to push.
Whoops.
Still the problem has been recognised and things are picking up again and my Stomping The Search Engines review for example is ranking very well.
I'm checking it out. Thanks,
I have a membership site (well kinda, it's a bit of a twist on a membership site) where the user profiles are visible to the search engines. One thing I am concerned about is as the user profiles build up they are getting indexed. This, of course, is good except for the fact that many of my members have been to lazy to fill out their profiles (go figure, my site is all about getting off your lazy butt). So I'm concerned that as these build up I might get stuck with a duplicate content penalty.
Can you offer any suggestions to get those profiles filled out and turn my negative into a positive.
Thanks
Phil
aka Shunshifu
Here's one,
you could offer incentives for users to fill out their profiles, like a %50+ discount. And/or, if you know your site's PHP, you could put a small
<?php
if(!$user_submitted_profile[$user_name])
echo ";
?>
script in the head of your template.
Additionally, you could charge less for your service anyway.
Ups, that should read
echo '<meta name="robots" content="noindex"/>';
I know #3 is going to cause some discussion after Matt Cutts' comments at SMX the other day. I'll just say this . . .
I've had very good success with PageRank consolidation. We're talking pages that did not rank until I started using the nofollow attribute to work through my navigation. These pages also had visible toolbar PageRank increases on the next update (did not do any other link building), and still hold that toolbar PageRank and the SERP rankings, as well.
I know others (Rand Fishkin, who I don't always agree with, but definitely do on this) are still seeing positive effects from PageRank consolidation. So I guess at the end of the say, it's not what anybody SAYS, it's about what WORKS. And if Leslie Rohde says it, it works.
i also am interested in seeing how matt cutts' comment effects things. his comment was basically that the "nofollow" tag will become less effective in the future at controlling pagerank flow.
http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/archives/2009/06/nofollow_makes.html
i'm sure stompernet will keep us up to date on all this. they are, after all, seo wizards.
Ok, I understand this pretty well, and employ these strategies on my static sites.
Here's my question: will Wordpress (self-hosted) blogs benefit from "no-following" the non-money-page links?
I had thought that all links are "no-follow" by default, can you clarify this?
Thanks, can't wait to receive my next "Net Effect" hard copy!
mark
Thank you for the information!
What I think? Okay you asked for it!
Besides the website listed I have 5 other stores .. at risk of sounding like a whiner (I’m not) I am completely overwhelmed by all the information on the internet. It did not take me long to realize that most of it is crap. Like an unnamed body part opinions are like it … everyone has one.
Most of the information seems to be about building list, putting together a product and throwing at your list and hope something sticks.
Everything I sell is a physical product which entails a tremendous amount of work just keeping the new flowing in and the discontinued, back ordered in check.
My most precious commodity is my time, the next in line is my cash flow.. I have spent a lot of money early to see if my working models would sell products.
It seemed as soon as I got all the stores up to date with the latest greatest SEO technique I had to start at the beginning to keep up with the flavor of the month.
My point?
It is refreshing to see information that is well written that makes sense but will also stand the test of time. There is a lot more to running a e-commerce store besides SEO.. there are the customers…who are KING (in my humble opinion)!
It would be awesome to have an SEO course that would address the MUST have SEO strategies that pertain to the guy that sells physical products ..but in stages … I am aware that Stompernet offers such insight … ( I was a member for a year) …the reason I am not was because at some point I had to put all the stuff I learned into practice… in the mean time the meter is running!
Maybe it is just me and I’m a wimp that can’t digest all the info or resist spending countless hours mining the information …when in the back of my mind…the voice is yelling at me…get some work done on your linking, article writing, site architecture, product descriptions, on page seo, off page seo, Web 2.0 strategies, your blogs need work, you haven’t tweetered in a week and your lawn needs mowing!
Of course the logical answer is outsource but if it is not in the budget (at the moment) I have to roll of the sleeves! But hey I LOVE THIS STUFF and I would not have it any other way…
So again a course that would be in stages ($money$ wise as well) about going to the freezer get the box stuff.. you don’t get Stage 2 until you have completed and seen results with Stage 1…
I have vented and rambled and probably don’t make any sense … but I wager there are other people in my shoes… you asked what I was thinking… sorry.
There are a few names on the internet that I will sit up and take notice …they are (not in any order of importance) Brad Fallon – Andy Jenkins – Dan Thies – Aaron Wall – Leslie Rohde – Dave Taylor – Perry Marshall
If not for these people I would not be where I am today…I may not be worth millions but …………. I DON’T PUNCH A CLOCK!!!!!!!!
Bravo I feel you large, and your words resonate! I'm K2Scuba.com and currently an F5 member and if I cut sleep to three hours a day, I might be able to force a dent! Let me add Sherman Hu, Paul Lemberg, Frank Kern, and David Bullock to the list of mentors. I would be up for a segmented course.
Tevis
Thanks for the information. I used Yahoo Site Explorer to check some of our competition. If I look up GiftBaskets.com they have 5,120 pages and they rank No. 1 when searching for Gift Baskets. Below them is Bluechopsticks.com and they have 28,241 pages!!
Whey is GiftBaskets.com out ranking a site with many, many more pages? And that is not links but actual pages on their site.
Andrew,
Bluechopsticks has a much better link diversity profile than giftbaskets.
BCS has 12,876 inbound links from 2,413 different domains
GB has 1,009 inbound links from 522 different domains
Even though GB has more visible toolbar pagerank I'd much tather have the link profile that bluechopsticks has.
That is actually a good question. I guess it depends on the keyword used in the search, and whether Google deems one page more relevant than another with regards to that keyword. I have one website that I've been trying to rank for for a somewhat competitive keyword. My site has over 150 pages and over 500 backlinks. Yet I'm being outranked by another site that's hosted in a free blogspot account with 2 pages and 1 backlink (Digg). But of course for my other main keywords, my site is #1 and that blogspot site is nowhere to be found.
So having more pages will increase the PageRank, and all things being equal, that will probably be enough to outrank another site. But on page factors, quantity and quality of backlinks, anchor text in onsite and offsite links, etc., also play in determining its relevance with a particular keyword and hence its ranking for that keyword.
That's how I understand it anyway. I'm still learning this stuff.
Hi again, Just left a comment on how great this info is.
But can one add to a wish list? Because page ranking is getting easier and easier for me. The goal now: way more conversions – even just to opt-ins for updates. Page views – up over sevenfold. Conversions are up too, but those were truly dismal.
Elsa
This is just brilliant…to simplify it like this, and put it in all one place. I remember when I was first learning about pagerank, I spent hours hunting for the info you have in this one place!
Sean
Great stuff – as usual. I've loved the info you recently gave out on internal linking – used it and saw pages soar. The tips here add (re what should link to what, and how to stop pagerank drainage).
Loved another piece of info as well – on how to make sure you're not committing duplicate content suicide. Again, I went and checked – sure enough, pages that did not rank (for a mysterious reason I could not figure out) had committed accidental duplicate content suicide. Easy to remedy.
I'm looking forward to whatever goodie you have next.
Elsa
http://the-idea-emporium.com