 |
|
What is PageRank leak?The idea of Google PageRank leak is a contested one, but has become more widely accepted as part of Google's algorithm. The belief in its existence became verifiable when Google employee Matt Cutts commented on how to control the 'flow' of PageRank by using the robots.txt file and NoFollow Meta Tags. Essentially, PageRank leak is where you counteract the chances of having a healthy site-wide PageRank by linking too much to a) too many of your own pages and/or b) external websites. Therefore, this will effect search engine rankings for your sub-pages. In essence, it's the opposite of building Google PageRank when trying to get external websites to link to yours. When linking to other webpages on your website - from your homepage
especially - you will share some PageRank with these pages. In simple
terms, imagine your homepage is a pie. If you want to share it with 11
of your friends and you want some, you'll have to cut 12 slices. Of
course, being your pie, you'll take the biggest bit! If more people
came along, they could have some of the pie, but it would a share of a
slice already cut. Translating to your website, you'll maintain the
majority of your PageRank, and can share it with other webpages, but
the more you share the less PageRank they will get.
Why do some maintain PageRank leak is a myth?Some people rightly didn't understand how PageRank leak could exist when the staple diet of any link building scheme was directories, directories that had hundreds or thousands of outbound links. The most well known directory, Dmoz, has a high PageRank throughout most of its pages so surely this meant PageRank leak was made up by paranoid webmasters? Well, that was then, and this is now. Take a look at these theories in articles and you'll most likely find they're a few years old now. The reality is even behemoths such as Dmoz have dropped PageRank. Minor directories will often have zero PageRank for their sub-pages caused by the dampening factor, as we have found out with our constant monitoring. It is true to say that PageRank out of all SEO Mistakes is not the biggest, and by tightening the ship you can stop the problem effecting your rankings. How can I tell if I'm leaking PageRank?There is no sure fire way to tell if you are leaking PageRank. Your PageRank may have been the same for ages, or it may have even gone down, but there are many ways that PageRank is calculated so you can't put it all down to a leak! Going back to Google employee Matt Cutts, he confirmed that Google's guidelines doesn't suggest have more than 100 links on a page. Now, this should be fairly obvious from a user perspective, but when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation, it just looks like a huge link page. This is deemed bad for the user, so the page is marked down.
How can I stop PageRank leak?As mentioned in the first paragraph of this article, you can control the flow of PageRank from your homepage with the use of the robots.txt file and NoFollow meta tags. You can also add the NoFollow attribute to individual links. As suggested by its name, the attribute tells Google (and some of other search engines) to not visit that particular link. But isn't this against Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) methods? It is very true that internal linking is important, but not all pages need to be SEO friendly. Although helpful to a user, for most websites the Contact page or Privacy Statement aren't particularly important. When it comes to external links, if at all possible, avoid linking to them on pages that have a good PageRank. Of course, this means your homepage especially. You can use the NoFollow attribute or robots.txt file here again, otherwise you can put any external links on a page with little or no PageRank. The result of using these methods is each page you do link to gets a bigger slice of PageRank pie, and will jump up the search engine results.
You may also be interested in reading....
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Articles to your inbox
Discover more about Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click advertising and Email Marketing by getting our articles when they're published.
Just put your e-mail address in the box below.
Latest Articles
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|