10 replies to this topic

[Alistair]

I have a problem that I am not sure is resolvable but here’s hoping.

I have an e-commerce site that is effectively a department store (www.shop-in-scotland.net). I know there is a deal of SEO work to complete and that is what we are busy doing at the moment. Because we have such a range of products we decided at the beginning getting good positioning for all products promoting the home page would be impossible. So we promote and submit the individual product pages as these can be more easily optimised.

The reciprocal links we obtain all point to our home page. There is the problem. Page ranking is calculated in part by link popularity, so people tell me. Google ranks our home page at 3/10 while all other pages are 0/10, I assume because there are no links to the pages.

So there is the conundrum. We promote product pages with no links and probably get penalised by low page rank, while our non-promoted home page is ranked at 3 and will no doubt increase rank with time.

Is there a solution to bring the positives together?

[Mel]

Hi Alistair.
If you link you product pages from your home pages and have a home link on all your pages your home page Pagerank will propogate through your site.

But you would be so much better off if you would solicit keyword text links from outside pages direct to the relevant product pages. A portion of this newly created PageRank will percolate to your home page and to all your other pages if you set up your navigation system right.

PageRank is not really a big part of how your pages are ranked, perhaps more like the last 1% that breaks the tie between two well optimized pages.

Anchor text in links however will do your page rankings much more good than PageRank.

[Scottie]

As Mel says, a good internal linking structure will help insure all of your pages receive PR.

It doesn't hurt to get some links to some product pages though! Consider running promotions and discounting a featured item (or a few) each week/month. Release that info to the bazillions of coupon/bargain sites out there and you will not only get some inbound links but targeted traffic that is looking to buy!

There are also many shopping forums on the net- become a member and promote your specials. Most allow links. (*Fair warning- they will have to be good specials to get a lot of traffic. If it is a really good deal, they may swamp your server.)

[Jill]

Welcome, Alistair!

I would hazard a guess that your site is simply just new. Your inner pages probably have not been added to the index yet, and that's why you are seeing a pagerank of zero.

Build up more links to your home page, and give it a few more months. Make sure that the links within your site are static links that the search engines can follow, so that they can actually find your inner pages. If your site is dynamically generated, which I'm guessing it is, make sure that you do what's necessary to link the pages through the site navigation.

Take a look at our dynamic pages category of the forum, as there are some good posts and resources there.

Good luck!

Jill

[Alistair]

Thanks for the qucik responses.

Site is fairly new (launch March 2003). We considered spreading links around the pages but thought this may dilute what we had. Now we are building numbers a bit we may look to distribute them around the site. Also every page (including home) is linked to every other page via Java and text links.

Will try the suggestions.

[schecky]

Possible Bad link
All that was on the page was this: 20000111110 which looks like a SessionID

from:The category links at bottom Are you sure spiders are getting pages from these links. This may be a reason for spiders not going very deep.

[glengara]

On a Mac, using IE5.1, none if the images downloaded; did you check how the pages validate?

[Phil CK]

Hi Alistair,

I think your site's having one of those moments as none of the images show in IE6 either, and the all the links 404 error (well, all the links I checked !)

[Debra]

Alistair

Since you are a shopping site with a geographic focus, think about partnering with travel agencies and tour operators bringing people to Scotland.

Offer an incentive ( discount coupon, free gift with minimum purchase etc) to these travel agencies in exchange for a link. Focus your discounts on specific items/pages within your site. Make the links for the interior pages you want to promote.

You get a link. The tour operator gets an added value promotional item for their customers and the customers get a discount.

Win-win for all!

[bwelford]

Another useful web page to add is a Site Map or Site Maps if you would have more than 100 links per Map. This is very Search Engine friendly and helps the spiders find all your pages.

Barry Welford

[Alistair]

Thanks for the feedback on site. We have had server problem that now seems to be resolved so you should all be able to see the site OK.

The tips all seem very useful. I will follow some of them up. Most impresed with feedback!