17 replies to this topic

[Ledfish]

I have often seen it noted or said that your index page will tend to have the highest Page Rank and then as you go deeper into your site, it will tend to go down. For instance the index page might be a 5/10, then next page most often will either be a 5 or a 4 depending on whether or not the index page was a high 5 or a low 5.

I have a site that has been ranking really poorly for its most relevant 2 word phrase. This two word phrase couldn't possibly be anymore relevant. All my competitors seem to be rank well. I've spent 6 months trying to figure out what the problem is and I am still no closer. I Rank 20th in the Google directory for the term, but in the regular search, I'm not even in the top 10,000. So I have really had to spend a lot of time looking beyond the norm and looking at very obscure things. So that lead me to discovering the following:

The sites index page has a Page Rank on the toolbar of 3/10, but the internal pages have a page rank on the tool bar of 4/10. If I go deeper some pages page rank falls, other stay at 4. Funny thing is none of the internal pages have any link pointing to it except my links page.

So what could this be the result of ? Any ideas ?

Now often I have heard, "you need to get more links" In the last six months, I have gotten of 30 new links, all from pages ranked between 4 and 6, unfortunately, I can't find any relevant sites that have higher than a 6. But in 6 months, only 2 of the 30 have shown up in Googles backlinks Plus there are many many pages out of the first 10,000 that don't have any back links. So this diagnoses has been dismissed.

Any super sleuths have any ideas what other obscure things might be happening ?

I'm almost convinced that someting is amiss in Googles database, but of course I can't seem to get anyone at Google to even be interested in looking at it.

[Ledfish]

Also, I forgot to mention that through Florida and Gladys, my ranking under this two word phrase hasn't changed at all. No effect, nada, nothing.

[Jill]

That may very well mean that there's a slight penalty on your home page for some reason.

Some things to check for are stuffed image alt attributes, excessive cross-linking between sites that you own, and/or running automated queries on Google a whole lot.

Jill

[Grumpus]

I was thinking the same thing. The important thing is - don't panic. Don't go ripping everything apart, but find out what is most likely causing the problem and fix it. If there is nothing there that looks like it may be causing the problem, then it may very well be something else.

G.

[Diniz]

go for some very strong partnerships with an exchange between homepages and increase the amount of content on your site. Also see if there are any broadly related subjects you can do link exchanges with. Try writing some more articles about this phrase that are linked to from the main page themed for this phrase. Also make sure the main article (for this phrase) is linked to from the homepage with the phrase in the link text if possible. Get some links from outside containing this phrase. work on your internal link structure to spread page rank more evenly.
Link occurences of the phrase in other documents to the authority page for that phrase. also do your internal pages link back to the homepage?

Edited by Diniz, 30 January 2004 - 10:08 AM.

[OldWelshGuy]

Hi Ledfish, no brainer question, but do you actually link back to your index page with a spiderable link? or link between certain pages but not others? this sort of poor navigation can also sometimes cause this anomaly.
ADDED also your not in some kind of linking scheme from your index page are you?

[Ledfish]

Jill

No stuffing, No crosslinking between sites. I have only used marketleap to check for number of indexed pages. Used DigitalPoints rank checker a couple of times, but that has only been in the last month or so and like I said, maybe two times total. I have about twice a month looked through the top 1000 via a normal search and figured that if I wasn't in the top 1000, then it didn't really matter much.

Grumpus

After six months, I'm not in a panic at all and in fact have done many changes, but in very small dose. The only thing I've steadfastly done is stay away from anything aggressive. I've got 7 years invested in the site and the name. I'm not about to ruin that and I'm not about to give up on the site either. There has to be a logical explaination, although I'm beganning to think that after all my work and frustration, it;s a Google problem and I so I may never get the explaination.

Diniz

Like I said, done that, been there.....nada !


Old Welsh Guy

Link back to index page, well yes and no. From the index page, you can only get to three pages, an industry glossary page (links back to index) a site map (links back to index) and my second site page which lists categorys of product we sell (links back to index). so in a nutshell any page you can reach directly from the index page, links back to the index page. Basically I'm using a "one level up" internal linking type scheme I would guess you call it. For instance, you cant reach the index page from a product detail page. Have I explained that properly ? Should every internal page have a direct link back to the index page ?


No, we don't link to anything like a link farm or one of those top 20, top 50 type things or even a webring. We basically only link back to either highly relevant sites with good page rank or directories with good page rank. We have always been very very careful who we link to and we even check.

[Diniz]

Ledfish. Every page should definately link to the home page. Are you sure you really have done that, been there.....nada since you can always add more content and links. I like to link to as many pages as is possible from the homepage almost like a directory. It seems to me this is why it is called an index:)

[OldWelshGuy]

A site has a pr value of its own independent of external factors, and based on the amount of pages in it. So if you have 50 pages, and only 3 of them link to your index page, then you are not making best use of your internal pr transfer.

Ideally i would link from every page to the index page, to ensure that you are getting maximum PR value for your index page.

Any one else got any views on this?

[Ledfish]

Diniz

I was just saying that we have followed the method of culling and gaining good quality relevant links and it has done nothing, it has no noticable effect. I even wrote an article that had a couple of internal links, got it published by a site that had good page rank, the article page on their site got ranked a 6, the benefit our site got from google from the linkage on the page was zero, zip. It hasn't even shown as a backlink.


OWG

I'm going to try this, even though I don't think it will be of any benefit to my visitors, because I can easily add a link to the index page to each page of the site.

Two questions, should I call it simply "Home Page" or "Index Page" in the text or should I label it some other way. Also should it point directly at the index page i.e. www.widgets.com/index.html or should it just point at the domain i.e. www.widgets.com ?

[qwerty]

If you can put some keywords in the link to your home page without it looking clumsy/spammy, I'd say it's a good idea. And you should definitely make the link point to the domain name rather than index.html. Whether or not the SEs see those two urls (www.domain.com and www.domain.com/index.html) as the same isn't really the question (although I understand they've gotten better at it). If at some point in the future you change your site so the default file is index.php or index.asp, you won't need to change the links.

[Jill]

LED, it makes sense that that might be the reason for the lower PR, but it's hard to say.

Do you have a company logo on every page? If so, simply make that a clickable image back to your home page and you'll have made your site more usable, plus linked back for the spiders.

Jill

[Diniz]

I would say call it Home Page. From a usability point of view if someone gets lost they might try going back to the beginning to find what they want.

I am always clicking on logos to find my way home.

[OldWelshGuy]

I am always clicking on logos to find my way home.

I have logos on every other lamp post between me and the pub for this very reason

[Jill]

I can just see OWG clicking on the lamp posts as he stumbles out of the pub...

Why isn't this taking me home????