PageRank Sculpting is, essentially, the practice of targeting PR by limiting link flow to other pages within a website. Adding a nofollow attribute to one link so that it will not take value away from other links on the page.
PageRank Sculpting or Designing LinkFlow?
In a recent interview, Matt Cutts professed that PR sculpting was simply not worth the time, and here’s why: if there are 5 links leaving a site, each link is portioned about 1/5 of the link value. Preventing the 1/5 from flowing through one link does not necessarily re-distribute that share of the value to the other 4 links; therefore, that 1/5 is wasted. In addition to this, search engines want to follow the same path as a person navigating your site. If you’re sending a visitor to a page, a search engine wants to go there, too – not be sidelined by a nofollow attribute.
Instead of focusing your efforts on condensing PR, there are other ways to emphasize pages on your site. The starting point is your site architecture. Often, your homepage is the strongest page on your site and has the highest PR; therefore, the pages closest to the root (and to the homepage) will receive the most subsequent PR.
Using this principle, design your site in tiers: the most important pages are at the top (closest to the root) and link down to pages of secondary and tertiary importance. This organizes the priority of your pages and value is passed down accordingly.
Once your site architecture is organized, you can use link building to give emphasis to specific pages. The more incoming links a page has the more value a search engine perceives. Think of a bucket of water. Each outgoing link is like a tiny hole in the bottom of the bucket, leaking link flow.
Each incoming link (in SEO terms) is like a tiny stream of water pouring in link flow. If you can pour in linkflow faster than it is leaving, you’ll start retaining value and filling your bucket. By thoughtfully building the link flow on a page, you’re able to make the page noticeable to the search engines and thus, you’ve reached your goal.
As I’ve said before. It takes a combined effort of on-page and off-page optimization to make a site work. Molding linkflow is a perfect example of the symbiosis between the dual forms of optimization. Rather than trying to manipulate a search engine with PR sculpting, try to impress it with carefully planned linkflow design. The results will be stronger and the efficiency will be greater.
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5 Comments
Hi,
Although I know little or nothing about SEO and web pages editing, I believe that this option will also offer to the viewer a better experience due to a more “logical” navigation throughout the website, besides “taking” the user to where the webmaster pretends.
This structure will also have influence on the PR of the different pages of a website or blog, namely because they can be mentioned on other websites.
Best regards,
José
Hi Jose:
Great SEO by design is always better than after the fact “SEO”.
As you implied above, managing LinkFlow and building pages most conducive for search engines and users is a true win/win scenario.
It essentially gives both “humans and search engine spiders” what they want…
Hi Jeffrey,
So, would you recommend removing nofollow from links to pages such as ‘contact us’ and ‘privacy policy’? I have them nofollowed on each page in the footer, or is it better to just link to those pages from the homepage and remove links to them from inner pages to boost more link flow to other pages?
Does this also mean that it is better not to use nofollow at all, as rather than losing a percentage of link flow completely, the less important pages that were previously nofollowed would then receive the link flow credit and pass it along by linking out from that page?
Thanks for any thoughts you can provide.
Justin
Nice explanation about page rank sculpting. page rank sculpting is one important factor in case of maintaining PR. We always try to minimize the outbound link of our site for avoiding page rank flow.
A really nice and valuable explanation!
Thanks for sharing that really nice ideas!
Do appreciate all of them!
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