Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How much link juice does a sites homepage pass to inner pages and influence inner page rankings?
-
Hi,
I have a question regarding the power of internal links and how much link juice they pass, and how they influence search engine ranking positions.
If we take the example of an ecommerce store that sells kites.
Scenario 1
It can be assumed that it is easier for the kite ecommerce store to earn links to its homepage from writing great content on its blog, as any blogger that will link to the content will likely use the site name, and homepage as anchor text.
So if we follow this through, then it can be assumed that there will eventually be a large number of high quality backlinks pointing to the sites homepage from various high authority blogs that love the content being posted on the sites blog.
The question is how much link juice does this homepage pass to the category pages, and from the category pages then to the product pages, and what influence does this have on rankings?
I ask because I have seen strong ecommerce sites with very strong DA or domain PR but with no backlinks to the product page/category page that are being ranked in the top 10 of search results often, for the respective category and product pages.
It therefore leads me to assume that internal links must have a strong determiner on search rankings...
Could it therefore also be assumed that a site with a PR of 5 and no links to a specific product page, would rank higher than a site with a PR of 1 but with 100 links pointing to the specific product page? Assuming they were both trying to rank for the same product keyword, and all other factors were equal. Ie. neither of them built spammy links or over optimised anchor text?
Scenario 2
Does internal linking work both ways?
Whereas in my above example I spoke about the homepage carrying link juice downward to the inner category and product pages. Can a powerful inner page carry link juice upward to category pages and then the homepage.
For example, say the blogger who liked the kite stores blog content piece linked directly to the blog content piece from his site and the kite store blog content piece was hosted on www.xxxxxxx.com/blog/blogcontentpiece
As authority links are being built to this blog content piece page from other bloggers linking to it, will it then pass link juice up to the main blog category page, and then the kite sites main homepage?
And if there is a link with relevant anchor text as part of the blog content piece will this cause the link juice flowing upwards to be stronger?
I know the above is quite winded, but I couldn't find anywhere that explains the power of internal linking on SERP's...
Look forward to your replies on this....
-
The Pagerank of a page, no matter what page it is, will flow out of the page to the pages to which it is linked. The amount of Pagerank that is passed to a specific page is determined the amount of pagerank the linking page has, the number of links on that page, and the subtraction of a certain percentage of Pagerank (because the algorithm determines that there will always be some lost).
Take your first example:
Let's say the homepage has 100 units of link juice (just work with me here). And let's say the homepage has 16 links on it to 16 pages and the percentage of link juice lost off is 20% (I'm not aware they've ever told us exactly how much is lost). After the 20% decrease, the homepage has 80 units of link juice to pass on to the linked pages. Since there are 16 links, each page gets 5 units of link juice (80/16=5).So, in the case of your first example, where a site's homepage has a lot of links coming to it and the category and product pages don't have any, that may be alright for them. If they have a good link structure, they may pass enough Pagerank through their internal links to the category and product pages to give them enough authority to out rank other similar product pages. This actually works very well for sites because typically you want the homepage to rank for more general keywords which are more competitive and category and product pages to rank for more specific keywords which are less competitive. So, the pages that have the most authority are competing for the most competitive keywords.
In your second example, it works similarly, the blog pages each pass a certain amount of Pagerank to the homepage based on how many links each blog post gets (and how authoritative those links are) and how many links are on those blog post pages. Each post may be passing only a small amount of Pagerank, but since the blog has a lot of blog posts all linking to the homepage, it starts to add up. That builds up the Pagerank of the homepage, which can then be passed on the category and product pages. You can also pass Pagerank directly to the product pages by linking to them in the blog posts.
As to whether having a relevant keyword in the anchor text increases the amount of Pagerank passed in the link, no it doesn't. It can, however, contribute to the linked page's link reputation. The anchor text in the links to a page are one signal to the search engines of what that page is about and, thus, what keywords that page should rank for. So, having relevant keywords in the anchor text, can help a page to rank better for specific keywords because it increases the page's reputation for that keyword. This, however, I believe has been somewhat weakened lately with Google's updates. Do to spam abuse, I think Google has lessened the signal of anchor text.
I hope this to make it more clear for you.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can 'Jump link'/'Anchor tag' urls rank in Google for keywords?
E.g. www.website.com/page/#keyword-anchor-text Where the part after the # is a section of the page you can jump to, and the title of that section is a secondary keyword you want the page to rank for?
Algorithm Updates | | rwat0 -
Ecommerce SEO: Is it bad to link to product/category pages directly from content pages?
Hi ! In Moz' Whiteboard friday video Headline Writing and Title Tag SEO in a Clickbait World, Rand is talking about (among other things) best practices related to linking between search, clickbait and conversion pages. For a client of ours, a cosmetics and make-up retailer, we are planning to build content pages around related keywords, for example video, pictures and text about make-up and fashion in order to best target and capture search traffic related to make-up that is prevalent earlier in the costumer journey. Among other things, we plan to use these content pages to link directly to some of the products. For example a content piece about how to achieve full lashes will to link to particular mascaras and/or the mascara category) Things is, in the Whiteboard video Rand Says:
Algorithm Updates | | Inevo
_"..So your click-bait piece, a lot of times with click-bait pieces they're going to perform worse if you go over and try and link directly to your conversion page, because it looks like you're trying to sell people something. That's not what plays on Facebook, on Twitter, on social media in general. What plays is, "Hey, this is just entertainment, and I can just visit this piece and it's fun and funny and interesting." _ Does this mean linking directly to products pages (or category pages) from content pages is bad? Will Google think that, since we are also trying to sell something with the same piece of content, we do not deserve to rank that well on the content, and won't be considered that relevant for a search query where people are looking for make-up tips and make-up guides? Also.. is there any difference between linking from content to categories vs. products? ..I mean, a category page is not a conversion page the same way a products page is. Looking forward to your answers 🙂0 -
How seasonal would you expect organic on a b2b site to be?
I have a client who has a b2b site catering to a white collar information market. Looking back in G/A, it appears that they've never had a good organic search Summer, but have made plenty of YOY gains.This Summer is a little better than past Summers. Personally, I have read about people who take Summer vacations. Mostly in France. This is a U.S. site and U.S. traffic catering to business executives. I can see it in the parking lot of the downtown office building I work in... fewer cars after Memorial Day and more cars after Labor Day. How seasonal would you expect that kind of organic search traffic to be, say from April vs July? Would prefer answers from direct B2B experience, rather than guesses. But, if a guess is all you have, I will gladly accept that! Thanks... Darcy
Algorithm Updates | | 945010 -
Should my canonical tags point to the category page or the filter result page?
Hi Moz, I'm working on an ecommerce site with categories, filter options, and sort options – teacherexpress.scholastic.com. Should I have canonical tags from all filter and sort options point to the category page like gap.com and llbean.com? or have all sort options point to the filtered page URL like kohls.com? I was under the impression that to use a canonical tag, the pages have to have the same content, meaning that Gap and L.L. Bean would be using canonical tags incorrectly. Using a filter changes the content, whereas using a sort option just changes the order. What would be the best way to deal with duplicate content for this site? Thanks for reading!
Algorithm Updates | | DA20130 -
Agency footer link, do we keep it ?
Hello ! I was wondering if it's still a good idea to let a do-follow link on the bottom of agency released websites. Because they obvisouly come from different websites with no link with a web marketing agency. Do we have to keep them in the footer in no-follow ? If we do so, how to get some link juice from the different websites ? It sounds a bit stupid but one of my partners went from PR7 to PR5 recently. I guess Penguin 2.0 did not like all its links from its customers' website. Tks a lot !
Algorithm Updates | | AymanH0 -
Correlation of Rankings with Personal Pronouns?
Has there been any tests or studies that associate writing in the first person or using "emotional" feeling phrases to higher rankings. More specifically to a blog structure. I'm trying a blog option with a local telecommunications company, however I'm having flashbacks of writing those 5 paragraph essays when taking the SATs. The owner decided he should take on the responsibility and it's like he just can't bring himself to write from a personal perspective. He's a bit stuck in the "professional" mindset and worried about appearing unprofessional. I empathize with his perspective, but I know it's not going to work..or maybe it will? it's just not going to be interesting to readers, but perhaps google will appreciate the fresh content. I don't think letting an employee takeover will be an option as he's very protective of the company's image. So would you ditch the blog? or continue with the dull posts?
Algorithm Updates | | squareplug0 -
Sub-Links of Organic SERP
I would like to know if you can modify (or suggest) the sub-links under an organic listing. For Example: Main Link/Title = COMPANY NAME - What We Do.... Sub-Links (popular pages within site) currently include links like: Locations / Catalog Request / Bestsellers Is it possible to suggest other pages as sub-links or do the search engines determine these? Please advise, and thanks in advance....
Algorithm Updates | | WhiteCap0 -
Using Brand Name in Page titles
Is it a good practice to append our brand name at the end of every page title? We have a very strong brand name but it is also long. Right now what we are doing is saying: Product Name | Long brand name here Product Category | Long brand name here Is this the right way to do it or should we just be going with ONLY the product and category names in our page titles? Right now we often exceed the 70 character recommendation limit.
Algorithm Updates | | mlentner1