Do more page links work against a Google SEO ranking when there is only 1 url that other sites will link to?
-
Say I have a coupon site in a major city and assume there are 20 main locations regions (suburb cities) in that city.
Assume that all external links to my site will be to only the home page. www.site.com Assume also that my website business has no physical location.
Which scenario is better?
1. One home page that serves up dynamic results based on the user cookie location, but mentions all 20 locations in the content. Google indexes 1 page only, and all external links are to it.
2. One home page that redirects to the user region (one of 20 pages), and therefore will have 20 pages--one for each region that is optimized for that region. Google indexes 20 pages and there will be internal links to the other 19 pages, BUT all external links are still only to the main home page.
Thanks.
-
Thanks Marc. Sorry for the slow response--I came down with a bug last night..
Here is the basis for my comments that I am thinking that link juice is about Page Rank and not some much with the resulting Search Rank, as well as that Page Rank may actually not be a big deal anymore with overall Search Rank--and so my concern about dilution is overblown. Regardless of the truth on the matter, I appreciate your advice about content and relevancy:
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5535/Why-Google-Page-Rank-is-Now-Irrelevant.aspx
Thanks again, Ted
-
take a look at the screenshot - it`s taken from this url:
http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors
So you only misunderstood that linkjuice has nothing to do with search rank... it is a ranking factor so you should think about how you can use it more effective. On the other hand, websites with only a few sites or even with less content will also have their very own problems with the rankings. BUT everybody (including Google I guess) would prefer a smaller site if it provides good content in comparison to big sites with nonsense
If you are able and can ensure a certain kind of quality and uniqueness for every single (sub)page of your site then go ahead and use this scenario... if you are just able to create (partial) DC: hands off!
-
HI Marc,
Yeah I may not be explaining my understanding correctly, or I may not understand correctly. What I have read is that the issue of link juice is only connected to page rank and not search rank. So, if I have no backlinks to my subpages, then I don't lose any home page juice. So why even have subpages if no backlinks? Because of the search rank. Queries can still lead people to my subpages. In fact I've read that page rank is hardly even a factor in search rank anymore, which implies that no one should even be concerned about link juice dilution at all! I'd like to believe it because I potentially will have plenty of pages with unique content and would like to build backlinks to at least some of them besides the home page..
Does it sound like I've misunderstood this issue?
-
Maybe I didn
t understand you correctly but to avoid mistakes, please have a look at the attached graphic (linkjuice)... it would be like I
ve explained... I mean its not really bad to add several subpages and to pass some of your whole linkjuice towards them but there is no real advantage in the first place... let
s say that you want to do a really, really good job, then you have to create absolutely unique subpages (20 times in your case) for more or less the same topic... terrific if you can do so... then use the subpage model...It
s not an indisputable fact that your site won
t rank if its just one site... chances might raise if you have additinal subpages but only if you are able to fill each page with unique cotent. I think that there is a potential risk, that you just create DC or partial DC and pass some of your linkjuice towards those unperfect subpages... so if you think that you are able to create 20 unique subpages that choose this scenario... if it
s more or less a copy of the main site than this wouldn´t make any sense -
Hi Marc,
Thank you..I've heard this but here is why I find this issue so perplexing: First, I have read that the link juice is ONLY associated with inbound links, so if in both scenarios above all inbound links are to the home page only, then there is no decrease in link juice if I have 20 internal pages, YET I get the benefit of having 20 more pages indexed that might show up in a user query. I guess I'm trying to confirm that my understanding is correct before I have the programmer (me) set up 20 internal pages...I don't want to any more lose link juice from the home page than I have to.
Yesterday the SEO guy I'm thinking of hiring wrote this:
"If you only have the home page indexed, you will never rank. If you only have incoming links to the home page, you will never rank." I don't really understand this..it is in the context of a coupon site that offers coupons for all regions in all cities and of course they will be categorized by some 30 categories and 200 subcategories...
Any further input..really do appreciate it..
-
linkjuice/linkpower is a term which comes up within the scenarios you describe.
You have to imagine that every single external link gives your site this linkpower/linkjuice. According to that keeping it within one site would be a better decision. If your main site has serveral additional local sites behind/under it, the linkjuice will be passed to those sites.
You don`t have to be a genius in mathematics to see that this would decrease the linkjuice by 20 (in the scenario you describe)...
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
-
Is it deceptive to attempt to rank for a city you're located just outside of?
I live in Greenville, SC (who has a large "Greater Greenville" reach). I work for an agency with many clients who are located just outside of the city in smaller towns, sometimes technically in counties other than Greenville. Often, they provide services in the city of Greenville and aim to grow business there, so we'll use "Greenville, SC" throughout site copy, in titles, and in meta descriptions. Are there any negative implications to this? Any chance search engines think these clients are being deceptive? And is it possible these clients are hurting their ranking in their actual location by trying to appear to be a Greenville-based company? Thank you for any thoughts!
Local Website Optimization | | engeniusbrent1 -
Hreflang errors "no return tag" sitemap.xml , and local search landing page with wrong Languages
Really need help , our website when search in google(US) will provide global page (keyword:asus/asus zenfone3). and search console also return "no return tags"another wear thing is when use googlebot crawl sitemap.xml googlebot cannot finish the file less than a quarterCan you please advise on what needs to be edited or changed to make sure my implementation is correct and not returning errors?
Local Website Optimization | | June01270 -
Pages ranking outside of sales area
Hi there Moz Community, I work with a client (a car dealership), that mostly serves an area within 50-100 miles at most from their location. A previous SEO company had built a bunch of comparison pages on their website (i.e. 2016 Acura ILX vs. Mercedes-Benz C300). These pages perform well in their backyard in terms of engagement metrics like bounce rate, session duration, etc. However, they pull in traffic from all over the country and other countries as well. Because they really don't have much of an opportunity to sell someone a car across the country that a customer could easily buy at their local dealership, anyone from outside their primary marketing area typically bounces. So, it drags down their overall site metrics plus all of the metrics for these pages. I imagine searchers from outside their primary sales area are seeing their location and saying "whoah that's far and not what I'm looking for." I tried localizing the pages by putting their city name in the title tags, meta descriptions, and content, but that doesn't seem to really be getting rid of this traffic from areas too far away to sell a car to. My worry is that the high bounce rates, low time on site, and general irrelevancy of these pages to someone far away are going to affect them negatively. So, short of trying to localize the content on the page or just deleting these pages all together, I'm not quite sure where to go from here. Do you think that having these high bouncing pages will hurt them? Any suggestions would be welcomed. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | Make_Model1 -
What's with Google? All metrics in my favor, yet local competitors win.
In regards to local search with the most relevant keyword, I can't seem to get ahead of the competition. I've been going through a number of analytics reports, and in analyzing our trophy keyword (which is also the most relevant, to our service and site) our domain has consistently been better with a number of factors. There is not a moz report that I can find that doesn't present us as the winner. Of course I know MOZ analytics and google analytics are different, but I'm certain that we have them beat with both. When all metrics seem to be in our favor, why might other competitors continue to have better success? We should be dominating this niche industry. Instead, I see a company using blackhat seo, another with just a facebook page only, and several others that just don't manage their site or ever add unique, helpful content. What does it take to get ahead? I'm pretty certain I've been doing everything right, and doing everything better than our local competitors. I think google just has a very imperfect algorythm, and the answer is "a tremendous amount of patience" until they manage to get things right.
Local Website Optimization | | osaka730 -
Map Files for Branches and SEO
Dear All, We have an xml and image site map but we currently don't have a separate GEO Site Map / map files for our branches. I am wondering if such a thing exists and if so , if this something that we should be doing to help our branches rank locally on google maps etc. We have google local listings for our branches and we already do schema.org for our branches. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. thanks Peter
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Listing bundle info on site and on local SEO page.
We just finished a new telecom site, and like all telecom sites (think AT&T, Verizon, Suddenlink, etc.), we allow people to put their location in and find internet and phone service packages (what we call bundles) unique to their area. This page also has contact information for the local sales team and some unique content. However, we're about to start putting up smaller, satellite pages for our local SEO initiative. Of course, these pages will have unique content as well, but it will have some of the same content as what's on the individual bundle page, such as package offerings, NAP, etc. Currently this is the URL structure for the bundles: domain.com/bundles/town-name/ This is what I'm planning for the local SEO pages: domain.com/location/town-name-state/ All local FB pages, Google listings, etc. will like to these location pages, rather than the bundle pages. Is this okay or should I consolidate them into one?
Local Website Optimization | | AMATechTel0 -
Combining sites. But what domain to use?
So we currently have two websites: www.thephotoboothguys.co.uk and www.thephotoboothguys.com.au We're redeveloping our sites, and combining them to have just a singular website (and then sub sections for each country / location). Unfortunately we can not get the .com of our domain, nor the _.net _And I really can't find a .com that i think will work (for lack of availability, or just because the domain name would not be succinct enough). So, I also have registered - www.photobooth.gy and www.thephotoboothguys.co
Local Website Optimization | | blitzna10
My question ultimately is - is it a bad idea to use a .gy or .co as my main domain - especially when we dont operate in either Guyana or Columbia - but, assuming that the content and structure of the website make it clear what countries and locations we do operate in. Is this something Google et al will figure out over time? Or is it likely to make a huge impact? Or should I be searching harder to find a .com that will work for me? Cheers!0 -
Local Rank & Branding Confusion - HELP
I am working with a client now that has two sites that serve two segments of a particular market segment. They have two different URLs which cater to these different target markets BUT the company is known in its local market as a their brand name (of course) which is different than their 2 domain names used on these 2 sites. Confusing eh? This has resulted in confusing Google and their rank has suffered a bit. To provide more color + insight- Let's just say this company is called AtlantaEventsInc and they offer event services for corporate events and let's say weddings. So let's say they have had atlantaeventscorporate.com for 20 years and then they add atlantaeventweddings.com about a year ago since their wedding business is expanding. So they promote their corporate events on one site and their wedding events on another. These 2 sites also currently share one blog, share one Facebook page, one Twitter and have two Google+ pages. Should we keep these two sites totally separate? and even have separate blogs and separate social media accounts? OR since our rank has only suffered with the new wedding site (just a year old) should we retire that site? (i suppose we could still keep separate blogs though for each target market. WOULD LOVE INSIGHT ON THIS! Thanks, Chris
Local Website Optimization | | Sundance_Kidd1