Pagerank Sculpting Guide | SEO-Doctor.co.uk

What is PageRank ?

PageRank ™ is the core of Google’s ranking system and named after Larry Page. Google describes PaeRank as:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".

Google’s Toolbar PageRank gives you a rank between 1-10 and can be seen using the Google Toolbar. This measure is the strength of a web page (not a website) and is generally calculated by the number of links pointing to that page, and the number of outbound links. Also remember that this measure is only a guide provided by Google and is not the ‘real’ Pagerank figure that only Google will know.

What is PageRank sculpting?

Each time you link to a page, you are voting for that page and passing on PageRank, even if you are linking to an internal page in your website. So, it is important not to pass PageRank to unimportant pages of your website. Some people refer to the ‘leaking’ of PageRank to these pages that do not matter. An example might be your ‘terms of service’ page, which may be getting a vote from your PR7 home page. You may not even want this page to be indexed by Google, so why pass the link love to it?

The overall benefit is that your pages that matter will rank higher in the Search engine results pages (SERPs) due to the retention and control of PageRank. The technique is generally used on large sites and has had good results for websites like Amazon.

How do you sculpt this PageRank?

People use the ‘nofollow’ tag which tells the search engines not to follow the link. It should be used sparingly around your website to control the flow of PageRank through it. This idea is not new. For years webmasters have been using JavaScript and robots.txt to do the same thing. But the nofollow tag is just one easy tag to drop into your link as illustrated below.

<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.example.com/">Anchor Text</a>

Does the method work?

The overall opinion is yes, if you ask an SEO consultant. Take a look at the link below to see the responses from the world's top SEOs on whether they use the technique.

SEO Opinions on Pagerank Sculpting

What Problems can occur?

One problem is the response of search engines to the tag. MSN have already said they ignore this tag. So if you do want a page indexed in any search engine, make sure by using robots.txt to totally block the page from the bots!

You also need to be very careful that the page you are blocking does not have links out to other pages on your site that may be important. PageRank sculpting is regarded as a more advanced SEO technique, so becareful.

Examples of where to use the Nofollow tag:

• Terms of service
• Legal notice
• Login/registration
• Dynamic sections e.g. profiles

Check out our good friend Rand's video for a great tutorial on on the flow of PageRank:

 

June 2009 – Google Update

Since writing this Hub news is just comming out on a change of stance by Google to the nofollow tag.  Matt Cutts has hinted that there is better ways to sculpt PageRank than using the nofollow tag. How nofollow is being treated by Google in sculpting is unclear at this present time and the SEO world is waiting for clarification.  Though as usual this is not forthcoming.  Matt Cutts suggests building more links to pages that are important as seen in the video below.

For updates on this latest issue follow Rand Fishkins blog