PageRank Sculpting With Semalt
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- What is PageRank Sculpting?
- Rules of Inheritance
- The benefit of PageRank Sculpting for SEO
- Conclusion
Introduction
When a random searcher throws a search query on Google, results pop out. But do you know that these results are not arranged randomly? How does Google know what website results to put first and which to come in second? This answer is PageRank. PageRank is one of the ever-so-old metrics that search engines, especially Google use to determine a website's importance or value. With the use of PageRank, Google would simply put the page with the most important and like that till the last result on every page. But then again, what is the meaning of 'importance?' 'How is the importance of a web page defined?' The answer to this is linked.
Link building was and still is one of the major parameters for determining a website's importance. When a website is linked repeatedly, it is seen as important and relevant. The web pages with less or no links are hereby seen as not important or less important. Though there is more to the concept of PageRank - like the renovation of the basic PageRank rule, and more attention is on its sculpting. Therefore, this foregrounding of this idea is enough to get you through the rest of the guide.
What is PageRank Sculpting?
PageRank sculpting is the act of trading or distributing links with other web pages on a single website. It involves the concentration of link juice in such a way that one webpage will attract more attention and gain more importance with some sort of manipulation. While this seems like a smart idea, PageRank sculpting does have some controversies with SEO (more information on that soon). PageRank sculpting takes into account certain concepts. Some of them are backlinks, link juice, no follow tags, parent websites, page rank, and Google's algorithm. Here is an overview of these concepts:
- Backlinks: Backlinks are the type of external links that leads from a foreign website to yours. For example, if you have a website on cakes and someone with a blog site has a hyperlink carrying your website's URL, then that is a backlink (linking back to you). Backlinks are recognized by Google as a vote of trust for having content that is valuable enough to reference.
- Link Juice: This is also called link equity. It is the total number of backlinks a website has attributed to its entity. For instance, if a website has a total number of 30 backlinks, then the website in question has a link juice or link equity of 30 points.
- No-follow tags: These are attributes that accompany internal links such that there would be barriers to those links and their destination. Hence, site crawlers cannot crawl those pages even though they are on your site. Most often, webmasters use no-follow tags for pages like 'about us, contact us, sitemaps, and so on because there is little or no need to rank for these pages.
- Parent Websites: These are the main focus of a website, such as the landing page or home page. Subsites or subpages are web pages that are linked to the parent website. This is also the part of the site that carries the link juice.
- Page Rank: As explained above, this is the amount of a website's importance that is used to rank a web page on search engine result pages (SERPs). The Page rank can sometimes be equated to the link juice since the PageRank value is also accredited by the number of website backlinks.
- Google's Algorithm: Like every other search engine, Google also has its rules and guidelines for ranking websites on its result page. These guidelines (algorithms) are used to select what websites have more relevance to the search query and which should come first. In that case, you could see PageRank as one of Google's algorithms.
So what is PageRank sculpting all about? Check the rule of inheritance for more details.
Rules of Inheritance
The rule of inheritance is where the meaning of PageRank sculpting lies. It is a certain rule that was made up to help webmasters rank higher for certain web pages. Recall the concept of link juice, no-follow tags, and parent websites. If you have a site and the parent site has a total link juice of 10 points with a total number of 10 sub-pages, then each sub-page would be awarded 1 point (or link equity). That means these pages all have the same potential for ranking on Google's search result page.
But if you think about it, a competitor's sub-page with up to 5 points will rank higher than your sub-page with a single point. So how can you boost your link juice? That's where trading or sculpting comes in. By using the no-follow tag, you can block the transfer of equity to some other sub-pages and then distribute the link juice to the rest of the pages. For example, if you add a no-follow tag to 9 of the other sub-pages, the last sub-page would have 10 points of link juice which would make that rank higher. Hence, why it is called link trading, manipulation, and distribution of links.
The benefit of PageRank Sculpting for SEO
From the above explanation, it can be said that sculpting PageRank is almost like manipulating Google's algorithm to work well for you. So what are the advantages that you stand to gain from PageRank sculpting? There are 4 great benefits in total which include higher ranking for sub-pages, more control on the division and concentration of link juice, an increase in the traffic of the website generally, and a possible increase in the website's link juice. Check below for more details on these points:
Aid sub-pages to rank higher
PageRank sculpting, as explained above, involves the use of the no-follow tag to divert link equity or link juice from one sub-page to the other. In the process of doing this, you would be diverting more link juice to a single page. Why is this a benefit? Imagine you have a website with only three sub-pages; an about us page, a delivery page, and a catalog page, and you have a total of 90 link equity. If you were to follow the normal rule whereby your link equity is divided among your sub-pages, you will end up with only 30 link juice for each of your pages. That also means that your catalog page faces competition with only 30 points. But, if instead, you block the link equity from flowing to the other two pages and direct it all to your catalog page alone, then you will be able to aid that catalog paid towards higher ranks with a total of 90 link juice.
Remove attention from insignificant pages
Not that the pages are that unimportant, but when related to some other sub-pages, some web pages do not need to be promoted. For instance, if your website has a page that contains only a contact form, promoting this web page will be insignificant. The same explanation can be true for an about us page, or a delivery page. Though these web pages are meaningful and important, they do not need advertisement nor do they need to rank at all. Therefore, instead of spreading valuable link juice even to this part of your website, you can utilize extra link juice and divert it to pages that need attention.
Increase overall page traffic
Thirdly, by improving how much importance a web page has, you can indirectly improve the website's traffic. Here is how it will work. When you conduct PageRank sculpting on your website, you immediately boost the importance of a sub-page such that it becomes more valuable than the others and has a better chance of being visible on Google's search engine result page. Since you have a page that's visible to the public, that will get visitors to click on your website's URL through that 'important' page. When visitors land on your page and find the information valuable, they might take a stroll through your site and if they are convinced - might even become loyal customers. Some might even learn your URL address and insert it directly into the search bar the next time they browse the net. All of this together makes for an increase in site traffic.
Could increase the website's link equity
Finally, when you put together the first three benefits, you will make your website more valuable at the end of the day. What happens to important sites? People would want to associate with it to also rank higher. In that manner, your backlinks will also increase especially if the other parts of your website SEO are intact. An increase in backlinks will boost your link juice and the cycle goes on in that manner.
Conclusion
PageRank seems like the easy way to do SEO by yourself, but Google had since canceled out the manipulative feature of PageRank in 2009. Now, the no-follow tag doesn't block the channel for the transfer of link equity, making the divisions between pages a constant process. In that case, you need to find more effective ways to improve your website's Google ranking. Semalt and its team might have some solutions for an easy SEO tool that gets you going even as a beginner.