Manage PageRank by managing link flow

Do you understand what I mean by “link flow”? I see link flow problems on Web sites all the time, which is a bit ironic given that nearly every SEO blog and forum is telling you to go out and build links. You build links for anchor text and PageRank, you build links for visibility and traffic, but do you build link flows?

Link flow is the pathway that links forge throughout your Web site or network. You can manage link flow and should manage link flow because it has more to do with your search engine success than any other single factor. In fact, most SEOs understand the value of managing link flow at an intrinsic level, but we don’t discuss the process directly.

Orphaned pages, broken links, weak interconnectivity bewteen pages — you have dealt with these issues time and again. That is how you manage link flow. But you can do so much more, and to some extent some of you have been doing more without realizing you were managing link flow.

Do you believe you can (or should) hoard PageRank? You cannot hoard it, but a lot of SEOs believe they can. So they strive to place as few outbound links as possible on as many pages as possible so as to direct all their PageRank toward their home page (which makes absolutely no sense from SEO perspective, but then neither does the idea of hoarding PageRank).

PageRank hoarders manage link flow. Their management goals are unproductive and inefficient but they are at least actively managing link flow.

Think of a Web site as a pool that needs to be cleaned. Rising up from the floor of this pool are numerous pylons or pillars, each very filthy. The easiest way to clean the pool is to let water rush into it so that every pillar and every wall of the pool is soaked by the water. When you hoard PageRank, you block up the gaps between as many pillars as possible so as to direct the water toward only one section of the pool.

If the PageRank hoarder is lucky, he’ll miss something and accidentally let PageRank flow to deeper sections of his site. PageRank is like moving water. It flows constantly and never stays in one place. You cannot hoard PageRank, but you can use it to your advantage if you stop tryign to hoard it.

Search engines won’t let you hoard PageRank. They’ll force you to disperse it, and some hoarders understand that much. If a page has inbound links but no outbound links, then whenever PageRank is calculated the page is kept out of the process until the last iteration. In the last iteration of the PageRank calculation process all the non-linking pages are added back in to the data and they are then treated as if they link to every other page in the data collection.

If you place only one link on a Web page, you’ll direct all of that page’s PageRank (however miniscule it is — and remember that all PageRank combined only equals 1) toward whatever destination the link points to. Ideally, you want that PageRank to flow to one of your own pages, but there are good reasons to link offsite in as many places as possible. Hence, one rule for managing link flow is that every page on your site must link to at least one other page on your site. And the more pages on your site that each page links to, the better.

You don’t need PageRank to improve your search results (in fact, in most queries PageRank is not a deciding factor and low PageRank pages outrank high PageRank pages). What you need PageRank for is to improve your crawling and indexing. Google won’t place very low PageRank pages in the Main Web Index. And that is how PageRank hoarding hurts you — if you direct all your PageRank to the root URL of your site, you can expect a lot of your pages to end up in the Supplemental Index.

Good link flow ensures that PageRank flows throughout a Web site.

Good link flow ensures that crawlers can easily find a lot of pages throughout a Web site.

Good link flow ensures that visitors can find related content on a Web site. You should not be requiring your visitors to use search tools or return to hub pages in order to navigate around your site.

Good link flow ensures that your pages are clearly and definitively associated with other good content on the Web.

Good link flow passes the right link anchor text to the right page. Hint: Linking back to your root URL with the keyword “home” is bad link flow.

Good link flow directs off-site links to numerous internal points of entry. The more of your pages crawlers can find from other sites, the better. It’s a whole new link pathway each time the crawler comes to visit.

Pages go Supplemental because of poor link flow. Poor link flow arises from a lack of strategic planning and implementation. You’re not thinking about how to get users from one part of your site to another. If they find value on one page, they may find value on another. That is why successful ecommerce sites offer the customer an option to continue shopping before closing a transaction.

Bad link flow attempts to trap visitors. Just this week I visited a forum where someone wrote: “My concern would be that by linking out you are sending your visitors to someone else!”

Those customers are going to leave your site anyway. You cannot keep them there. But you can sure help them decde where they go next.

Many of today’s SEOs advocate linking to competitors (or getting competitors to link to you). There is no SEO advantage to such linking. Back in 1999 and 2000 when I encouraged business site operators to link out to resources, they often said, “I don’t want to link to my competitors”. I agree. Don’t link to your competitors. That’s crazy. Link to non-competitive sites that deal with your topics. They are out there. Find them.

But get links from resources that people use to find sites like yours. That doesn’t mean directories. That doesn’t mean your competitors’ sites. It can mean directories. It doesn’t ever mean competitors. You’re not ready to link to competitors until you can articulate, at least to someone else with enough SEO knowledge to understand you, why linking to your competitors helps you more than it helps them.

Link flow is your permanent linking strategy. You cannot guarantee that off-site links will always be there to help you. But you can certainly ensure that your on-site links will be be around for as long as your site is. And if you change all the URLs, those 301 redirects you implement are part of your link flow management. Just be sure the new pages also participate in your link flow management.