There seems to be a growing “anti-page rank” trend amongst those that are actively involved in the world of search engine marketing.
I often see and hear statements such as:-
“Forget page rank”
“page rank doesn’t get you rankings”
“page rank doesn’t equal traffic”
I accept that under certain circumstances those statements may be true, if a site is poorly set-up and poorly themed the pages won’t generate much traffic regardless of Page rank. However, with the introduction of Googles supplemental index page rank or more importantly it’s flow through your site is something worth considering.
What is the Supplemental Index - Google now has two indexes, its main index and a secondary “supplemental” index. Google places any pages that it considers to be of low importance including duplicated pages into the supplemental index. Once in the supplemental index those pages will rank below pages in Googles main index.
Which pages go into the Supplemental Index - Google have themselves stated that it’s primary consideration when determining whether a page should be in the supplemental or main index is the page rank of that page and how much of the content on the page is unique. When faced with multiple copies of the same information spread across a number of sites Google will generally keep the page with the highest Page rank in its main index and place the others into the supplemental index.
E-Commerce Implications
This poses a number of problems for e-commerce sites:-
1. Hierarchy - Typically e-commerce sites have three tiers, homepage, category pages and product pages. When we consider the flow of page rank through these sites its clear that the pages with the least page rank tend to be the products pages. Pages which ideally would have the highest page rank. As a result highly important product pages often find themselves placed in the supplemental results.
2. Duplication - For any given product there is invariably more than one site selling that product. The majority of sites tend to use the same product information resulting in a large number of pages with the same content. If you’re not an authority site chances are your product pages are already in the supplemental index.
What can you do?
1. Avoid the empty shell syndrome – this commonly occurs when the majority of external inbound links point to the homepage. This compounds the problem with regards the flow of page rank through the site. Concentrate on generating high quality inbound links to lower level pages, raising the page rank on the lower level pages and subsequently the product pages.
2. Re-visit your sites internal linking structure. Can you highlight important products? Focus on linking to them from higher level pages, one such method would be to include a featured products section on the homepage and category pages. Or perhaps add a blog; write some interesting content about your industry that other webmasters may link to. Be sure to drop some links to your important products on these blog pages. There are many options, use your imagination. You have complete control over this aspect of your site; ensure Google can tell which of your pages you consider to be important.
3. Write Unique Product Descriptions – this is hugely important. Admittedly this can be a time consuming task but highly beneficial in the long run. Take the time to look at the products you sell. Produce highly detailed descriptions then ask yourself what questions is a potential buyer likely to ask about that product. Include answers to as many of these questions as possible. Turn each product page into a source of information, something web surfers are likely to link to.
The above is simply an introduction but should be enough to get you started. I’ll re-visit this when I have a fresh mind!
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