PageRank (PR) is a citation-based algorithm introduced by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It revolutionized the whole web and the ability to drive website ecommerce. PageRank (PR), in simple terms, refers to Google’s way of ranking webpages for them to appear on a Search Engine Result Page (SERP). It’s one of those important factors that search engines like Google considers when it decides which page should be shown at the top of the search engine listings. PageRank is Google’s trademark and other search engines have similar techniques.
By understanding the basic principles of PageRank, you can better understand the ways to position your ecommerce to drive traffic and sales. Ecommerce sites possess a natural hierarchy of categories, subcategories, departments and various products and services. Each page on your website has some link authority, ranging from the lowest amount—which is often found on your homepage—to the highest amount—on a page for a really obscure product. Hence, a well thought out linking strategy, executed internally and externally (suitably using ecommerce SEO) for an e-commerce website can boost the site visibility on the search engines.
PageRank passes between websites via links and it can be distributed through a single website containing internal links. Certain pages possess a higher PageRank compared to others; hence they can pass on more PageRank to pages they link to. A dampening factor gets applied when a page links to another.
GOOGLE’S REASONABLE SURFER MODEL
A link that is more likely to be clicked on will transfer more PageRank than a link that is more unlikely to be clicked on, according to Google’s Reasonable Surfer Model. Numerous elements, such as colour, font size, and anchor text, influence this. However, as SEOs, we frequently have influence over and can thus take advantage of the location of a link on a page.
EXTERNAL LINK BUILDING FOR KEY PAGES
Creating backlinks to important pages that we want to rank makes sense because connecting pages convey PageRank. Category pages typically rank for the most competitive and lucrative keywords for ecommerce sites.
Therefore, if possible, we should try to employ strategies that encourage link development to the pages that generate money, which for the majority of websites looks something like Homepage, Category pages, Product pages, Blogs etc. Obviously, this is easier said than done. Utilizing these strategies to increase PageRank on your important pages. As a result, the dampening factors are lessened.
HOW TO PROCEED FROM THIS
Internal links from blog articles or digital PR pieces that go on to gain links themselves are a frequent strategy for getting around this challenge of building connections to category pages.
Getting links to your target page can still be more advantageous than not getting any links at all, even though the PageRank passed to the website we wish to rank will experience a dampening impact.
It is important to take into account the category page’s relevance to the blog post or press release it is included in, as well as where the links are situated on the page, keeping in mind the potential influence of the Reasonable Surfer dampening effect.
1) Create backlinks from high PageRank pages.
High authority pages or pages with loads of PageRank to send onto your own site are some of the most sought-after connections to acquire, as any expert in digital public relations would know.
The majority of the time, this is really seen at the domain level, but as is shown in Majestic’s excellent analysis of how PageRank works, a domain that should theoretically have a high PageRank can instead drastically lower that PageRank at the page level by means of its own internal linking.
In this context, one caution for digital PR teams is to avoid becoming overly dependent on domain-level metrics as a substitute for connections that carry a lot of PageRank and are therefore beneficial for ranking. Although relying too heavily on third-party tools is never a good idea, they might be the closest we can come to determining the PageRank passed by a specific page, as opposed to a domain. Precisely which pages have high PageRank is nearly hard to tell.
2. Obtain backlinks from relevant websites
The Reasonable Surfer Model contends that links that have no connection to the document are less likely to be followed.
Building links from websites that are more relevant to your own site will therefore probably pass more PageRank.
3. Remember, it’s not simply about the quantity of links.
The PageRank value passed by one site can be significantly higher than the PageRank value passed by the culmination of thousands of other sites due to the way PageRank is computed.
This is why relying solely on the total number of links might be deceptive.
SPREAD PAGERANK BY USING INTERNAL LINKING
When determining which pages on an e-commerce site would gain the most from ranking and how to distribute PageRank, we need to take into account a few distinct approaches:
1. Use pages with high PageRank yourself to link to pages you want to rank.
2. Include links throughout the website to the pages you want to rank higher.
3. Provide links to pages you want to be ranked higher.
1. Link to pages that have high PageRank from pages that you want to rank.
Pages with high PageRank, which we can presume are the pages from which external sites link to them most frequently, can be utilised to transfer PageRank to:
Using Homepage
The homepage is the best illustration of how you may accomplish this. Most homepages are frequently one of, if not the most frequently externally linked page on a website.
In other words, the homepage has the greatest PageRank to pass on to other internal pages.
By carefully choosing which pages from the homepage you link to, you can transfer the high amounts of PageRank to the important pages you want to rank.
2. Links to pages you wish to rank higher on the site should be frequent.
How often you link to the most crucial pages you want to rank is another strategy to take into account.
Given that each page has the ability to pass PageRank on, it makes sense that a page with more internal links will likely pass on more PageRank than a page with fewer links (although obviously influenced by the PageRank of the linking pages).
In order to ensure that significant pages get linked to more frequently, you should therefore be thinking about where you might add internal connections, including:
Breadcrumbs
Given the frequency with which different levels of sites are linked to at NOVOS, who have long been aficionados of breadcrumbs, their utility of transmitting PageRank to important pages shouldn’t be understated.
In addition to improving user usability, breadcrumbs on e-commerce sites also convey PageRank up to the core pages that typically rank for competitive keywords. Usually, they aid to rank the categories.
The homepage is typically at the top of a pyramid-shaped structure that includes certain key categories, a growing number of subcategories, and numerous product pages. You take advantage of the pyramid structure by using breadcrumbs on the webpage (both CX wise and SEO). Since each product page will have links to the categories and subcategories that are pertinent to it, and each subcategory will have links to the categories that are pertinent to it.
In this sense, internal links are distributed as an inverse pyramid, with the highest concentration (if we ignore the homepage) being on the main categories that are typically targeted for high-volume keywords. In this way, there’s a good probability that internal links to your e-commerce site will pass on a lot of PageRank.
In general, it is also simpler to create links to product pages and for them to do so naturally. The stronger the relevance, the higher PageRank product pages can distribute upwards; this suggests a lower likelihood of suffering considerably from dampening influences.
Global navigation
We can presume there is a damping effect applied to links in the menu because they are outside of the page’s main body text. This is most likely to be far less than in the footer, though, considering its importance in navigation.
The volume of links that will be flowing PageRank will therefore likely flow to those pages included in the navigation as the global navigation is, as its name suggests, linked worldwide from every page on the website. Therefore, you should prioritise these pages as your top priority.
Footer
We can expect that damping variables have a considerable impact on the PageRank passed by footer links based on the Reasonable Surfer Model. However, the fact that these connections go across the entire website suggests that there may be some advantage to placing significant pages in the footer for the purpose of increasing PageRank.
3. Give links to the pages you want to be ranked higher.
It is important to think about where a link is located on a page because the Reasonable Surfer Model took that into account when determining the likelihood that it will be clicked. This can entail taking page templates into account while creating general links.
For instance, linking to the category page early in the article with clearly related anchor text is likely to drive more PageRank than linking to the category page right at the end of an article in a content strategy where multiple blogs are written on a given relevant topic to support a category page. This distinction might seem inconsequential on an individual basis, but for an e-commerce site with thousands of blogs, the overall PageRank passed might matter.