Site Structure For PR Flow

[Zyn]

Hey, I just read the SEO guide. Great stuff, Chris! I almost feel like I know what I’m doing now!

But, I do find myself stuck on figuring out the best site structure.

I’m setting up a content site to partner with my ecommerce site, with a hub in between.

I should be able to get a lot of quality external inbound links to the home page of my content site, and I want to direct that PR to my hub through the copyright link (and onward to my ecommerce site).

Note: I expect to be able to get a lot of quality inbound links to my content home page. Whether or not I actually get any traffic to the content site is not so important. Also, I don‘t know if I’ll get many links to the articles pages, but I don’t care much as long as I get links to the home page. I’m most interested in getting PR to flow to my ecommerce site so it ranks higher in SERP’s.

What’s the best way to structure my content site?

Scenario 1: Home page has 20 articles linking to subpages and they all link only back home (no other outbound links). Only the home page has a link to the hub through the copyright. So, home has 21 outbound links -- 1 to the hub, and 20 to articles pages. The articles pages only link back home.

Scenario 2: Home page has only 5 total outbound links -- 1 to a subpage with a list of articles (which has the 20 articles), 3 to subpages that only link back home (About Us, etc.), and 1 link to the hub. So, home has 5 links, one of those to the hub, and 3 pages that only link directly back home.

What site structure would maximize PR flow to the hub?

Also, should a copyright link to the hub be only on the home page or all pages?

Finally, since I want to maximize PR flow to the hub, I’m thinking a hierarchical structure is best. But would a mesh be better?

Thanks!

~ Zyn

[Chris]

Heirarchical is best.

And ALL pages need the link to the hub.

[Zyn]

OK, maybe I'm not clear on something. I understand that hierarchical is better than meshed for what I want to do.

But what about the number of outbound links from the home page? If I want to maximize the flow of Home Page's PR into the Hub, wouldn't it be better to have fewer outbound links off the Home page?

You had a diagram where Page A --> Page B, which had Pages B1, B2, B3 all linking right back to Page B. Page B had roughly double the PR that it originally received from Page A.

I'm thinking my Home page would be Page A, with A1, A2, A3 all linking right back to Page A, and also Page A4 linking to 20 articles. Page A (Home) would then be able to funnel more PR into the Hub than if the 20 articles pages were all linked directly from Home (Page A).

Only 4 links off Home (3 of which go right back only to Home, plus out to Hub) versus 20 links off Home (which also go back Home plus out to Hub).

Thanks.

[xmlsitemaps]

You can try analyze your website with A1 Website Analyzer. It will analyze all links to and from all pages. It also gives more importance to a link if it resides on page with e.g. many incoming and few outgoing links. Takes the guesswork out of building a website with good internal linking structure.

[bermuda]

Having a good search engine friendly navigational structure for websites is always recommended.