Page rank 2 for home page, 3 for service pages

[Nextman]

Hey guys,

I have noticed with one of our new sites, the home page is showing page rank two, whereas 2 of the internal service pages are showing as 3. I have checked with both open site explorer and yahoo back links and there are by far more links to the home page. All quality and relevant directory submissions and blog comments.

The site is only 4 months old, I wonder if anyone can shed any light on the fact 2 of the lesser linked pages are showing higher PR?

Thanks

[nsauser]

Hi! It's highly possible that the homepage is not getting full link juice value since you mention that it receives blog comment links. First, those are likely nofollow and second they have been devalued by Google since they are a known method of spammers.

If the other pages receive better quality links they will be considered more authoritative than the homepage. Just my thoughts!

[Nextman]

you know that is weird. Although it is a method of spammers, if the site is relevant to your own, it makes no sense for Google to de-value.

The comments on the blogs are mostly no follow, but they are comments made by an employee who is networking in the industry and is not concerned if the actions affect the SEO of the site. He is simply commenting on relevant blogs that are of interest.

Do you think I should ask them to stop? I really didn't think this kind of no-follow comment link paid any negative towards PR. As long as the site is relevant, it is natural behaviour.

[nsauser]

Yea, I have found and tested the fact that Google has essentially de-valued Comments, Footers, and Sidebars. To what extent I don't know. I wouldn't cease any natural blog commenting as it is just that, natural.

My comment was merely regarding the value (weighting) of different types of links. A blog comment link is worth much less than a link in the body or content section of the page. And because of this it could lead to your inside pages being considered more authoritative.

It's not that the homepage is being penalized or looked upon negatively, it just doesn't have the same inbound link juice.

[Nextman]

Yeah sure, that's a good point and actually makes total sense.

When I look at the site, one of the service pages has only links from the body text of the blog and the home page yet it is PR 3. Do you think it makes sense to also produce more internal body text links from the blog and service pages to the home page? To out weigh the blog comments?

[Alex-Harford]

Does your homepage show (in Google's index) under different URLs? E.g.

• www.website.com
• www.website.com/
• website.com
• www.website.com/index.html

That would split the authority over the separate URLs. You should redirect any differences to one standard URL and all of your links should point to the exact same homepage URL if possible.

Is your homepage linked to on every page on your website? How about those service pages? Your internal link structure goes a long way towards showing which pages are the most important.

PageRank updates infrequently. There's a possibility the value of your internal pages has been updated, but the homepage hasn't. Have you checked the Page Authority in SEOmoz PRO?

You say you have links from "relevant directory submissions and blog comments" - as it's a new site you might not have a varied link profile, so the link building could look unnatural. A spike of links from directories, for example, doesn't look natural - so Google might not give the links as much weight as they would have done had the links been built over a longer time period.

Do you have any/more outbound links on your homepage? Are you selling links?

It could just be down to the fact that the site is new. The authority of the homepage should naturally build over time if you continue to concentrate on building a relevant link profile from varied sources.

[Nextman]

Hi Alex, I appreciate that answer loads. I will check all of the points you mentioned, however I am travelling from the UK to Thailand over the next day or so, so I will take a look once I land and sleep! Appreciate both yourself and Nsauers help loads on this

[Alex-Harford]

Cool - have you figured out what the problem might be yet?