Do more page links work against a Google SEO ranking when there is only 1 url that other sites will link to?

[couponguy]

Say I have a coupon site in a major city and assume there are 20 main locations regions (suburb cities) in that city.

Assume that all external links to my site will be to only the home page.  www.site.com    Assume also that my website business has no physical location.

Which scenario is better?

1. One home page that serves up dynamic results based on the user cookie location, but mentions all 20 locations in the content.  Google indexes 1 page only, and all external links are to it.

2. One home page that redirects to the user region (one of 20 pages), and therefore will have 20 pages--one for each region that is optimized for that region.  Google indexes 20 pages and there will be internal links to the other 19 pages, BUT all external links are still only to the main home page.

Thanks.

[dotfly]

linkjuice/linkpower is a term which comes up within the scenarios you describe.

You have to imagine that every single external link gives your site this linkpower/linkjuice. According to that keeping it within one site would be a better decision. If your main site has serveral additional local sites behind/under it, the linkjuice will be passed to those sites.

You don`t have to be a genius in mathematics to see that this would decrease the linkjuice by 20 (in the scenario you describe)...

[couponguy]

Hi Marc,

Thank you..I've heard this but here is why I find this issue so perplexing:  First, I have read that the link juice is ONLY associated with inbound links, so if in both scenarios above all inbound links are to the home page only, then there is no decrease in link juice if I have 20 internal pages, YET I get the benefit of having 20 more pages indexed that might show up in a user query.  I guess I'm trying to confirm that my understanding is correct before I have the programmer (me) set up 20 internal pages...I don't want to any more lose link juice from the home page than I have to.

Yesterday the SEO guy I'm thinking of hiring wrote this:

"If you only have the home page indexed, you will never rank.  If you only have incoming links to the home page, you will never rank."    I don't really understand this..it is in the context of a coupon site that offers coupons for all regions in all cities and of course they will be categorized by some 30 categories and 200 subcategories...

Any further input..really do appreciate it..

[dotfly]

Maybe I didnt understand you correctly but to avoid mistakes, please have a look at the attached graphic (linkjuice)... it would be like Ive explained... I mean its not really bad to add several subpages and to pass some of your whole linkjuice towards them but there is no real advantage in the first place... lets say that you want to do a really, really good job, then you have to create absolutely unique subpages (20 times in your case) for more or less the same topic... terrific if you can do so... then use the subpage model...

Its not an indisputable fact that your site wont rank if its just one site... chances might raise if you have additinal subpages but only if you are able to fill each page with unique cotent. I think that there is a potential risk, that you just create DC or partial DC and pass some of your linkjuice towards those unperfect subpages... so if you think that you are able to create 20 unique subpages that choose this scenario... if its more or less a copy of the main site than this wouldn´t make any sense

LvI2k1i

[couponguy]

HI Marc,

Yeah I may not be explaining my understanding correctly, or I may not understand correctly.  What I have read is that the issue of link juice is only connected to page rank and not search rank.  So, if I have no backlinks to my subpages, then I don't lose any home page juice.  So why even have subpages if no backlinks?  Because of the search rank.  Queries can still lead people to my subpages.  In fact I've read that page rank is hardly even a factor in search rank anymore, which implies that no one should even be concerned about link juice dilution at all!  I'd like to believe it because I potentially will have plenty of pages with unique content and would like to build backlinks to at least some of them besides the home page..

Does it sound like I've misunderstood this issue?

[dotfly]

take a look at the screenshot - it`s taken from this url:

http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors

So you only misunderstood that linkjuice has nothing to do with search rank... it is a ranking factor so you should think about how you can use it more effective. On the other hand, websites with only a few sites or even with less content will also have their very own problems with the rankings. BUT everybody (including Google I guess) would prefer a smaller site if it provides good content in comparison to big sites with nonsense

If you are able and can ensure a certain kind of quality and uniqueness for every single (sub)page of your site then go ahead and use this scenario... if you are just able to create (partial) DC: hands off!

Zc0mJMy

[couponguy]

Thanks Marc. Sorry for the slow response--I came down with a bug last night..

Here is the basis for my comments that I am thinking that link juice is about Page Rank and not some much with  the resulting Search Rank, as well as that Page Rank may actually not be a big deal anymore with overall Search Rank--and so my concern about dilution is overblown.  Regardless of the truth on the matter, I appreciate your advice about content and relevancy:

http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-we-dropped-the-100-links-per-page-guideline-but-we-may-take-action-if-it-is-too-spammy-178197

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5535/Why-Google-Page-Rank-is-Now-Irrelevant.aspx

Thanks again, Ted