Deeper Levels = Lower Page Authority?

[HB17]

After migrating 8 sites into one last year, which went quite successfully, we're now looking into SEO much deeper and how we can improve overall.

Something I have noticed is the deeper the pages, the longer the url, the lower the page authority. It almost halves for each level the page gets deeper.

Is this true? And if so how can we combat this?

I know content is key, but is there anything else we can do?

Many thanks

[DirkC]

It would be quite logical. Compare it with real estate. Your primary location is your homepage -which normally will list your most important & interesting content. As you normally cannot put everything on your home, you shift less important content to level 2, and then 3 ..etc. The deeper the content - the less important you find it. So it's quite normal that Google follows this logic as well.

The second part is the number of internal links - because your most important content will receive a lot of internal links. Normally - the more links a piece of content receives, the closer it will be to the homepage (chances are bigger it receives links from the home, level 2 or level 3 content).

Index pages can help to move your content closer to the home - but this will only get you so far (this doesn't change a lot to the number of links these articles receive).

You could try to regroup your content in a cluster per theme  - with it's own homepage & a lot on links inside the cluster to create more internal (theme based links) & move content closer to the home. There is an interesting post on this topic from Gianluca Fiorelli: http://moz.com/blog/topical-hubs-whiteboard-friday

Hope this helps,

Dirk

[HB17]

Hi Dirk,

Thank you for your reply.

Our problem is that all our our second levels used to be individual websites with DA and PA of around 25-30. Now however after the migration, what used to be the home pages of individual sites are now 1 level down from the domain and have lost a huge amount of authority.

Is there something we've done wrong or is this simply what happens when merging lots of sites into one? What was the home page with high DA and PA is now much lower due to being a subfolder.

Thanks!

[LauraSultan]

What Dirk says is right, but there are ways to improve authority. Make sure you have a link on all of the new subsite pages to its corresponding "home" page.  You'll also want to update any backlinks that pointed to the old home pages to point to the new subpage.

[gfiorelli1]

Thanks for citing my WBF Dirk!

About your doubt, Harry, there are few things that are not that clear:

1. Do the migrated domains had a strong home page PA, but a not so strong DA? Or the contrary (stronger DA than home page PA);
2. When the migration had been done, how the backlinks of the migrated domains were treated? Did you ask to update at least the most relevant ones so to point to the new URLs, or you just considered that 301 would have solve this facet of the migration?

I ask this because if the migration was correct in every facet, and the home pages were strong, than the PA  of the new "home pages" on level 1 should be almost the same.

On the other hand, DO NOT confuse PA  with PageRank. They are two very different metrics, as PageRank calculates just the value offered by all the links (internal and external) pointing to a URL, while PA consider also other things (on-page, for instance).

A loss in PR is quite normal, because the new internal linking (links toward deeper levels, but also the link toward the new home page), are redistributing PR (and possibly PA in how PA works) so that a 1:1 coincidence between old situation and new is almost impossible.

[gfiorelli1]

Apart the two good answers here above, your situation explains why one of the most important (and sadly forgotten) facets of on-site SEO is Internal Linking.

Be always sure to create justified opportunities for internally linking your deepest levels for your strongest upper ones.

For instance, we usually see in the home page that real estates are presented in different ways:

1. New appartments;
2. Most viewed;
3. Most reviewed (if you offer a way to "thumb up"/review/star them
4. etc etc

What we almost never see is using this way of showing "products" on a category and sub-category level. That method, though, would help you giving a strong internal link, which will make stronger the apartments pages that matters the most for your business, because those internal links let the bots to "jump" directly to the apartment's page without the need to pass through too many levels.

That is also one the functions of what I define as topical hub, about what I talked in the WBF linked by Dirk in his comment.

[HB17]

Thank you all for your answers.

I'll try and respond to some of your questions:

• Yes Domain Authority - This was high on the old sites and now has dropped since moving what was a home page to now a level 1 sub home page (e.g. website.com/this-was-a-home-page). The old DA was lower than the PA but not by much. Overall though it seems we have lost a lot of DA. The domain name its self has changed, but it's almost like not much DA has been brought across.

• Backlinks - Since we had 8 different businesses with 8 different websites, they linked to each other which created most of our backlinks. We have asked for other backlinks we had that came from the brand website themselves to be changed, but unfortunately a lot of the brands we represent will not link to us directly. We have also updated any sites like DMOZ with our new address.

• Home page links - Every page links back to it's corresponding brand home page, as well as the overall home page.

• We have many internal links and strong navigation allowing you to go to almost anywhere with just 1 or 2 clicks. Our urls don't go deeper than 3 levels.

Just an overview of our site structure which may help:

Overall company home page
Brand A home | Brand B home | Brand C home etc... For 8 brands
Brand A content | Brand B content | Brand C content etc...
Brand A subcontent | Brand B subcontent | Brand C subcontent etc...

To put it in context of real estate:

Our company overview home page
Apartments | Houses | Mansions | Holiday Homes
Info about our apartments | info about our houses | info about our mansions | info about our holiday homes
Info about individual apartments | info about individual houses | info about individual mansions | info about individual holiday homes

All with the ability to jump between these categories easily.

Thank you for all your help so far, I hope the above helps you to help us further!

Many thanks

[HB17]

Is there a way I can mark this question back to unanswered as I still feel we haven't reached a definite conclusion?

Thanks!

[gfiorelli1]

Hi Harry,

I changed the status to "Discussion", because - as a moderator - I consider that the answers summed up substantially offer you a solution, but - as it is quite common in SEO - there is space for further discussion.

Moreover, the "discussion" status may attract more people into offering valuable opinions.