This post was originally posted Nov 7, 2006 – I have added a screenshot as the original subject site is no longer online – it is still just as relevant today as it was over 3 years ago. In places I have added some additional commentary or expanded on original ideas.

References to PageRank should be looked on as synonymous with Google Juice & overall site authority, and not just green pixels in a toolbar, though that can be a good visual indicator at times.

How a Blogroll can kill your PageRank

I followed a link from Digg a few minutes a go, read the story, and as I frequently do on any site I visit, I snooped around a little.

I actually do exactly the same every time someone writes a blog post referring to me and pings my blog. It is the polite thing to do, and maybe I can add something to the conversation. It also allows me to relate any comment to the person who is writing about me, either positively or negatively. Everyone is entitled to opposing views. What is often important is why they have an opposing view, and it isn’t always obvious.

Now about the site in question:

1. I have only read half of one article there, so I don’t know much about the site contents
2. The reason I am linking through to the site is purely from an SEO point of view
3. This is a very common problem, very easy to make, and honestly not too hard to correct.

With that said, here is the site Kerry Fox Live (Archive.org link – the site seems to have been offline for 2 years.)

Initial Site Analysis

So the first thing I notice is that it is a PR3 site.

The internal categories are mainly PR2

The archives are mainly PR2

The individual post pages are generally PR1 or unranked

A large proportion of the content is duplicate syndicated content from services such as Associated Press, without any wrapping

But the site has been around for 16 months

You can make a splog, chuck duplicate content at it, and get a PR4 or PR5 after a few months.

So what is wrong with the site?

Take a look at the sidebar

At a guess (I am seriously not going to count them all), only 20% of the links on any given page point to an internal page. (yes that sidebar is on every page)
There are 2 blogrolls, one of which seems to be websites and blogs he likes, and the other is a whole load of press related sites… news sources.

Every single one of those links is a live external link leaking PageRank to other sites. Those other sites are not reciprocating in any way.

Now I am sure someone is likely to point out that those links provide a service for visitors, and maybe add a little authenticity to the site.

What visitors?

We are looking at a news site with an Alexa rank of close to 2M – not 2k, but 2M

Now there are times you want to sacrifice a little page rank to other sites, especially if they are reciprocating, sharing visitors, or in the case of my blog, I like visitors commenting and joing my “community”. You might also do it in a carefully controlled way from a mininet to one of your own sites.

Solutions

Get rid of the blogroll on all internal pages. It is giving away too much traffic to other sites, not to mention PageRank.

Add nofollow to all the blogroll links that are not reciprocating, or you don’t want to be overly friendly with. (Update August 2010 I would probably tend to use javascript in some way)

Increase internal linking to compensate for all the leakage.

How to Increase Internal Linking

• Recent posts – 10 links
• Top Posts – 10 links
• Recent Comments – 5 – 10 links
• Tagging + Tag Cloud – 50+ links
• There wouldn’t be a need for as much internal ball linking if there wasn’t so many external leaks. The site is gaining very few comments.
• Related posts – 5-10 links
• Related reviews – 5-10 links
• Glossary links

Emphasis should be placed on the links you wish visitors to traverse

External Linking

The site has 2 visible external links to the front page. I am not sure how many to internal pages, but even if it did have external links, any PR given would immediate leak.

Just syndicating one article will generate loads of backlinks, far in excess of what you can achieve with a single blog post (unless you have 100k+ readers). Based on my analysis of “A” list bloggers, their average blog post might normally generate around 10 backlinks (showing in Google).

(update August 2010: – whilst many of the bloggers I analysed in 2006 have 10x as many subscribers by RSS & email now, the number of links they receive, other than from splogs & social media probably hasn’t increased)

Conclusion

It is not rocket science, just simple maths.

If you have 100 external links on every page of your site, you need lot of internal links to retain some (hopefully most) of your PageRank, and it would certain help if those people you give a link to on your sidebar reciprocate in some manner.

(please note that includes me – don’t put a link in your blogroll to my site – sure I appreciate the links, but I would much prefer just an occasional mention in your blog)

If you can’t get a reciprocal link, use nofollow, (August 2010 – blocked external javascript), or stick them on their own seperate page so they don’t suck your own site dry.

And finally… this site structure plagues a huge proportion of blogs. Other blog owners who do not have this problem, quite likely don’t even realise why.

Further reading:

Revenge of the Mininet | 3rd Party content | Blog Comments | No Follow

Update: whilst I am still a fan of article marketing, I no longer recommend any service that doesn’t provide a way to have unique passwords for each distribution site.

In this particular case I am flattered, and seem to be in great company.

I am not the biggest fan of blogrolls on my own sites, I much prefer juice to flow via editorial links in content, and moderated links in both comments and trackbacks.

Fortunately I do link to the guys at Search Engine Land quite frequently when discussing industry events, and I will be enhancing my industry resource links in the near future.

Thanks Danny

Is being included among Top Commenters really a benefit?
Does Top Commenters give more benefit to blog owners than the harm it can cause if you are not careful?

Traffic

Andy Beal introduced Top Commenters to his blog on 19th February, and since that time I have been among his top commenters most of the time. I didn’t change my commenting habits, and even argued against including it.

In almost 1 month those links, plus the links from my comments have driven a total of 29 visitors to my site – Google Analytics only picked up 23 of them, so I am sticking with the MBL numbers.
Without exception, the clicks seem to have been on posts where I have made a comment, thus nothing to do with appearing across the whole of Andy’s site on the sidebar.

This might question the value of text link ads for traffic on blogs, I suppose it depends on how much a visitor is worth to you.

SEO

Site wide might be looked on as something desirable from a high ranking blog, but the value is limited.

• It is in the sidebar, thus the value is diminished by the major search engines
• The link isn’t permanent – what effect does a link that appears and then disappears at the start of a new month have
• The link might not be relevant
• The link in many cases points to the root domain rather than laser targeted LSI Related Content.

This to a lesser extent questions the value of paid text links for SEO, but note with paid text links you choose the anchor text, and can choose to advertise for more than 1 month

Effect on The Hosting Blog

On a well designed blog, the negative effect of providing Top Commenters can be mitigated, but the majority of sites where I have seen this plugin implemented will experience a detrimental effect on their internal Google juice.

The problems associated with the Top Commenters Plugin are similar to those that can affect blogs which have long blogrolls.

• Theme design – the theme uses the same template file for for the front page and single pages, and thus plugin output appears across the whole site, including duplicate content pages. Good themes use single.php for individual posts, and also include archive.php and other template files for navigation and search pages
• Widgets – The WordPress Widget plugin is convenient – unfortunately every theme I have seen applies Widgets to every sidebar across a site, and thus the links will again appear everywhere, even if a single.php template exists.

Pouring Liquids

Lets take a situation that you have 10 glass milk bottles in a line, and one of them is filled up with milk.

Your challenge is to consecutively pour the contents of a bottle into its neighbour until you reach the end of the line. You have to do this as quickly as possible.

The smart thing to do would be to use a large funnel, that prevents milk escaping and only allows it to flow in the direction you intend. Without the funnel, lets say you lose 10% of your milk in each transfer, you would only have 39% of your milk in the last bottle.

WordPress Duplicate Content

With WordPress you have multiple navigation and archive pages that contain duplicate content, and on a poorly designed blog theme, would also include blogroll links and Top Commenters links.

• Date Based Archives
• Categories
• Sequential Pages – page1, page2
• Tag Pages

There are plugins available that add noindex nofollow to the meta tags on these duplicate content pages, and if you wanted to have total control, it is possible to ensure that the only links to your content come from your sitemap – in doing so you could potentially reduce other important factors in search engine calculations such as relevance.

I have seen blogs with as much as 90% external links on all their duplicate content pages.

Alternatively with no blogroll, and no Top Commenters plugin, you can reduce the number of external links on duplicate content pages to as little as 5%, even if you are generous with your external links within the content.

Dofollow – Remove Nofollow From Comments

This is my preferred alternative and I use it on all my WordPress blogs that have comments enabled.

• All comments provide permanent links, and you can make that link more relevant by using a deep link to related content on one of your own sites
• All trackbacks provide a followable permanent link between related content
• Comments only appear on the single pages that are gaining from other sites. They don’t appear on most duplicate pages.
• Real comments with related content surround your backlinks giving them enhanced value
• By cultivating and preserving Google Juice, it flows to where it matters, subsequently comment links on those pages are more valuable.

Here is a list of available dofollow plugins, and some alternatives that can be used for other google juice flow control.

Effects on Other Services

Site wide links do have an effect on other services such as Technorati and some meme trackers as I have recently discussed. This can be beneficial for the number of links, but remember that Technorati ranking is based on number of unique sites rather than the number of links.

More Comments

Maybe it influences some, but rewarding 5 or 10 people, when 100s of people take part in your blog isn’t the fairest system in the world. In addition the people who often try to be the top commenter for the link value often should be spending more time on their own blogs than commenting on yours.
I am all for encouraging discussion, but not at the detriment to someone elses real interests. Helping people sometimes isn’t encouraging them to spend hours per day commenting on your blog just to get a temporary site wide link that is of little short term, or long term value.

Look At All The Pink Boxes

Martins Make Money blog is hosted on Blogger, but look at how selective he is being in where he sends some link juice.
One thing I hadn’t noticed on Blogger is that on single pages these days there is a reduced sidebar. That is great for SEO because you don’t have to have things like your blogroll on every page.

One of the interesting things Martin does every week is post his affiliate earnings with various programs. It is a great opportunity to repeat the affiliate programs a second time, especially if the program is 2 tier.

A couple of additional pointers

• All those affiliate links should be nofollow
• Please remove the link to me from your blogroll or at least stick a nofollow on it

I do appreciate the gesture of being added to a blogroll, but I would much prefer my readers to retain just that little bit more pagerank.
I do appreciate links from within a post, but make sure you trackback so you gain some linkjuice in return.