PageRank Sculpting

There has been a lot of discussion about PageRank sculpting, which may affect your website's standing on Google's search engine result pages (SERPs). Google staffer and SEO blogger Matt Cutts recently wrote a post explaining in depth some of the issues regarding PageRank sculpting and its perceived and actual effect on your site. But before we delve into the details of PR sculpting, let's start with the basics.

What is PageRank?

In case you aren't familiar yet, Google PageRank is a system of measuring the perceived credibility and reputation of a website, and pages within that website. PageRank is viewed in a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the highest. The single most important factor in determining your PR is the quality and quantity of incoming links to your site.

Each backlink pointing to your site is like a vote from another website telling Google, "Hey, this site is worthwhile. I recommend it!" That vote carries much more weight when it comes from a high ranking PR site itself, and when it's a site that is somewhat related to yours.

In 99 cases out of 100, the highest PR page on your website is going to be your homepage. From your homepage, PR is then distributed to the sub-categories, content pages and other areas of your site.

So what's PageRank Sculpting?

PR sculpting is the process of trying to manually alter the PR of some pages on your website. The theory goes that the more pages your website has, the more your PR gets diluted as its spread from page to page. Webmasters began using the rel=nofollow attribute on their internal links to block certain pages from receiving PR, which in theory would increase the PR of their higher value pages.

The rel=nofollow attribute has also been used on outgoing links that a website has to other sites. This basically takes away that credibility vote that would normally count towards another site's PageRank. Cutts has explained what many already felt to be true, which is that not only is rel=nofollow not effective but it's actually frowned upon and could negatively impact your standings in the SERPs as well as your Google PageRank.

The PR Loop and PR Decay

When you link out to another site without rel=nofollow some of your PageRank flows along to that next site. That's why links coming from higher PR sites are more valuable for your own site. Cutts explained that PR flows around the Internet basically in an endless loop, passed on from one site to the next.

Since this wouldn't get anybody anywhere, before your outgoing links are counted towards another site's PageRank, there is a decay factor of between 10-15% that stays within your site regardless. Additionally, since the remaining PageRank is passed along the links you have, the more outgoing and internal links you have, the less each one receives as a result.

To sum all of this up more simply, the amount of outgoing links you have on your site, and where they are headed affects your PageRank, along with the quality and quantity of incoming links. Further, the rel=nofollow attribute in a link is ineffective and still allows for the transfer of some PR. The only time it should be used is when you really don't trust the site that a link is leading to. For example, a sketchy link in the comments of one of your blog posts.

The bottom line is that PageRank sculpting is ineffective and could harm your site's PR as well as your standing in the SERPs.

Sources: Matt Cutts, PageRank sculpting