PR of homepage when other pages have more lniks

[UnderRugSwept]

This is going to sound like such a newbie question. I don't know how I've been doing SEO all this time and haven't come across the answer.

It's usually true that a homepage will have the most backlinks, but what if it doesn't? What if an internal page has more links? Is it possible for an internal page to have a higher PR than a homepage?

Additionally, if I do on-page SEO for many internal pages of my site, will it only help those particular pages or will it give the whole site a boost, thus making the homepage rank higher in the SERPS?

[SEO-Doctor]

Its not just from backlinks.  I've got blogs where the  homepage is PR1 but posts are PR3, due to social signals and shares of the post.  This seems to be happening more recently.

[UnderRugSwept]

No Panda problems. It's a legitimate business whose website I'm just trying to make as optimized as possible. www.stadriemblems.com

Most of our product pages only have about a paragraph of text in them like this one. I was hoping by adding five or six paragraphs of helpful information to all of those pages like this one that Google would consider the whole site more helpful rather than only the page.

I mean, individual pages have to count in some way toward the quality of the overall site in Google's eyes. I've always heard that it's a good thing to have a lot of indexed pages--as long as they're good. So if it's only individual pages that matter, then what's the difference between a site that has 1,000 quality pages vs. a two page site as far as home page ranking goes?

Is having 1,000 indexed pages only a good thing because you have 1,000 chances to rank for 1,000 different terms, and has no bearing on the homepage?

[Jason_342]

Great points Doug.

[DougRoberts]

If those pages you write attract their own inbound links then the link-juice that flows into your site, into those pages, will also flow to the other pages on your site giving other pages on your site a boost too.

Don't just think of link juice as something that flows down from your home page.

Adding more (quality) content will also help your website rank for all those lovely long-tail keywords.

Just remember that it's not JUST about links/link-juice. The pages should have a purpose and be written for the audience you're targeting. Make sure you're thinking about answering their questions rather than your own, and provide them with the information they need.

[Jason_342]

Ingeneral (I have not seen your site or know what problems it might have), if your site was hit by panda then adding great content to all your pages would probably help your homepage rank better for your targeted keywords.  However, I don't know if you are having a panda problem or just need to do more link building to your homepage and optimize it.  A panda penalty can reduce the rankings of all the pages on a site.

Also, adding quality content that helps the user is never the wrong choice to make.  However, if you are trying to get your homepage ranking better for a specific phrase and you don't have penalties/filters on the page.  Then I would probably focus on link building and doing on page SEO for that page and funneling the link juice from the other high PR pages on the site to my homepage more efficiently.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,

Jason

[UnderRugSwept]

So if I devote a lot of time to adding a lot of quality content to my site--lots of text and helpful information about our products, Google doesn't view the site in general as better and more informative, thus ranking the home page higher? All that extra text helps is just the page it's on?

[Jason_342]

Marisa,

Yes, it is possible for an internal page to have higher PR than the hompage.  Sometimes a site will host a viral piece of content (infographic, quiz or an awesome blog post etc..) that will dramatically increase that pages PR.  This is not a bad thing, but can be a very good asset.

On to your last question, depending on how you have your internal link structured the link juice coming into the site will help all your pages rank more aggressively in the SERPs.  ingeneral onpage SEO will only help the page that you are optimizing ranking more aggressively.  However, if you are optimizing your internal links to other pages, this will help those pages rank better too.  So in short, it depends on what you are doing.  If you are just optimizing the Title tag, meta description, H1 tag and keywords on the page. You are really only helping that page rank better.  However, if you are linking to other pages from within the body copy and optimizing your internal links to pass more juice.  That will help all your pages rank better.

Remember that google doesn't rank site, it ranks pages.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,

Jason

[DougRoberts]

All those deep pages that have lots of back links also pass on page rank via their links too and I bet that in most cases pages on a website have one or more links back to the homepage...