How to Battle On-Site Linking Issues
 By Hope Hopkins, writer, OMC

Many people don’t realize that Google’s PageRank algorithm can be used in other ways besides being applied to external links. For example, it can be used as an analysis tool to determine the health, strengths, and weaknesses of on-site links. This is important, because out of all the factors affecting a website’s ranking, there are only some which you can fully control yourself.

Organic
Unfortunately, websites are bound to have problems with their on-site linking structure. If you fail to optimize these links, you may see non-indexed pages, pages relegated to Google’s “Omitted Results” filter, and orphaned pages.

CMS
Content Management Systems (CMS), which drive the majority of large corporate websites, present many issues. They are limited to including customizable meta tags, title tags, and keyword rich pages. CMS’s are complex tools, and if the people configuring them are not confident about what they are doing, their work will lead to disaster.

Promotion
Your promotion environment may be a huge factor in preventing your on-site linking architecture from being optimized. This will typically include factors such as logos, icons, and color schemes. Often, there will need to be a trade-off between optimal linking structure, and real world promotion requirements.

In conclusion, link building should be done in a focused and proactive manner. Each on-site link should have its own rationale behind it. Leveraging Google’s published PageRank algorithm will help determine a site’s linking strengths and weaknesses.
The hard truth is that you might experience a drop in rankings, traffic, and sales, due to a non-optimal on-site linking structure. So, keep building and optimizing those links!