The Spreadsheet - the pyramid structure
Consider a small site like the one to the left.
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| How to specify the pyramid |
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| Pyramid without bread-crumb trail |
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| Pyramid with all pages linking back |
Notice how the top and middle-tier pages (1, 2 and 3) have a higher PageRank than the rest. Each of them has 3 pages linking to it, so the formula reflects the fact that these page are more important than the sub-pages.
Let's suppose all pages link back to the home page, Page1, like on this spreadsheet. One way this could be done is with a breadcrumb trail - and the result is shown to the right.
The result is shown to the right, and this time Page1 has a much higher PageRank (because it has 7 backlinks) - and Page8 has a higher PageRank than page 4, 5, 6 and 7 because it's closer to Page1.
The pyramid is a good model for structuring large sites, because it will concentrate PageRank on the pages that are central for navigation.
The pyramid combined with a breadcrumb trail concentrates PageRank at the top pages.
What happens if Page8 doesn't link back? For the answer, see the page about internal PageRank leak.
Next: the star configuration.