Ranking your mapped page for a target keyword is tough. If you have any practical SEO experience you might have noticed, that in many cases, the page that does rank for our target keyword isn’t always the intended page.
Even if the intended page does rank we often have to deal with cannibalization issues and then resolving that is whole another story.
In this blog, we have come up with a strategy by which we can rank target pages for specific keywords by selectively interlinking.
But before that let’s understand how ranking is determined by Page Rank.
What is Page Rank?
PageRank refers to the system and the algorithmic method that Google uses to rank pages as well as the numerical value assigned to pages as a score.
How does Page Rank pass through Interlinking
The picture on the Moz Blog puts it very clearly.
Source: Moz Blog
The diagram shows that PageRank, a traditional model of how links move through web pages, no longer functions as it once did. The toolbar is a terrible predictor of PR flow, and even while Google (and other engines) may still employ some elements of the PR model (and related algorithms), it is unquestionably not the be-all and end-all of linking strategies.
However Links from Internal pages still pass Link Value, and the more the PR of a page, the more its probability to rank. We will use this concept in our attempt to rank a single page above all others.
How to Selectively Interlink Pages to Pass Page Rank Strategically
Identify the Target Keyword and all Pages containing it
The best way to do it is to simply put a site: command along with the target keyword.
In this example, we want to find out all pages in the domain aifpms.com containing the word “portfolio managers”.
Scrap all Page URLs containing the Target Keyword
You can scrap the urls from Google SERP itself using the Scraper extension. The following video from Ahrefs will tell how to use it. (Watch from 2:34 sec timestamp)
<iframe width=”853″ height=”480″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/8f4YTubL6cM?list=PLvJ_dXFSpd2tjUTuAHpHidz5e2hAedP_m” title=”How to Build Unique Backlinks With Resource Page Link Building” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe>
Save the scraped page urls in an Excel Sheet.
Find all Page Ranks using Gephi
To know how to use Gephi, you can read our Definitive Guide or you can watch the video I made to find all relative page ranks values for your pages.
Video Link > https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bxnz6qW-9JGQ-7qOIGbZd0N9WD1S5DHl/view?usp=sharing
After you have exported all the website page URLs with the page ranks, you can find the page ranks of the previously exported urls containing the keyword “portfolio manager” specifically using a simple VLOOKup function.
If you don’t know how to use a VLOOKup function you can refer to the following video.
<iframe width=”853″ height=”480″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/Lw03WcG4mt4″ title=”Vlookup Function in Excel for Beginners” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe>
Filter Pages with a Page Rank lower than the Target URL
Essentially the concept is we want to make sure all relevant pages with a page rank lower than the target page links to the target page to empower it.
We are not to touch the page with the highest page rank since we don’t want to disturb their rankings.
The rest you can sort out in the Excel File.
Final Thoughts
This strategy is one of the most effective ways to rank specific landing pages in Google SERP. Eventually, by repeating the cycle every 3-4 months, we eventually make sure all our pages are properly linked and our most important pages have proper link and page rank distribution.
