Main site PR benefit to backlinks to internal pages?

[denemante]

Hey wise folks,

I have a program on my e-comm site where users will end up with their own unique links to mini-stores on my site. For example, John Smith's area might be found at www.example.com/john-smith

There is very strong incentive for John to market that link specifically, as traffic to it will make him money when his products are sold. Assume he e-mails friends, posts on craigslist, syndicates, buys AdWords, banners, and generally promotes it anywhere he can.

Will I see any SEO benefit from this? If he creates what boils down to 1000s of backlinks to that specific URL, will my overall site gain any positions? Or is it worthless in terms of overall SEO to my main site?

Thanks!

[jimbeetle]

Are there any links from Jon Smith's page to any other pages on your site, the home page maybe? If so, then yes, Smith's page will pass some link juice along and help the overall performance of the site.

[denemante]

No, he won't have any other links to my site out there - just www.example.com/johnsmith (where johnsmith is a folder with an index.htm file within).

I could end up with 100s or 1000s of these types of links to my site. As such, hate to have that much link exposure and get basically zero PR boost.

So I'm looking for some creative idea as to how I might do this and still get that boost.

Would it help at all if I created root-level pages instead, like www.example.com/johnsmith.htm?

My only final thought is that I put a drop-down list on my homepage with links to all these "mini-sites". Then I tell John Smith to go promote www.example.com, and instuct people to look up "John Smith" from the drop down. Kinda hokey.

[jimbeetle]

Would it help at all if I created root-level pages...

Again, unless that page has a link to at least one other page on the main site, no, you can't pass PR without a link.

Kinda hokey

Yeah, and not effective. Mr. Smith could lose a lot of the traffic he sent.

The only way to benefit from those pages is to put some sort of link on them back to your home page or other page on your site. Home page would be best for PR distribution. Any possibility of a "Sponsored by" or some such link in Mr. Smith's footer?

[denemante]

Hey - sorry - I wasn't totally clear.

Every one of these "johnsmith" pages will be fully integrated into my site - same exact shared navs/template as my main site, and lots of links back to all the pages of my site.

But I'm not worried about the vote from these pages back to my homepage. I could create a tree of pages myself to do that.

What I'm interested in is when John Smith posts 100 postings around the internet to www.example.com/johnsmith.

Sure, the "johnsmith" page will have lots of backlinks and might get a solid PR itself. So will "suzysmith" and "janedoe" individually get solid PR. And then those higher PR pages, while internal, are "voting" for my homepage and other pages on my site linked out from those pages.

But that's so diluted. Overall, there could be 1000s of links placed out there. I want my homepage to get the direct benefit of 1000 links - not spread across 20 subpages of my site who will vote for my homepage.

But I don't know and you guys are wise So maybe this secondary benefit of high PR on some of my site's pages is a great thing and all I can hope for.

Looking forward to more insight!

[jimbeetle]

I want my homepage to get the direct benefit of 1000 links - not spread across 20 subpages of my site who will vote for my homepage.

Unless those external pages link directly to your home page you simply can't, it just isn't possible.

So maybe this secondary benefit of high PR on some of my site's pages is a great thing and all I can hope for.

That's not a secondary benefit -- that's the way you want it to work.

You want to attract links to internal pages of your site, in this case your affiliates' pages.

You want those internal pages to link to your home page and other important pages.

You want your home page and other important pages to distribute the link juice around your site.

And now, say, if your home page does not link back to those affiliate pages, you are distributing their incoming link juice to the home page only to *your own* pages, not back to the affiliate page.

Overall, not a bad setup.