Question about pagerank
 

I am building some music sites and am using some mp3/cd sponsors. As I am building the pagers, I am including separate links for each mp3, album, ringrtone, and so on, each linking directly to the product in question.

Would it be better for page rank to minimize the outbound links? Does google factor in each separate link regardless of the domain it is linked to? Do several thousand outbound links to a particular domain count as much as several thousand to different domains?

I was surprised to find out that one of my domains has a PR of 1 with only a few links pointing to it from music forums and social networking sites, including myspace. It has only internal links though, no outbound links ... yet.

Would I do better to link to a domain (with a few outbound links) which itself links to the content on another domain? The domain in question would have lots of pages on it. Alternatively, could I load the pages with heavy outbound links in a frame on the domain being linked to? Would I be penalized for doing this?

Google loves big sites with tons of pages; just make all pages link back to the home page and to the specific category page.

First, pagerank is irrelevant. Don't sweat it at all. I would use rel="nofollow" on all of your external links though.

Would that make them INVISIBLE as far as determining pagerank goes? Should all my sponsor links have this? Obviously you don't want to do it with traffic trades.

bump bump bump

In a nutshell, this is how pagerank works:

Popular website with lots of inbound links get high pagerank reflecting their popularity. For each site they link to, they give away a small portion of their pagerank.

All of the websites linking to you give you a small part of their pagerank, and this is how you get your pagerank. You in turn give away a little pagerank when you link to another website, unless you use rel="nofollow"

It's slightly more complicated than that, but that's a basic description.

From Google:
Q: What types of links should get this attribute?
A: We encourage you to use the rel="nofollow" attribute anywhere that users can add links by themselves, including within comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists. Comment areas receive the most attention, but securing every location where someone can add a link is the way to keep spammers at bay.

Here are a couple more questions.

(1) Does each individual link on a a page count for one vote, or just one for each domain. If I post my link to my site in my sig file in a dofollow message forum and make 3,000 posts, goes that give it 3,000 votes or just one because they are all coming from a single domain?

(2) I understand why many sites don't like reciprocal links with sites that have a lower PR than theirs, as it seems the site that has the lesser PR would benefit the most. Is this correct?

it doesn't work the way CYF is describing

google is pretty tricky with the whole thing, especially moreso of late

as for your questions, there is no "vote" tally like you describe, it used to be that simply collecting 2000 backlinks would give your page relevance, but google is moving toward more clever techniques to determine relevance... simple answer to your question though is that google won't give your page any extra confidence from 3000 links in a signature than it would from one link in a single post, it might even backfire if that is all your site has going for it

2) people's likes or dislikes with linking is not always based on current google reality either, but generally people value PR like a commodity, and giving a pr4 link in return for a pr2 link doesn't add up in most people's fairness quotient (even though there are many situations, especially when relevance is high, where it might be a wise trade for both parties involved)

For a general overview:

http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html

For the nitty gritty, including algorithms:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important"."

It kind of does work how I described it, I just was trying to give an executive overview.

fair enough, there is alot of the theory that is debatable as well and alot of the info from 2007 is still being touted, as google is a "moving target", but I think a general thought is that outlinks do not affect the pr of the page with the links, although there is a limit to the value they can pass so a page with alot of outlinks are not passing much juice compared to a page with just one or two outlinks

all subject to debate of course, and subject to change overnight on google's whims

and the relation between serps and pr (or lack thereof) is a whole other issue

I think a consensus now is to try to make your site in as natural a way as possible, natural sites tend to have some outlinks that are relevant to your subject, so don't be scared of putting links on your pages, google might think you are scheming if you nofollow every link on your site

think of it like this... there is no such thing as "domain"... only "pages". each page has a value of X. each link one one page to another page passes a value of .X and sitewide links (navigation, includes etc) have a lower value - of .0X. a "domain" doesn't have a pr value. its index page does.

Page Rank is a representation of the value of inbound links to a given page (internal and external links). i.e. 1000 links linking to the home page, each passing a value of .X.. the home page linking elsewhere, each passing a value of .X and value left over for that page is converted from its actual mathematical value to a number between 0-10.

PR has no real relevance for ranking for phrases, although its obviously going to go up as you build links back to the page you want to rank for a phrase... so there is an indirect correlation and it says something about the volume/quality of back links to a page.

adding the "rel=nofollow" attribute to links tells google not to follow it and it won't pass any value to the page you are linking to. this should also be part of your strategy. "contact", "privacy", "register" etc etc etc are not pages you want to pass any link value to.

don't try to be clever. don't try to trick Google. do it right. do the math. think things through. plan things out. figure out where you want to concentrate your linking, to what page, for what phrase. pay attention to the anchor text and spend some time figuring out how to build links TO the site from elsewhere on the web... preferably relevant sites with the anchor text for the phrases you want.

there are no simple 1-2-3 answers. your site is unique, the content is unique, the phrases are unique and the competition is very fluid and ever changing for those phrases. you have to be resigned to becoming the expert on the phrases you aer going after and the competition. if you are serious... do everything with purpose, deliberation and because its part of a well laid out plan to achieve a specific objective... not because someone on gfy gave you an easy answer that you wanted to hear.
:2 cents: