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Link Juice or Link Equity is the authority a webpage passes to another webpage through a hyperlink. It is like a praise a website gets from another website or itself. (We’ll understand how it gets this praise from itself)
The hyperlinks a webpage gets acts as a vote of confidence that indicates the content present on the page or the overall page is valuable and worth promoting.
Higher the link juice a webpage receives higher the chances of it to rank well in the search engine result page (SERP).
Link Juice is great indication to search engine that a webpage is worthy.
It is a crucial ranking factor. It helps search engines determine a page's authority and relevance.
Websites with more link juice are generally viewed as more trustworthy and authoritative by search engines, leading to better rankings.
This is the authority passed from another website’s webpage to your website’s webpage.
Having high-quality external links pointing to your website is important to build your site’s overall authority.
When authority is passed between pages of your own website that is link juice being passed internally.
It is important to distribute links on your website efficiently to pass link juice to all pages boosting their ranking potential. (Through internal links a website gets praise from itself)
Let’s understand how anchor text and internal linking is used to pass link juice.
Suppose this is a new page: /what-is-seo
To boost it we create backlink to this page from other internal pages.
Here page 1 and page 2 is internally linking to “/what is seo” page and through anchor text “general SEO” and “Search engine optimization (SEO)”
1. Domain Authority: A well-established website with a good domain authority when links to any website the link juice transferred is high.
Similarly, a low domain authority website if links back to you the percent of link juice transferred is less.
2. Page Authority: Even within a domain, some pages hold higher authority than other. Link juice passed from those pages contains more weight.
Let’s understand with ahrefs example:
Links from these pages will transfer different amount of link equity as per their page authority.
URL | Authority |
https://ahrefs.com | 84 |
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer | 67 |
https://ahrefs.com/seo | 61 |
Metrics taken from SmallSeoTools.
3. PageRank and its Relation to Link Juice
PageRank is a Google algorithm that uses backlinks as a factor in determining website rankings.
Although PageRank is just one of many ranking factors, it's closely tied to the concept of link juice.
A webpage gets a PageRank based on its backlink profile and other factors which is influenced by link juice.
Quick Difference between PageRank and Page Authority:
4. Link Relevance: Link equity transferred from a page related to your page passes more value.
A page about a technical product giving link to a page about some medical product will hold less value since they are not related. Still domain authority plays a role here.
5. Number of Outbound Links: A link from a page with fewer outbound links is worth more than a link from a page with many outbound links.
A page linking to multiple pages from the content will distribute the link juice evenly amongst them resulting in each getting less authority transfer.
6. Link Location: Links from the main content of a page contains more weight than the links from footers or sidebars.
Getting a backlink from the main content of the page contains more value and weightage than the links from the footer or sidebar.
7. Through Images: Images are embedded inside <img> tag and not <a> tag so they cannot directly pass link juice. For it to pass link juice <img> tag can be placed inside an <a> tag yet it won’t compare to text links.
A properly optimized image may pass link juice based on alt text. Check out how to optimize images and get most out of it.
8. Follow vs. Nofollow Links: Links that contains “follow” attribute passes link juice. Links with “nofollow” attribute does not. This does not mean nofollow links are useless, they are still considered for page ranking purpose.
9. Link Crawlability: A page needs to be crawlable through search engine bots to get link juice.
10. HTTP Status: Make sure the linking page has a proper HTTP status (200 or 301 redirect).
11. Anchor Text: The anchor text from which a page is getting links can influence link juice transfer. Link to a page about “link juice in seo” from the term “link equity” will hold more value than getting link from anchor text like “read this article”.
Your Backlinks: Check for backlinks pointing towards your website and make sure they are high quality. High quality backlinks pass good link juice.
To determine if a backlink is good quality, check these factors:
Spam Score: Also make sure to check spam score of websites passing links to your site (if high spam score websites backlinks to you it will affect your website negatively).
Orphan Pages: Identify orphan pages (pages with no internal links) and link high authority pages to weaker pages to boost their authority and pass link juice efficiently.
Strategic Internal Linking: Analyse all pages and create a strategy to link them internally to properly distribute link juice within website.
Competitor Backlink: Check backlinks your competitor is receiving and determine the equality if it is worthy look for similar backlinks to link to your webpages
User Behaviour: If your website is huge with many internal links (and good traffic) use Google Analytics to check how it is affecting the user behaviour. Then place your links accordingly.
Page Traffic: See how a page is receiving traffic, if it is from other links check them and align your links strategically.
No, nofollow links do not pass link juice their primary purpose is to signal the bots not to follow the next page from that link and to avoid google penalties. However, Google may still consider it as a hint.
Read more about how nofollow links affects PageRank in eyes of Google here.
Link Juice is transferred through hyperlinks and each hyperlink whether external or internal, acts as a vote of confidence, passing authority and relevance signals to the linked page.
However, not all links are created equal. Factors like domain authority, page relevance, link placement, and anchor text significantly influence the value of link juice transferred.
Building and managing link juice effectively can significantly impact a website's search engine rankings and overall online visibility.
To boost your online visibility with proper SEO optimization connect with us and get best SEO service for your site!
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