If you’re new to SEO, you might come across words and terms every now and again that leave you wondering what they could possibly mean. One such term that might cause a bit of confusion is “link juice”. In this blog, our SEO experts take you through what link juice is, how it works and why it’s important for your campaign. So, first things first, what exactly is link juice?
Link juice (sometimes referred to as link equity) describes the value passed on from one website to another via links. A website can pass on authority and ranking power to another website by linking to it.
Read on to learn more about link juice, how it works and effective link-building strategies.
What is Link Juice and How Does it Work?
Link juice is the slang term for the official Google PageRank algorithm. You might also see it referred to as Link Equity, describing the value passed on from one page to another via links. It refers to the authority or ranking power that a link can transfer from one page to another.
How Do Links Impact Search Rankings?
The idea is that a link from a high domain authority website to a lower-authority website can help to improve the rankings of the lower-authority website. Search engines like Google see these links as a kind of vote of confidence, indicating that your website is valuable and worth promoting. Domain authority is a metric used in SEO to measure the likelihood of a website ranking in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
For example, we have a blog about Site Structure. A number of other SEO agencies and companies are also talking about this topic and have considered a range of other SEO factors to the same standard as ours. But, in this scenario, a high-authority website links to our blog on this topic, and not the other agencies’ sites. Because of this link, it’s likely that our blog will outrank the others. This is especially true if multiple websites link to this blog.
How Does Link Equity Work?
There are three key components to link juice and how much juice can be passed from one page to another.
- The authority of the linking page – pages with higher authority tend to pass more link juice than pages with lower authority.
- The relevance of the linking page – the relevance of the linking page to the content being linked to can influence how much juice is passed on.
- The type of link – a link from a key page within a website’s main navigation/menu is likely to pass on more juice than something such as a blog, which wouldn’t usually be in the navigation.
- Follow/Nofollow links – if a link is tagged as “Nofollow”, search engines will not follow the link, therefore no equity is passed along.
How to Build Link Equity
There are a number of ways to build your backlink profile. Some of them take quite a bit of time and effort, but they are incredibly worth it in the long run.
Earn Organic Links
Earning link equity simply refers to the process of creating quality content that other websites want to link to organically. When you create high-quality, super-relevant content, other sites will link to it as a source. If you’re already working on SEO, this is the simplest way to build backlinks as you should be doing this already!
Another way to do this is using the skyscraper technique – essentially, taking top ranking content for a given topic, making it considerably better, and asking websites that currently link to this page to link to yours instead. Learn more about the technique in our recent article.
Alternatively, digital PR campaigns are another great way to organically earn links.
Internal Linking
Did you know that you can also get link juice from your own website? This is why internal linking is so important in SEO. Linking from well-performing pages on your website to lesser performing websites can help to give it a boost.
Additionally, when you use keywords on pages that you don’t want to rank for that keyword, you can add an internal link on the word or phrase, linking to the page you do want to rank. This will send a bit of link juice to the desired page.
Ask for Links
This involves getting in touch with and asking journalists, website owners and other relevant sites to provide a link to your content. There are a number of ways to do this, including:
- Asking them to link to existing content
- Asking to write a guest blog
- Providing expert knowledge in exchange for a link
Manually Adding Links
Whilst manually adding links tends to be the least effective method of link building, it’s still worth doing – every little helps! This includes manually adding links to:
- Social media profiles
- Directories
- Blog comments
- Profile pages
- Forums and Q&A sites
It is worth noting, however, that social media profiles, directories and blog comment links contain less equity than organic links. Some may also be Nofollow links offering no equity at all.
Learn more about link building practices in our dedicated blog, What is Link Building?
When Link Juice Won’t Work – What to Avoid
When link building, there are a few types of links to avoid. They typically don’t provide much juice and aren’t worth the effort.
- Spammy links – whilst they might not actually damage your authority as previously thought, there is no benefit to purchasing or using spammy backlinks.
- Low authority – links from websites with low authority won’t offer much juice for your website.
- Nofollow links – “Nofollow” is an attribute that can be given to links that tell search engines not to follow that link, therefore it’s not worth chasing such backlinks unless it provides brand awareness.
Learn more about Nofollow links and how Google crawls your website in our recent blogs, How Often Does Google Crawl My Site, and What Is the Difference between Follow and Nofollow Links?
Link Building and SEO With Wildcat Digital
At Wildcat Digital, we specialise in all forms of SEO, from creating high-quality content that earns organic backlinks, to detailed digital PR campaigns backed by creative link-building strategies. Visit our digital PR page to see our full link-building services, or get in touch with us today to arrange a free consultation.
Chloe Robinson
Content Strategist & Team Leader
