What is link juice?
Link juice, or SEO power, is the value transferred from one page to another through external and internal linking. The amount of link juice transferred depends on, among other things, the power of a given subpage and the number of outbound links.
Link juice – definition
Link juice is a link building term. Link juice is an important element of SEO. It is most often translated as the power conveyed by a link to the target site, i.e. the linked site (by the linking site). Each link conveys power, but its value varies. Link juice is transferred not only by external linking, but also by internal linking.
What affects the value of link juice?
Link juice applies to any dofollow link. This means that for such links, the power is always transferred – but not always in the same amount. The value of SEO power is affected by:
- The authority of the linking domain, i.e. its position in search results, the number of visitors to it,
- power of link profile,
- The number of all links located on a given subpage.
Why is link juice important for SEO?
Link juice is the transfer of SEO power through linking. As you can easily guess, it has a huge impact on SEO, as it allows a site to achieve a better position in search engine results. Acquiring external links, especially from good quality sites, can help a site even get into the top 10 of Google searches. However, this does not mean that more is always better. In this case, link quality is crucial, as well as the balance between external and internal linking. When taking care of link building, you can bet on one of two strategies:
- acquire links from competitors and publish links on the site that lead to competitors’ sites,
- acquire links from sites that do not link to competitors.
SEO power distribution
Theoretically, link juice should share proportionally among all the links on a site. So if there are 5 links on the site, each should equally distribute SEO power among the four sites (20% each). In practice, however, the matter is much more complicated. Google’s algorithm turns out to be complex and constantly changing, and the amount of power transferred is further influenced by such factors as:
- link location,
- quantity and quality of links,
- The link environment, or the subject matter of the site,
- Thematic link between the linked site and the linking site.
It is also important that the linked page should have the right attribute. If it is marked as “noindex” or “nofollow” robots will skip such a link and the power will not be transferred.
