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What is Link Juice in SEO and How Does It Impact Digital Strategies

Link Building
On November 23, 2022

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Backlinks are an essential ranking signal that has a big impact on how your website shows up in Google’s search results pages. In this guide, we are going to cover everything you need to know about what link juice is and how it affects SEO digital strategies.

What is Link Juice in SEO?

Link juice is a slang term in SEO. In simple words, link juice is the level of value or authority a backlink passes from the page the link is on to the page the backlink is referring to. In the circles of SEO experts, it is a consensus that various sorts of links present on pages pass some value from one page to another page.

However, the level of value a link passes on from one page to another varies, as it depends on many factors. These factors range from the overall quality of the page that’s providing the link, its authority, and relevance to other types of factors. Another term that’s interchangeably used to describe link juice is link equity in SEO.

Link Equity VS PageRank

 

PageRank and link equity are two entirely different terms that are often confused by professionals as being the same. The meaning of both terms is different and should not be used interchangeably. The first time the term ‘PageRank’ was introduced by Google was when it provided insights into their algorithms that were intended to measure site rankings in the search results.

The purpose of PageRank was to measure the backlinking strength of a website so that a site could be ranked in SERPs (search engine results pages). However, in the algorithms of Google, there are various other SEO factors that are also considered by the search engine when ranking websites.

The terms link equity, and link juice in SEO are the same, however, and can be used interchangeably.

How is Link Equity Determined?

There are various factors that play a pivotal role in determining the amount and value of link equity. Be it internal links or external links, both have the potential to pass link equity. Below we will mention the major factors which are important determiners of link equity.

  • Relevance of a Link

Link relevance plays a big role in deciding the quality of what is link juice in SEO being passed on from one page to another. For example, providing a link to an attorney landing page from a page that has content about women’s accessories is not something relevant or valuable.

  • Crawlability of a Link

For the purpose of providing a pathway to website crawlers, webmasters can use the robot.txt file or no-follow links. This is done to avoid including a link that’s not supposed to be crawled. Also, in case a website is yet to be indexed by the search engine’s bots, then any sort of links on the website will not be found, and thus they will not pass any authority.

  • Specific Locality of a Link

The effect that a specific link will have depends very much on the location where it is present. For example, a link that is contextual and comes somewhere in the middle of the content will have more influence than a link that has been placed in the lower section of the content.

  • The Amount of Links

What is link juice in SEO, or link equity can be spread depending on the number of links on a page? It means if a webmaster includes five links, then the equity of a page will be equal across all five links. With the increase in the number of links, there will be an equal stretch in link equity across all links.

  • Site Authority

This is also a big determinant. The links which come from authoritative websites, such as from famous sites or leader sites in a specific industry, carry more weight than other websites. However, this does not mean the search engine gives any calculation of absolute authority to certain domains and avoids others.

How Does Link Juice Work?

 

Link juice is passed on with the help of do-follow links of high SEO value. It should be kept in mind that the link juice comes from do-follow links and not from no-follow links. What is link juice in SEO and the way link juice works is, for example, you have two sites. One is site S, and the other is site P. In case all the other ranking factors are constant, and site S has a single link, whereas site P does not have any links, then site S will rank higher than site P. 

This is because site S is receiving link juice from the external sites linking to it. Now, if site P is also given a link, then site P may also rank high depending on the amount of what is link juice in SEO, and each link passes. Depending on the quality of the links and the number of sites linking to a specific site, the link juice can be more or less. When a page from an authoritative website gives a do-follow link to your web page, then you may see that the ranking of your site will go up with the passage of time. Also, link equity is also passed from pages on your own website.

Why is Link Equity Important?

Link equity is of an essential nature because it has a connection with PageRank. And for a big search engine like Google, PageRank is an important ranking metric. The more you work on increasing the link equity of a page, the more will be the likelihood that it will rank high in SERPs.

With link equity, you can see how much strength a backlink has. By learning more about link equity and the way it works, you can pay attention to your link-building efforts in such a way that you’ll be able to get high-quality links that can make a real difference in getting the desired results.

How to Discover the Link Juice?

What is link juice in SEO will come primarily from external backlinks. Below you can find the ways to get backlinks and explore more of what is link juice in SEO opportunities:

  • Make authoritative content that’s high-quality and value-driven, and try to be an authority for the best information in your industry
  • Position your site and content as a worthy go-to resource
  • Write high-quality blog posts for authoritative websites in your industry
  • Be quoted on other websites by making PR efforts
  • Improve your links with link reclamation techniques

How to Maximize Your Link Juice?

It is essential that you take the maximum leverage of the link juice you have available. To do this, there are specific techniques you can use to improve how a specific site will pass the link juice to all the essential pages that matter. There are three ways you can use to do it effectively.

  • Get Quality Links from External Domains

The best method through which you can receive link equity is by obtaining external links. For a webmaster to get external links, the best approach is to create high-quality content that’s relevant and helpful. By doing so, you will be able to get authoritative sites to want to use the content and hopefully provide links to it. You can use the guest posting technique in order to get high-quality links from external domains.

  • Have Internal Links

Link equity can be spread across links in a variety of ways. Once you start getting high-quality external links, the same links will lend their authority to internal links on your site pages as well. This is another benefit of external links and leveraging them with internal links. This link juice is passed on from the external pages to your content and spreads to the pages that are linked internally.

Source: creometric.com

 

  • Make Use of SEO Auditing

You can find SEO audit services in an effort to optimize for the factors that Google uses in its algorithms to rank. The SEO audit services provider will thoroughly review your website so as to point out where improvements can be introduced. They will make a proper plan and strategy to take away any issues hindering your site’s ranking with keyword research and other SEO services.

The main goal here is to streamline the flow of link equity throughout your whole website. This way, you are able to know everything is being assembled in the right way to get the best results from link equity.

How to Quickly Find Internal Link Juice Targets?

Doing internal linking as a means of creating link juice is an easy and straightforward process. All you need to do is pick up those pages on your website that have high authority. Then you need to pass equity through links from those pages.

Also, in order to know the authority of pages, you can use SEO tools such as Ahrefs, SEMRush, and others. When you add internal links from your high authority pages, doing so increases the likelihood of ranking higher and better in search engine results pages SERPs.

Discovering the Link Juice Being Offered in Your Content

In order to know the value or the amount of what is link juice in SEO that’s in your content, you can use certain tools. The good thing about using an SEO tool is they use various metrics, such as citation flow, domain flow, etc., to know the exact value being passed from the links. In this regard, the best tools available on the market are Majestic SEO, Monitor Backlinks, and Ahrefs.

Ways You Can Bring in Link Equity from Other Sites

Now we will discuss the most important thing, as you cannot control how other websites will carry out their things, such as:

  • A site owner can choose not to link to your content
  • A webmaster can designate the backlinks as nofollow
  • They can also go on to remove all the links at once whenever they want to

 

All such are scenarios that you cannot do anything about. You might be cranking out high-value content in the hopes of putting it out on other sites and possibly getting a link in return. But you still have no control over the real deal, which is backlinks. 

However, you can work on things that are within your control. By forming well-thought-out techniques and strategies, you can get high-quality links. Below is the roadmap on how to do this.

  • Select a Method You Find Suitable

If you’re looking to get backlinks on a DIY basis, then it will require you to work with the webmasters of other sites in your niche. You can pay them to allow backlinks to your site. However, Google never recommends doing this. Instead, the search engine enforces penalties on websites that engage in the practice of paying for links.

The safer route of getting links the right way is the following.

The Broken Link Building Technique

In the broken link-building technique, you can create fresh and relevant content for the links that are no longer live on pages that are relevant to you. After creating value-driven and relevant content, you can partner with the other site’s owner to provide links to your freshly created resources.

Any Brand Mentions that have Not been Linked

This will require you to find all the mentions of your brand that are unlinked. It can be the name of your business, contact, address, or any other thing that particularly mentions your business. After you’ve found such citations or mentions, you can reach out to the specific site’s owner and ask them to add a link to your site on the unlinked mention.

Finding unlinked brand mentions can be very time-consuming. Therefore, it is recommended that you use a tool to quickly locate and find unlinked brand mentions. By using any of the two discussed strategies, you can improve the authority of your pages. 

The best way to create better backlinks is by cranking out high-quality guest posts. I return for providing your prospective sites with high-quality content that meets their demands, you can get quality backlinks in return.

  • Make Intent-Based Anchor Texts

Anchor text is the text within content that’s highlighted or underlined, and this text is embedded with a link. The anchor text is used to tell the reader as well as Google what the link is about. Always make sure that the anchor text is intentional and that it tells the reader what they will find upon clicking the link. Your anchor text should be accurate, and it should provide at least a basic idea of what the reader can expect upon clicking the link.

  • Fix Minimums for the Domain Authority

Link juice is directly impacted by the domain authority level of the sites that provide you backlinks. Moreover, the overall quality of what is link juice in SEO will be spread across your site is affected a lot by domain authority. You will need to make sure that a good link-building strategy makes sure the sites that link to you are at least as authoritative as your competitor sites that show up in search engine results pages.

Source: seopressor.com

 

  • Have a Specific Traffic Threshold

You should always make sure that the human element is not compromised at any cost within the SEO strategy. If you partner with sites that do not bring a good amount of traffic, then the partnering will not yield results, no matter how good the overall SEO strategy is. You need to maintain a minimum traffic threshold for the sites you want to partner with.

If you’re creating high-quality content, then you would also want the sites linking out to you to be bringing enough human traffic. The sites you partner with should have a high domain authority with good traffic. They should not merely be catering to robots and search engine crawlers. 

Source: wizbrand.com

 

  • Beware of No Follow Links

Not all links are the same. You need to beware that a webmaster can choose to ‘nofollow’ the links in your published content. When this happens, the link equity is blocked from being shared with your target pages. This way, a website is better in charge of who to get classified with. If a webmaster makes the links no-follow, then it means the page is denying to share authority and trust.

Make sure that the webmasters you link out to do not do no-follow on your links. A no-follow link is not worth your time if you’re backlinking with guest posts. 

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