We detected that your browser language is set to English. Click "Continue" to display the page in set language.

English
seobase-logo
EN
  • English
  • Deutsch
  • Español
  • Türkçe
Sign InSign InSign Up - it’s FREE!Sign Up

What is SEO Link Juice, and How Juice Distribution Works?

Link Juice in SEO is the amount of PageRank that flows through links between pages. It helps determine how high a page ranks for a search term. In the early days of the internet, websites were not indexed by search engines like Google. To get your site found, you needed links to other sites. These links were known as backlinks. Backlinks are important because they help search engines understand which pages on your site are most relevant to users' searches. This helps search engines rank your page higher in search results. In this post, seobase explains what is link juice in SEO, and what is juice distribution. 

 

Sign up to our blog to stay tuned about the latest industry news.

By proceeding you agree to the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy

 

What Is a Link Juice?

Link juice in SEO “Search Engine Optimization,” refers to the amount of authority that a page gains when it links to another page. This authority is measured by the Page Rank algorithm. This is also known as “SEO juice.” The SEO juice is the number of times a link points back to another page.  If a page has more links pointing back to it than other pages, then it will receive more link juice. The SEO link juice describes and measures how much power a backlink passes onto another site and strengthens it. It is important to note that not all links carry equal amounts of link juice. Some links are stronger than others. 

Internal and External Link Juice

Link juice is the amount of value that is transferred from one page to another when a user clicks on a hyperlink. It is measured in kilocalories (kcal) and is determined by the number of external and internal links pointing to the target page. This is why it is so important to make sure that your links point to relevant content. This is calculated based on the number of incoming links to a page and the importance of those sites. The higher the PageRank, the more link juice will pass through the link. External and internal link juice is differentiated between:

  • External link juice is the linking power that is passed on from another domain.
  • Internal link juice is the linking power that is passed on by internal linking to other internal subpages.

Link Juice As an SEO Influence Factor

In order to get high ranking on Google, you need to build up your own domain authority. This is done through building quality content on your website and getting links to your website from authoritative websites. These authoritative websites will pass link juice to your website. In Search Engine Optimization (SEO), link juice is the value of a link. It represents the importance of a website in relation to others. This value is determined by the number of incoming links to a page and the quality of those links. The amount of link juice is necessary for the website link profile, therefore, the amount of link juice is essential for the website. Related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the stronger linking sites have in their TrustRank, the more link juice from them flows to the sites they link to. Based on all of that, you will find that many links (DoFollow and NoFollow) go from one site to various other sites.

3-1-scaled.jpg

How Do You Ensure Link Juice Distribution Flows In The Right Place?

In 2009, Google changed the interpretation of the "NoFollow" attribute so that PageRank sculpting was no longer possible. But before that, while the full link juice was directed to the essential sites, the flow could be turned off to the less important ones. The NoFollow tag is now interpreted differently than before. Nowadays, if you want to stop the link juice flowing to your site, you need to add rel="nofollow" to every link on your website. This will make sure that search engines don’t follow those links. However, there are several ways to distribute link juice between pages on your website. Internal linking is one of these methods. What Is A Dofollow Link, And Why Is It Important? The Nofollow tag is a simple HTML element which allows webmasters to specify whether a given link should pass PageRank. This is done by adding rel="nofollow" to the link's href attribute. The rel attribute specifies the relationship between the linked page and the referring page. By default, all links on a website will pass PageRank. However, if a webmaster adds rel="nofollow", the link will not pass any PageRank.

Penguin Update

In April 2012, Google launched a new algorithm designed to prevent websites from gaming the system. This algorithm, named after the penguin, penalised websites that were found to be using unnatural links to boost rankings. These links were often created through link schemes, where webmasters would create thousands of backlinks to a website in order to artificially inflate its position on search engine results pages. This algorithm, which is now known as the Penguin update, penalised websites that were found to be using unnatural links to boost rankings. These links were deemed to be ‘unnatural’ because they were not relevant to the content on the page. It is the link juice killer! With its webmaster guidelines, Google sets out clear rules that webmasters are to uphold for the avoidance of spam measures and punishments. This includes links appearing unnatural, e.g. which were created by the following factors:

  • Keyword stuffing: A keyword density that is too high due to the over-optimization of a keyword
  • Link purchase, link exchange: Unnatural as there is no link recommendation by a user
  • Link/anchor text: Unnatural accumulation of linked keywords (money keywords)
  • Rapidly growing link profile: Unnatural link growth on sites that only received minimal links and suddenly show an increased link growth
  • Cloaking: Visitors and the crawlers of search engines are shown different versions of the site
  • Topic relevance: Links from topically irrelevant sites 
  • Negative link environment: betting topic links, pornography, poker etc.
  • Inferior backlinks: Links from punished domains and link farms, footer links, comment spam, or blog spam.

Conclusion

You can always use link juice in SEO in the interest of your website. Link juice has many, many benefits. However, you cannot rely on it unaided for SEO as all factors must be combined to get the desired result from your website and rank on top of the SERPs. You can use the online SEO tools from seobase to help you improve your content and rank your site on search engines.

 

Do you want to boost your SEO rankings?

Leverage the most complete SEO platform for rank tracking, SERP analysis and more!