Link Juice

Understanding Link Juice

"Link Juice" is an informal SEO term that describes the authority, equity, or ranking power passed from one page to another through hyperlinks. While not an official Google term, it is a useful mental model for understanding how links transfer value across the web.

Imagine your website as a network of pipes. Link juice is the water flowing through them:

• External links pour water into your system from other websites
• Internal links distribute that water to different pages within your site
• Outbound links let some water flow out to other sites

The concept originates from Google's original PageRank algorithm, which treated links as votes of confidence and calculated page importance based on the quantity and quality of incoming links.

How Link Juice Works

Authority Flows Downstream

A link from a high-authority page passes more value than a link from a low-authority page. A single link from a major news site can be worth more than hundreds of links from obscure blogs.

The page doing the linking shares its accumulated authority with the pages it links to. This is why earning backlinks from established, trusted websites is so valuable for SEO.

Dilution Principle

The more outbound links a page has, the less juice each individual link passes. If a page links to 10 other pages, each receives roughly 1/10th of the available equity. If it links to 100 pages, each gets approximately 1/100th.

This is why a link from a page's main content (where few links exist) is typically more valuable than a link from a footer or sidebar (where dozens of links compete).

First Link Priority

When a page links to the same destination multiple times, Google traditionally counted only the first link for anchor text purposes. While this behavior has evolved, having your most important link appear first in the content remains a best practice.

Nofollow and Link Equity

Links marked with rel="nofollow" tell search engines not to pass ranking equity. Originally, all juice was preserved for followed links. However, Google changed this in 2019 — now nofollow is treated as a "hint," and the juice associated with nofollowed links may simply evaporate rather than being redistributed.

Internal Link Juice Distribution

Internal linking is your primary tool for controlling how link juice flows within your own site. Strategic internal linking ensures your most important pages receive the authority they need to rank.

Homepage Authority

Your homepage typically accumulates the most link juice because:

• It is the most common target for external backlinks
• It links to all major sections of your site
• It has the shortest URL and highest inherent authority

From your homepage, authority flows to pages it links to, then to pages those pages link to, and so on. Pages more than 3-4 clicks from the homepage receive progressively less juice.

Hub and Spoke Model

A hub-and-spoke internal linking structure concentrates authority on important pages:

• Hub page links to all related spokes
• Spoke pages link back to the hub
• Spokes may cross-link to each other

This creates a cluster of mutually reinforcing pages that collectively rank better than isolated pages.

Orphan Pages

Pages with no internal links pointing to them are called orphan pages. They receive no internal link juice and are difficult for search engines to discover. Regular site audits should identify and fix orphan pages.

External Link Juice

Earning Inbound Links

External backlinks inject new authority into your site. Quality matters more than quantity:

• Links from topically relevant sites pass more value
• Links from authoritative domains carry more weight
• Editorial links within content outperform footer or sidebar links
• Natural anchor text distribution appears more trustworthy

Outbound Link Considerations

Linking to external sites does "leak" some juice, but this is normal and expected. Outbound links to authoritative sources can actually help SEO by:

• Providing value to users
• Establishing topical relevance
• Building relationships that may result in reciprocal links

Excessively hoarding link juice by never linking out can appear unnatural.

PageRank Sculpting

"PageRank Sculpting" was a practice of using nofollow tags on internal links to control juice flow — the idea being that nofollowing low-value pages (like login or cart pages) would preserve more juice for important pages.

Google explicitly changed how this works. Nofollowed links no longer "save" juice for other links; the equity simply evaporates. Today, better strategies include:

• Using robots.txt to block truly unimportant pages
• Improving site architecture for natural equity flow
• Prioritizing internal links to high-value pages
• Reducing unnecessary navigation links

Measuring Link Equity

While Google's actual PageRank is not public, third-party metrics approximate link equity:

• Domain Authority (Moz) — Site-level authority score
• Domain Rating (Ahrefs) — Backlink profile strength
• URL Rating (Ahrefs) — Page-level authority score
• Trust Flow (Majestic) — Quality-based link metric

These metrics are estimates and should guide strategy rather than be treated as absolute measures.

Practical Link Juice Strategy

Focus on these actionable approaches:

1. Earn quality backlinks through valuable content, outreach, and PR
1. Build strong internal linking from high-authority pages to important targets
1. Fix broken internal links that waste juice on 404 pages
1. Consolidate similar pages to concentrate authority
1. Prune low-value pages that dilute site-wide equity
1. Use descriptive anchor text for internal links to signal relevance