Link juice

Link juice describes the power passed on via links. Strong backlinks bring link juice to a website, and internal linking distributes it. Important pages should be linked prominently, and lost backlinks redirected with a 301.

In search engine optimisation, links are digital recommendations – for users as well as for Google. If many trustworthy websites link to a page, Google sees this as a sign of its relevance. The “value” a link passes on to the linked page is figuratively called link juice in the SEO industry (also link equity or link power). The term doesn't come from Google, but vividly describes the principle of the PageRank algorithm: authority flows like juice via links from page to page.

How link juice is distributed

How much link juice a page can pass on depends mainly on two factors: the page's own strength – i.e. how many good links it receives itself – and the number of links it sets. Put simply, a page's power is divided among its outgoing links: a page with few links passes on more per link than a page with hundreds of links. In practice, however, Google weights links differently – a clearly visible link in the body text is likely to count for more than a link in the footer. Links with the attributes “nofollow”, “sponsored” or “ugc” generally don't pass on ranking power. Since 2009, however, setting nofollow no longer means that the remaining links receive more power; the share of a nofollow link simply evaporates.

Distributing link juice deliberately on your own website

If a website receives strong backlinks, this power should flow where it brings the greatest benefit. Internal linking is the most important tool for this. SEOs used to try to steer the flow with nofollow links, JavaScript links or iFrames (PageRank sculpting). That no longer works today and tends to do harm. A clear structure makes more sense: important pages such as high-revenue categories and bestsellers are linked prominently and from many places; pages that receive many backlinks – such as popular guides – link specifically to matching categories and products; unimportant pages receive few links. It's also important not to waste link juice: backlinks to pages that no longer exist should be redirected to a suitable page via 301 redirect.

Internal link juice is also relevant for Google

Internal links distribute link juice within the domain. External backlinks and internal linking thus work together on a page's ranking. Internal links also help crawlers such as Googlebot capture the website. Important: an internal “nofollow” is not a suitable way to keep a page out of the index. That's what the “noindex” meta tag is for; areas that shouldn't be crawled at all can be excluded via robots.txt.