Link juice (link equity)

What is link juice

Link juice (link equity) is an informal SEO concept describing the transfer of authority from one page to another via a hyperlink. The term emerged as a popular explanation of PageRank: each page holds a pool of authority value that is distributed among all its outbound links.

When an authoritative site links to your page, a portion of its authority 'flows' to you — hence the juice metaphor. Search engines factor the received equity into the page's ranking calculations.

How link equity is passed

The distribution model is based on the original PageRank algorithm. A linking page splits its equity equally among all outbound links. If a page has 4 links, each receives roughly 25% of its current equity.

In practice, equity doesn't accumulate linearly: a page with a thousand weak links doesn't always outrank a page with ten strong ones. Google evaluates topical relevance, donor domain authority, and link context.

Factors affecting link juice

Donor authority

The higher the DA or historical PageRank of the linking page, the more valuable its link.

Number of outbound links

A page with 2 links passes more equity per link than a page with 200 links.

Link position on the page

Links in the main content (body) are valued more than those in sidebars, footers, or navigation.

Topical relevance

A link from a relevant page passes more topical authority.

Rel attribute

nofollow, sponsored, and ugc limit equity transfer. A plain link with no attributes passes full equity.

nofollow, sponsored and UGC

Google introduced rel="nofollow" in 2005 to combat spam. In 2019, sponsored (paid links) and ugc (user-generated content) were added. Since September 2019, Google treats all three as hints rather than hard directives — meaning equity may partially pass, but there's no guarantee.

Internal link juice

Link juice flows not only through external links but also across internal pages. Smart internal linking lets you boost important pages with equity from your homepage, hubs, and popular articles.

• The homepage usually holds the most equity — link from it to priority sections
• Hubs (categories, tags) accumulate equity and redistribute it to child pages
• Pages with many external backlinks are great internal equity sources
• Pages removed with a 301 redirect preserve ~99% of equity for the destination page

Common mistakes

• Equity leaks via nofollow on internal pages — blocking internal pages with nofollow doesn't redistribute equity; it evaporates
• Too many outbound links on one page — dilutes the equity passed to each link
• Broken links — links pointing to 404 pages don't pass equity and create dead ends
• Dead-end pages — pages with no outbound links don't return equity to the site's link graph
• Linking to low-authority external sites — technically reduces equity available to your own pages