Link Juice

Link juice is informal SEO slang for the ranking authority a hyperlink passes from one page to another. When a trusted site links to yours, some of its credibility flows through that link, giving the destination page a better chance to rank. The idea traces back to Google's original PageRank model.

What decides how much value a link passes

Not every link carries the same weight. The main factors:

• Authority of the linking page — a link from an established news site passes more than one from a brand-new blog.
• Number of outbound links — value is roughly shared among a page's links, so a link from a page with 5 outbound links counts for more than one from a page with 200.
• Relevance — a link between two topically related pages is worth more than an unrelated one.
• Link type — a standard "dofollow" link passes value; a rel="nofollow", "sponsored", or "ugc" link generally passes little or none.

Moving link juice through your own site

Authority doesn't only arrive from outside — it flows internally too. Say your homepage earns most of your backlinks and therefore holds the most authority. A single internal link from that homepage to a new service page passes a share of that strength downward. Sites that link deliberately from strong pages to priority pages spread juice where it converts, instead of letting it pool on the homepage.

A quick before/after: a product page buried four clicks deep with no internal links struggled to rank; after adding contextual links to it from three high-authority blog posts, it climbed into the top ten for its main term within weeks. Distributing authority like this is a core aim of link building and internal linking. See also link popularity.