In the world of SEO, links play a vital role in making or breaking a site. The authority that sites obtain with quality linking is incomparable in the field of link building. In this article, we’ll learn about link juice and how it affects your site. But first, we have to understand what link juice is and how you can optimize it.
What is Link Juice?
Link Equity or Link Juice is a term that is used in SEO and is based on the concept that links pass on authority and value from one page to another. This is an important search engine ranking factor that Google takes into consideration. The amount of link juice passed on from links depends on various factors.
- Link Relevancy
The links that you place should be relevant to your site. Irrelevant links can be penalized by Google. Always make sure to link to sites that share complete relevancy with your niche or business.
- Authority of linking site
Link juice will flow only if the linking site has enough authority in the market. Low-ranking or unpopular sites do not have enough authority to generate link equity.
- Location of the link on the page
The location of the link on your page matters a lot. The more prominent your link is, the more people click it. This invariably increases the authority of the link.
- Dofollow status
If a link is nofollow, crawlers will not crawl it when going through your page. So it is better that your links are made dofollow to ensure link equity.
- Number of links
The number of links on your site matters too. The more the number of links the more equally your link equity is spread.
- Crawlability of the link
Always ensure that your links are crawlable for search engines. This will help in passing link juice.
What are Authority Websites?
For a website to be considered an authority website in a niche, it has to establish itself as a credible source of content. Authority websites are websites that have high PR (PageRank). These websites are trusted by their audience pool, gaining authority and credibility compared to their competition.
Since these websites have high PR, they can pass link juice to any website they will link to. Thus, link builders target these authority websites to get links.
However, this has been abused by black hat SEOs, leading to a loss of link value. Now, relevance plays an important role for the vote of confidence to count.
Let’s discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of link juice.
READ MORE: High PR Backlinks: How to Get One?
Link Juice: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Link juice (also known as link equity) was once the focal point for link building. But because of the abuse of this strategy, the effect of link juice on search engine rankings became almost negligible. Let’s look at the faces of getting link juice for link building.
The Good
Link juice works like this. When you read an article online (just like this one), you’ll find links within the content. These links may lead to an internal or external webpage.
The ranking potential of the primary article will be passed on to the links on the article. Thus, by internally linking to the articles in your blog, you distribute the ranking potential to your whole blog. This is what webmasters do to establish authority in their niche.
The Bad
Because this is an easy way to pass authority to low-quality pages, this has been abused by black hat SEOs. Irrelevant pages were also linked to high PR backlinks just for the sake of getting some link juice. Because of this manipulation, it shed a bad light on irrelevant linking to low-quality websites.
Since search engines are also keen on this manipulation, it became a liability to link to high PR backlinks without relevance. Manual penalties from Google can be issued to your site for trying to manipulate its search algorithm.
The Ugly
Building links for the sake of link juice has become inefficient. You can even receive punishments from search engines if you did this without precaution. These manual penalties can be ugly for your site and hard to recover from.
This is what you have to remember about linking to high PR websites. It’s a high-risk, high-reward situation. If you can do this the right way, you can reap a lot of benefits from it. We’ll get through with that in the next section. Keep reading!
How to Get the Most Link Juice Out of Your Backlinks?
Gaining link juice for your webpage generates PR for that page. This means it can increase search engine rankings. But you have to do it the right way for search engines to recognize this.
Link juice comes from different kinds of pages. These pages are:
- Relevant to your site’s content
- High PR webpages
- Top sites on SERP
- High-quality websites with quality content
If you have these kinds of backlinks on your link profile, then you’re doing great. Here are the ways you can capitalize on the links you have to get the most out of their link juice:
1. Internal Linking to Relevant Pages
You can gain link juice from internal links from your site. This is a good way to transfer the authority and spread it evenly across your blog. By linking internally to relevant pages on your blog, they also get link equity from your authority pages.
To make the most out of this technique, you have to craft your content. You have to find existing articles on your blog with the keywords for your link. Inserting keywords should be flawless and natural.
NOTE: You have to find keywords (or insert them naturally) from blog posts with the most value to pass. This means that the blog post should be authoritative first before gaining link equity from it. It’s also advisable to use LSI keywords to avoid looking spammy for search engines.
2. Content Optimization
To attract high PR backlinks, you should create content that’s worth linking to. This technique is called link baiting for your content. It’s an effective strategy as long as the links you produce provide value and relevance.
But optimizing your content once or twice isn’t enough. You have to continuously optimize it to have organic keywords in your article. If your article ranks high on Google, then you can make internal links to that content and distribute the link juice to your blog.
3. Engage in Guest Posting
Guest posting is a great way to gain backlinks for your site. You can also earn high PR backlinks from guest posts. The beauty of this method is you can establish yourself as an authority through your content.
Creating a well-researched guest post will increase the chance of being accepted by high PR websites. The first benefit you’ll get from this is referral traffic from the host website. A higher audience base will influence your site’s authority positively.
4. Submit Your Products on Roundups
Whether you’re offering a product or a service on your website, you should promote it by submitting it for review. Some websites review such products and give honest reviews about them.
If your product receives more positive reviews, Google will be more favorable to your product than your competitors. This means that you gain more link juice from articles that feature your product. And as a bonus, you get additional traffic for your website.
5. Control Dofollow and Nofollow Links
A dofollow link counts as a vote of confidence from the linking website. This passes link juice directly to your website. But if you think that having a 100% ratio of dofollow links will lead to more link juice, then you’re wrong.
There must be a healthy ratio between dofollow and nofollow links. There is no set number for the ratio, but making all your links dofollow can signal search engines that you’re manipulating link juice. Therefore, you must include nofollow links on your site as well.
FAQs
Can you check link juice?
Yes, you can use the below tools to check link juice.
- SEMRush
- Moz
- Google Analytics
- Ahrefs
- Yoast
How does link juice work?
Link juice is passed from one link to another and it helps it gain authority. This is seen as votes or approval from other websites to your site. This promotes you in the eyes of Google.
How does link juice boost your organic ranking?
The basic benefit of link juice is organic ranking. In order to get quality link juice, you should procure high-quality links. This will invariably increase your organic ranking and traffic.
Final Word
Link juice has always been a factor for search engines. However, because of the tactics made to abuse this factor, search engines became more cautious of this. This makes link-building techniques that focus on link juice more and more ineffective over time.
Linking to high PR websites is not a problem. In fact, it can be helpful for your link profile. If you get link juice from your backlinks and you want to improve them, we got your back. We hope that this article helped you get the most out of your backlinks. If you want organic traffic to your website, white hat link building is the best approach. LinkDoctor can help your website rank high in SERPs through ethical white hat link building.
