What Is Link Juice?

We all want the juice – but what is it exactly and how do we ensure that we are getting it?

Optimizing your SEO capabilities can be achieved through several avenues, one of which is by acquiring what is referred to as Link Juice. But first we need to understand – what exactly is Link Juice?

Link Juice can be thought of as the value your company obtains when one site hyperlinks to your website on theirs. When done correctly, it can serve as an incredible tool that can help ensure your searchability climbs up the ladder naturally. To clarify, link juice is not limited from site to site, it can also be leveraged on a more granular, webpage to webpage basis as well. 

All links have a certain level of SEO strength, and that strength again is referred to as Link Juice. The stronger your link juice, the stronger your rankings in the SERPs will be and consequently, Google’s and your audience’s trust and confidence in your site will increase as your company will be seen as a more reputable source for solutions they are looking for. And since Google likes to give people what they’re looking for, getting those votes of confidence from other sites, especially quality sites, should be a first priority. 

There are a few ways to achieve this as well as some methods that do not work. Let’s break it down below. 

The Do’s of Acquiring Strong Link Juice

Build Your Content

Acquiring Link Juice is just one way to help your site rank, and is in fact just one of maybe thousands of factors out there, one of which being whether or not you have linked to other sites on your own site. Linking to another site, a reputable, well-ranked site amongst your content is just as if not more valuable than your actual copy and content. We sometimes think of content as only referring to that of text or media, but remember links, especially strong and credible ones are also critical elements of your content and signs of an effective SEO strategy. It is crucial to understand how to use them correctly to help you rank higher in searches. The higher the quality of the sites you are linking to – the more reputable and higher quality your website and your content will be considered.. 

Earn Votes of Confidence Organically 

There are many ways to acquire Link Juice including the use of document sharing, sending out press releases, leveraging social media, and the list goes on. But the most natural way to do this is by building content on your site that strongly resonates with your industry and customers and organically motivates them to want to link back to your high-value content. Make sure you are writing and presenting what your users want to learn and hear more about, assert your expertise in your market and offer solutions to their pain points and challenges. If you make an effort to give your consumers and your industry value, they will repay you naturally by linking your site or page. Voila more Link Juice!

Utilize Proper Anchor Terms 

One way to maximize Link Juice is by defining the best possible anchor terms to link to. Anchor terms are an important factor in determining how much Juice you will get with the link. If the anchor term is weak or used inappropriately, or if you make the mistake of linking to the word in the sentence with the weakest association to the link at hand – you might lose Juice. So follow best practices and ensure the word(s) that you are anchoring the link to are strong and relevant. This means that for example, you shouldn’t link the anchor term to the word “here” in a phrase such as “Find out more on X here.” What does “here” mean to your customers and does it offer anything relevant? No, it doesn’t and it will therefore yield less Link Juice. 

The Don’ts of Acquiring Link Juice 

Link Exchanges. 

The internet can many times sniff out ‘black hat’ activity and it can get you penalized resulting in lower rankings for your company, so avoid it as much as you can. Buying links is one such example of black hat behavior and it will not yield in strong link juice. This is considered cheating at the game of acquiring links and is looked at as a big no-no… and even more importantly, the almighty Google hates it. Although it is considered that paid link exchanges offer you no Link Juice, more recent data has shown that even sponsored links do yield some Link Juice since engines like Google use the link as a cue to assess your website’s ranking, and those cues can signal some climb up in your SEO.

No-Follow Links. 

Once upon a time, websites were able to send more Link Juice to some sites that they were linking to while sending none to others. This was made possible by adding a ‘no-follow’ attribute to one or more of the links posted on a company’s site. This resulted in the available Link Juice being redistributed to the other links. However, this redistribution of Link Juice is no longer the case, and what would have previously been redirected to other linked sites is now just Juice floating throughout the realms of the internet.

Are all links created equal? Short answer – no. Not all links to your site will give you the same amount of link juice. There are ways to calculate this. To understand this, let’s look at an example. If Site A has other sites linking to it and Site B has none, Site A will inherently pass on more link juice to your site than site B will. If they both have sites linking to them, then we will have to look at other factors, such as whether the sites linking to them have the same level of reputability. If they are the same in their level of credibility, then the one that has more sites linking to it will be the recipient of more Link Juice. 

But as with everything in the world of SEO, this isn’t the only factor. Another thing to consider is how thinly spread one site’s Link Juice may be. If Site A is being linked to by 3 websites, but those 3 websites are also linking a few other sites – the Link Juice won’t be as strong as if Site B had fewer sites linking to it with those sites linked exclusively to Site B. This scenario would warrant the same amount of Link Juice, or even more, than that which Site A is getting from it’s more diluted links.

Because the calculations of Link Juice flow have evolved, it is a best practice today to stop trying to control the flow of Link Juice through ‘do-follow’ or ‘no-follow’ commands, but rather to just be more selective in who you chose to link on your site. This helps keep your rankings up . 

For more ideas and ways to build content on your site and get that Juice, reach out to our team at Firon Marketing today.