If I ask you what the most important part of the world of Search Engine Optimization is, what would your answer be?
The correct answer is backlinks. Since the beginning of the SEO world, backlinks have been the biggest currency in the world of the world wide web (www).
In the very beginning of Google, two people, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, built certain assumptions about this link into core research, which eventually became the savior we all run to in any problem. Google.
One of the biggest assumptions about these links was that a link from one website to another website would be cast as an editorial vote. Which means it determined the quality of the website it had been linked to.
Now as you may imagine, at the very beginning, these assumptions worked extremely well. For example, a very small group of people had resources for designing and developing a website.
So, the creators were only endorsing the best content on the web. At those times, a total number of backlinks or inbound links attached to a particular site decided that site’s “score”.
But as the times are changing, Google’s approach towards SEO is also changing.
Backlinks are still the most important factor for ranking on Google. But due to the increasing crowd on the platform, the parameters are constantly changing and becoming more complex.
If you want to earn long-term ranking success on Google, Link authority is one of the most important factors for that.
So, what exactly is the meaning of link juice?
What is Link Juice and How Does it Work?
Link authority or link juice is a measure of how the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your website will be affected if another website gives you a backlink.
Here, when one site links to another, link juice flows from the linker to the linkee.
In the 2000s, this link juice was pretty easy to make and digest. Sites with .edu or .org extensions were considered as the best and more desirable than all the other websites, but there were few other differences to be measured about these backlinks.
Link juice has only one essential ingredient – sites linked to your website. Every website that has been linked to your website comes under the category of link juice. The more juice you have with your website, the higher it will rank.
The major factor of this was a link anchor text, which helped Google understand the topic of an outbound link.
In today’s world where there are around 1.3 billion websites on Google, things are different.
So, getting a link from a very popular website will be more powerful than getting a link from any website.
Which site will be considered “popular”, though?
There are various factors which decide the popularity of a website, including the traffic on a website, overall domain age and the quality of content posted on the website.
Now, the question is how the link juice works.
How Does Link Juice Work?
Let’s take an example to understand this concept.
Suppose you have a site A and site B. Now, consider that all the other ranking factors for both these sites are equal. However, site A has one backlink, and site B has none.
Which site will rank higher?
Site A will certainly rank higher than site B due to the link juice from the external website linked to it.
Now, let’s say the creator of site B gets competitive and gets one backlink. What will happen then?
Now, it comes down to the amount of juice each link has. So, if site A got juice from a very popular website, for example, HubSpot, and site B has got a backlink from a basic website, then site A is going to rank higher than site B.
Now, if the sites linking to both sites A and B have the same authority, then the number of backlinks will decide how the websites will be ranked.
Two factors are – the number of websites giving the site a backlink and the amount of juice every website possesses.
Another important factor you need to consider is that the link juice works both ways.
Let’s say all the links connecting to site A are also linking to other websites and the sites connecting to site B are exclusively linking to site B only, then site B will rank higher than site A.
Creating the Link Juice
If you know the basics of do-follow and no-follow links, you’ll be able to understand this concept clearly.
When a website is giving do-follow backlinks to other websites, its link juice will be equally distributed to all the websites. For example, if my website is giving do-follow links to three other websites, they’re all going to get 33.33% of the link juice share.
Now, in the beginning, the juice flow was controlled by the no-follow links. Let’s say that I gave backlinks to two websites, but one of them is a no-follow link. Then, the juice will be equally distributed in the first two websites, and the websites linked with no-follow will get 0% shares.
But this is not possible now. According to new algorithms, what happens is that the link juice will be distributed equally amongst all sites. Just the site with the no-follow link will not get it. This concept is widely known as the leaking of link juice.
To stop this leakage, we need to limit our no-follow attributes to spam comments and links posted on blogs with no-follow attributes.
When it comes to internal links on a website, it is better that you let the link juice flow naturally and don’t limit it by using no-follow attributes.
The link juice distributed on the inner pages of your website will help you improve the rank of your pages as well as your homepage.
Where does link juice come from?
- Pages that have relevant content to your website.
- Pages having a very high page rank.
- Pages having relatively few outbound links.
- Pages having quality content.
- Pages having high SERP.
- Pages that use user-generated content.
- Pages that are often mentioned on social media.
Which pages will not give you any link juice?
- Pages that have no-followed any link to your website.
- Pages with content irrelevant to your domain.
- Pages that have lots of ad-links or site-wide links.
- Pages that are not ranking high.
- Paid links.
- For example, if you are exchanging links, if I give you a link and in return, you are giving me a link, the impact cancels out, and it won’t generate any link juice.
- Links from the unranked site which do not contain any content.
How to maximize your link Juice?
Since this concept is so important for ranking, optimizing the juice is an essential part of SEO.
This is divided into two parts:
- Increasing your available link juice
- Gaining additional link juice
Internal Linking:
Many marketers and content creators ignore the fact that a lot of link juice is already available on your website.
It is possible that there might be a lot of link juice on your website which can be distributed among other pages.
To optimize your internal linking for a page, you can search for different keywords that are relevant to that particular page.
You can use the site: and index: operators for this search.
After you find top sites ranking on that keyword put a link to your website on those pages. Try not to use the exact keyword-rich anchor text every time as Google might consider it spam.
How to Acquire more link juice for your page?
External links are also a vital part of link building.
Every external link is a vote from a third-party that your website has something valuable and informative for the audience. This means the search engines will see the link juice passed through external links otherwise and will take them into consideration while ranking your page on Google.
How can you build backlinks for your websites, though? It might seem a bit complicated but if you use the correct methodologies, you might be able to crack the solution to this problem.
- Hreflang for International Websites:
Sites that have users or viewers in more than one country might want to translate their content to the local language for better understanding and make it suitable for all users.
The hreflang tag provides the search engine with a signal that will direct the audience towards different versions of every page. It will also help them to return to the most appropriate version depending on the user’s language or location.
This tag allows the link juices to flow from a high authority website to local websites. This will provide a good foundation for those websites and also will help them rank in the local search engines.
- Link Reclamation
Sometimes, the links provided to the user might expire. In this case, the link will redirect the user to a 404 error page.
You can use different platforms like site crawler to check the URLs which are returning to a 404 status.
After you find such a URL, you can easily tell the owner to replace it with a new URL, since they too wouldn’t want dead URLs on their pages.
Don’t provide your homepage or link to an irrelevant page though. Google might consider it as a soft 404 error.
Note: if you are sneaky enough, you can steal your competitor’s expired links and can replace them with your links with relevant content.
- Linkbait Content:
This is a very old, yet very effective technique to generate more traffic towards your website.
The most important part of link juice is that you need to create something worth linking to.
Seems complicated? Some of the examples of how you can generate your revenue in the system are:
1. Expanding it
The listicle content is extremely popular with audiences today. The Top 20 or Top 10 is really intriguing for people. You need to add additional details and examples to these articles.
2. Updating it
The trends in every industry are constantly changing, and according to that, we need to update our pre-existing content.
Try to incorporate the latest information in your content. This content will be more useful for users.
3. Beautifying it
infographics are one of the best ways to market your content or attach a link to.
Users like when infographics are added where information is too heavy. These infographics are also super sharable.
- Outreach:
Now that you’ve generated awesome clickbait content, here comes the most crucial step in link building. For your best nets, people will be willing to link back to you.
Always start with competitor analysis. Try to find out where they are generating link juice from.
You can post your link on different websites which use user-generated content—for example, Quora.
You need to list out the websites that are:
- Interested in your industry.
- Relevant to your domain.
- Already linking to similar content.
When you are outreaching for link building, your blog or website or business is the most important thing is content. Because that is what you are going to sell. You need to create content that is relevant and useful for your audience.
While writing a letter to the blogger, you need to ensure the following:
- You need to make them believe that your blog or content is the only missing piece on their website.
- Try using a unique subject line. If you contact a very popular blogger, they get tons of emails in their mailbox every day. So, your subject line is what will persuade them to open your mail. Try to be as creative as you can.
- Incorporate your personal contact information with the email. This makes the email look genuine.
Finally, link juice is certainly an important aspect to rank your website. But it is also an important part while creating brand awareness.
Link juice will help you determine how people are discussing your brand, website, or content online.
It is a great way to establish yourself as a resource in your niche.
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