Link equity (link juice)
What is link equity?
Link equity is the ranking value a link passes from the linking page to the page it points to. “Link juice” is the informal name. A link from a trusted, relevant page that itself has many links passes more equity than a link from a weak or unrelated page. The idea comes from Google’s PageRank.
Link equity is not a number Google publishes. It is a way of thinking about which links help most. Factors that seem to affect it include the authority of the linking page, how relevant it is to your page, where the link sits (in the main content or a footer), how many other links share the page, and whether the link is followed or carries nofollow, sponsored or ugc.
Equity also flows inside your own site. Your homepage usually holds the most, and internal links spread it to deeper pages. Pages with no internal links, known as orphan pages, receive none.
Why link equity matters for SEO
Thinking in terms of equity explains why one link from a respected industry site can matter more than a hundred directory links, and why where you point your internal links matters. Pages that earn backlinks can pass value to the commercial pages that rarely attract links on their own.
It also explains why broken pages and redirects matter. A backlink to a URL that now returns a 404 passes nothing. A 301 redirect to a relevant replacement page lets that link keep counting.
How to make the most of link equity
- Find your most-linked pages and link from them to the important pages you want to rank.
- Redirect old or deleted URLs that still have backlinks to the closest relevant page with a 301.
- Fix internal links that go through redirect chains, and link straight to the final URL.
- Keep important pages within a few clicks of the homepage, so internal equity reaches them.
- Do not nofollow internal links to try to sculpt equity. Google stopped redistributing that value long ago, so it is simply lost.
Link equity example
Your free “SEO checklist” page has links from 80 referring domains, but your paid audit service page has three. Adding a clear internal link from the checklist to the audit page passes some of the checklist’s equity to a page that would rarely earn links itself.
Link equity FAQ
Does nofollow pass link juice?
As a rule, no. Since 2019 Google treats nofollow as a hint, so it may sometimes use the link, but you should not count on nofollow links passing equity.
Do 301 redirects lose link equity?
Google has said 301 and other server-side redirects do not lose PageRank. Redirect to a relevant page, though: redirecting everything to the homepage may be treated like a soft 404.
Related SEO terms
PageRank is Google’s original algorithm for scoring pages by the number and quality of links pointing to them. Google still uses a version of it.
A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Search engines treat backlinks as votes of trust and use them to rank and discover pages.
Internal links are links from one page on your site to another. They help visitors navigate, help crawlers find pages and spread link authority.
A dofollow link is a normal link with no rel="nofollow", "sponsored" or "ugc" value, so it can pass ranking credit to the page it points to.
A 301 redirect permanently sends visitors and search engines from one URL to another and tells Google the new URL should be indexed.
URL Rating (UR) is Ahrefs’ 0–100 score of the strength of one page’s backlink profile, including internal and external links.