Link Building & Link Juice: The Ultimate Guide for Higher Rankings!

The terms link building and link juice are two terms that every marketer or SEO expert needs to know. In case you’re not familiar with either or both, we’ve got you covered. In this blog, you’ll learn what link building is, what link juice is, and how they’re related. So, read in full.

What is Link Juice?

Link Juice, also known as “link equity”. It refers to the value or credibility passed on from one webpage to another through a hyperlink.

Example: Let’s say you published a guest post on a guest posting website (xyz.com) with a link to your website. Now, this link transfers a certain value from the guest posting site to your site, known as link juice. 

But what’s the relevance of Link Juice, you may ask? 

The idea behind this concept is that when a high-authority website links to a low-authority one, it helps improve search ranking. 

How? Google considers backlinks when determining a website’s authority and relevance. A low-authority website’s credibility will increase if it receives links from a high-authority site.

How to Determine Link Juice?

You cannot tell how much link juice a website passes to another. However, you can determine whether it’s high or low based on these factors:

1. Relevance of the Link

In the context of SEO, relevancy refers to the relevance or connection between a backlink and a website or page. Search engines, such as Google, utilize links to determine a website’s niche content and the services it offers, so link relevance is of utmost importance. Relevance of the Link helps search engines understand a website’s content, niche, and the services or products it offers

2. Authority of the Linking Sites

The authority of linking sites is an important factor in determining the quality and relevance of a website’s backlinks. Sites with higher authority, as measured by metrics like Domain Authority (DA) or Domain Rating (DR), can provide more value to the linked site. These metrics are influenced by factors such as the number of relevant backlinks, the quality and age of the linking site, and the overall link profile.

3. No-follow or Do-Follow

If links are do-follow, it means they carry link value. However, if the links are no-follow, it’s a signal for web crawlers that these links need to be ignored. So, they don’t necessarily have or transfer any link juice. However, this doesn’t mean the no-follow links don’t carry any other value.

4. Crawlability

In robots.txt, you can specify how web crawlers should interact or access your site. You will not gain any value from a backlink if the guest posting site blocks crawlers from accessing their page.

5. Link Location

When evaluating link juice, search engines also consider the placement of links on a page. A link in the main content area carries more weight than one in the footer or sidebar. This is because the body content is considered the most relevant and valuable part of a webpage by search engines.

In short, a website’s structure acts as a roadmap for Google, guiding them towards the content users are likely to find most useful. Consequently, strategic link placement within the main content translates to a stronger transfer of link juice.

6. Number of Links on the Page

Having your link on a website with many other links (like a link-building directory) might not be as valuable. While there’s no magic number for ideal links per page, a crowded page with excessive links can dilute the value each link passes on (link juice). 

Additionally, too many links can be overwhelming for users, making them less likely to click yours. This reduces the overall benefit you get from the link.  The ideal number of links depends on the specific page and its content. Focus on providing valuable and informative content with strategically placed links for a strong link building strategy.

7. Relevance of the Anchor Text

Anchor text is the hyperlinked keyword that directs the readers from the guest posting website to your website. The link is expected to transfer more value if the anchor text is more relevant and contextual.

How to Ensure Maximum Link Juice?

Here’s how you can evenly distribute or attract maximum link juice to your website/web pages:

• Go for high-quality Quality Backlinks Only – When building links, your focus should be on the quality of links instead of the quantity; i.e., you should build high-authority links. And that’s possible if you follow the right link-building strategies as mentioned above in the blog.

• Leverage Internal Linking – Internal linking is extremely important for the distribution of link juice throughout your website. It can help boost the ranking of all pages on your website.

• Anchor Text Optimization – To improve user experience and search engine ranking, anchor text optimization involves carefully selecting and using clickable text in hyperlinks. The anchor text should be relevant to the page it links to, providing context and helping search engines understand the content’s relevance.

• Remove Broken Links – If a link is broken, the value it carries dips substantially. So, try to eliminate or redirect those links to pages that work.

• Use Robots Tags, Robots.txt, and No Follow Tags – Robots.txt and robots meta tags help control how search engines crawl your site. Block low-value pages from search results with robots.txt and noindex tags. Use nofollow to prevent link juice transfer on specific pages.

• Identify low-value pages on your website – Identify which pages carry the least value on your website and which carry the most. Try to redirect users from high-value to low-value pages using internal linking and disperse the link value evenly.

4 Common Link Juice Mistakes to Avoid

When trying to build links and maximize link juice, marketers make these common mistakes:

1. Ignoring Interlinking

Link builders usually focus solely on external links because they’re a key technique for boosting domain authority. However, internal linking still has tremendous benefits despite external linking. You can pass link juice internally with internal linking.

Let’s say you have a web page that is performing well (high number of visitors, good design, above average watch time, numerous inbound links). And on the other hand, you have a page that could perform better. Adding a link from the high-performing page to the low-performing page lets you internally transfer the value and gradually boost the page’s authority.

Make sure the page that is not performing well is relevant. Redirecting users from a high-performing page to an “About Us” or “Contact Us” page won’t do you any good.

2. Thinking that the Source Page Loses Authority

Owners of websites believe that allowing guest posting on their sites will reduce the link value of their sites. Fortunately, Link Juice doesn’t function that way. You do not lose your link juice when you offer backlinks in exchange for a guest post. It does not affect your page’s link value if you link to one or more pages.

3. The No-follow Tag Does not Transfer Any Authority

Most SEO Professionals opt for do-follow backlinks when transferring authority. In spite of this, no-follow links are not completely meaningless. While no-follow links aren’t as valuable as do-follow links, they still pass some authority.

4. Concentrate on all the Links in the Home Page

Often, companies that offer SEO link-building services make the mistake of redirecting all the incoming links to the homepage. While this strategy improves the ranking of the homepage, it ignores the other pages on the website. 

Also, too many links pointing towards the home page might sound unnatural as this strategy is deployed by black hat SEOs, which might lead to a penalty. So, evenly distribute the links across multiple pages of your website. And if you have good link distribution on your website, each page will get the link value, improving your overall ranking.

What is Link Building?

The process of link building involves generating backlinks that point to your website. It’s essential for your website to improve the website’s ranking in search engines.

What is the importance of link building?

Link building is crucial to SEO for two key reasons: it boosts website traffic and acts as a credibility signal to search engines. By building links, you establish your website as a reliable source in your niche, and search engines reward you with better rankings

5 Ways to Build Quality Links

Here are some of the best link building strategies you can use for generating backlinks:

1. Creating Compelling and Shareable Content

One of the most effective ways to build backlinks naturally is by creating compelling and shareable content. Shareable content is content that your target audience finds valuable, resonates with them on a personal level, and inspires them to share it with others.

2. Guest Posting on Relevant Websites

Guest posting is a powerful link building strategy wherein you publish guest posts on relevant websites in your niche. Once your guest post is published, you get a backlink. In addition to helping you build backlinks, guest posting improves your ranking, authority, and brand awareness and expands your network.

While guest posting is effective and sounds simple, it’s quite effort-intensive. For instance, you need to find and compare the websites, email website owners individually with your request, send multiple follow-ups, and create content for the guest post if you get a response (which is highly unlikely).

3. Participating in Industry Forums and Communities

Participating in industry forums and communities can be a good way to build links, but it’s important to approach it with the right strategy.

• Targeted Audience: Forums are full of people interested in your industry, so they are an excellent way to connect with potential customers and build brand awareness.
• Credibility and Expertise: As an expert in your field, you can establish yourself by consistently providing valuable insights and useful information. In turn, users can naturally link back to your website from your content.
• Relationship Building: By participating in forums, you can develop relationships with other industry professionals. These connections can be valuable for future collaborations and link opportunities.

The focus must be on Quality over Quantity, Relevance, and Evolved SEO❣️

4. Connecting with Influencers

A great way to build links for your website is to connect with influencers. The strategy can be very effective in terms of SEO and helps to Increased Reach and Improved Credibility. There are 6 key things to keep in mind while connecting with influencers for link building.

• Target the Right Influencers
• Build Relationships
• Offer Value
• Focus on Mutual Benefit
• Be Transparent and Be Patient
• Focus on the Content and Relevance

5. Broken Link Building

The term “broken link building” refers to the process of locating pages within your niche that have dead backlinks leading to them. Once you have identified these pages, you should contact the website owners and ask them to link to your content instead of their own or broken page.

How it works: Finding Broken Links > Offering a Valuable Alternative > Outreach and Link Replacement

A broken link building strategy can help you acquire backlinks ethically and efficiently. Offering valuable solutions can build relationships and improve your website’s ranking in search engines.

Summary

In summary, the secret sauce of SEO in link building and link juice involves understanding the concept of link juice, implementing effective link building strategies, and distributing link juice effectively to improve your search engine rankings, things to avoid & things to keep in mind while doing Link building.

FAQs

Are PageRank and link equity the same?

Link juice or link equity is the value that passes from the referring page to the target page. PageRank, on the other hand, is the general importance of a page on the internet based on the link juice it gets from other pages.

What is the difference between internal and external links?

External links are the ones that redirect users from a 3rd party website you don’t own to your website. Internal links are the ones that take users from a page on your website to some other page that also resides on your website.

In case you missed:

• Best Guest Posting Sites in Australia
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