Role of Link Juice in SEO: Tips for Building Better Backlinks

Shahid Shahmiri

Last Updated on 13/08/2025

If SEO were a game of Monopoly, link juice would be your hidden cache of “Get Out of Page 2” cards.

Google adores the invisible power flowing through hyperlinks, which skilled marketers chase like gold. But here’s the catch: not all links are created equal, and some provide far more SEO juice than others.

So, what is link juice, and why is it so important for your rankings?

Link juice, also known as link equity, refers to the SEO value or authority passed from one webpage to another through a backlink.

Think of it as a vote of confidence—when a high-authority, relevant website links to your content, it transfers some of its trust and credibility to you.

The more credible the source, the more powerful the link juice, and the better your chances of climbing the SERPs for your target keywords.

It is a crucial factor in determining a page’s rank, but it’s not the only one. PageRank, which measures a page’s authority, is often confused with link juice, but the two differ.

Buckle up—we’re about to spill the beans on how to transform your connections into ranking rockets. 🔗💥

How Significant is Link Juice in Terms of Improving SEO?

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The significance of link juice in SEO is that having links to your website is crucial for SEO. However, acquiring link juice should not be the sole objective.

Instead, it can serve as a way to estimate the potential benefits of backlinks. The primary focus should be on generating high-quality content that earns links naturally.

This involves adhering to the EAT principle, which emphasizes expertise, trustworthiness, and authority.

Google places great importance on content quality and has comprehensive guidelines for it. The ultimate goals are meeting these guidelines, establishing authority, and building relationships with reputable websites to earn links.

While getting numerous backlinks without link juice may result in some referral traffic, it will have minimal impact on your website’s rankings.

Is PageRank and Link Juice identical?

While often grouped, there are differences between the two terms. Google’s PageRank is a metric used to assess a page’s ranking, whereas link juice is the value that a page receives.

Although backlink profiles determine PageRank, it does not necessarily determine a website’s position in search engine results. It is a crucial factor in deciding PageRank and should be viewed as the value a page receives.

How Does Link Juice Work?

Link juice is an important factor in improving your webpage’s ranking on search engines, although it is not the only factor. It is considered one of the top signals for ranking.

It flows to your page and can spread to other pages on your website through internal linking, which has been proven to improve rankings, according to several studies.

Essentially, it can be directed to other parts of your website to improve their rankings. To learn more about this concept, check out our article on DA vs. PA.

To illustrate how it works, imagine pouring water into a bucket. If you pour the water into one corner of the bucket, it will eventually spread and fill the entire bucket.

Similarly, it can be directed to a specific page and eventually spread to other pages on your website, improving their rankings.

Link Juice and Keyword Relationships

In SEO, keywords are crucial for optimizing web pages and improving search engine rankings. The more frequently and effectively they are used, the better a page will perform.

Link building should focus on relevant keywords, such as those in the post title, to boost page rankings. Using natural language and incorporating bolded keywords into the content can help create effective links.

For example, instead of using generic link text like “click here,” it is better to use keyword-rich text that relates to the content of the page being linked to. This approach will help generate more powerful PR for the landing pages and improve overall SEO performance.

Factors That Affect Link Juice

A. Source Page Relevance

The relevance of the source page to the target page is a crucial factor determining the amount of link juice passed. If the source page is highly relevant to the target page, the link will carry more link juice.

B. Link Placement

The link’s position on the source page also affects the link juice passed. Links placed in the main body of the content are more valuable than those placed in the footer or sidebar.

C. Anchor Text

The anchor text is the text that appears as a clickable hyperlink. Using relevant and descriptive anchor text helps search engines understand the context of the linked page and can pass more link juice.

D. Nofollow Attribute

When a link is marked with a “nofollow” attribute, search engines do not follow the link and no link juice is passed.

E. Page Authority

The authority of the source page also plays a significant role in determining the amount of link juice passed. A highly authoritative source page can pass more link juice than a less authoritative page.

F. Outbound Links

The number of outbound links on the source page also affects the amount of link juice passed. Fewer outbound links on the source page mean more link juice is passed to the linked page.

G. Link Age

The age of the link is also a factor that can affect link juice. Older links may lose their value over time, while new links may need time to gain authority and pass link juice.

How Can I Increase Link Juice?

Boosting link juice is crucial for improving a page’s visibility, traffic, and page rank (PR). Effective strategies are essential to achieve this.

Here are some tips for obtaining more link juice:

Produce high-quality content that is informative, authoritative, and trustworthy.
Good links or keyword strategies cannot hide poor content, so it’s essential to ensure that your content is original, relevant, and well-formatted to receive more link juice and better page rankings.
Engage in audience segmentation to refine your content to cater to specific buyer personas.
This targeted communication resonates with the intended audience, generating higher rankings and more link juice.
Consider guest posting and link exchange opportunities to connect with other site owners.
This link-building strategy strengthens your site authority and attracts new audiences, resulting in more link juice and increased site PR.

Partnering with others and producing outstanding content that attracts more traffic is always a great idea.

How do you send Link Juice to a page?

A. Add External Links

The best technique for developing link juice is building external links referring to a page. The authority of the page and your domain will improve due to quality inbound links.

It will be attracted to your site by any link building. Next, we’ll concentrate on the three that most relate to link equity.

B. Niche Edits

Consider applying niche edits if you want to send external link equity to a page that doesn’t naturally draw links.

When you pay other websites to link to your information in an article, such practice is known as niche editing. Unlike other link-building techniques, this kind of link-building allows you to pick the precise page you wish to link to.

The major drawback is that Google disapproves of websites that purchase links. You could be penalized if it determines that you have purchased links.

When purchasing connections, it’s essential to exercise extreme caution and only do so when getting caught is unlikely. Strive to stay away from link farms, PBNs, and spam sites.

C. Linkable Assets

Making a linkable asset is the third tactic. This information is intended to draw links.

The content you wish to receive link juice from won’t get links from doing this. To transmit link juice to the sites you want to rank, however, you may employ internal links when the digital asset starts to garner links.

D. Add Internal Links

It’s common for website owners to notice that certain pages on their site receive more links than others, and some pages may not receive any links at all.

Unfortunately, the most important pages to rank higher in search results are often the same pages with difficulty attracting links.

For example, an informative blog post with unique research is more likely to receive many links as other writers use the research to support their arguments. In contrast, a sales page may not have much external linking potential.

Give this a read: Is Link Exchange Still a Viable SEO Tactic in 2025?

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A well-structured internal linking system can help pass on link juice from pages with many links to the pages you want to rank higher.

This can be particularly useful for ranking commercial pages that are difficult to generate external links to, transferring equity from pages with many links to those with none, and boosting newly published pages’ rankings by sending link juice their way.

Link Juice Manipulation

Over time, significant discussion has been surrounding the concept of “link equity manipulation,” which is often viewed negatively due to its association with “manipulation.”

However, it is not always a negative practice, and if executed correctly, it can benefit your SEO and user experience. Link equity manipulation involves utilizing link equity to enhance the ranking signals of other areas of your website.

It can be categorized into two types: good and evil.

A. Bad Link Juice Manipulation

a. Nefarious External Linking

This refers to linking to external websites unnaturally to enhance your authority or site relevance.

There are various methods of doing this, including providing do-follow links to affiliate products, do-follow links to products or services that offer payment for promotion, and creating unnatural links to other websites.

Numerous studies have indicated the advantages of external links, which were discussed earlier in this blog post. Nonetheless, if you link to a website too frequently, it may seem unnatural. Site-wide links, in particular, appear highly unnatural and should be eliminated.

Nevertheless, if the link is natural and you have not purchased blogroll links or other spammy site-wide links, there is usually no cause for concern.

People use site-wide links when they receive payment or sponsorship, and such links should be nofollowed.

b. Are Internal Links good for SEO?

Internal linking is crucial for enhancing the user experience when navigating your website and for providing robots with a clear understanding of page relationships.

Using internal linking, link equity can be distributed among pages. Nevertheless, if executed poorly, this practice can harm your site.

In this article, we focus on the negative aspects of internal linking, which include:

Overloading internal links with anchor text
Repeating the exact anchor text excessively for a particular page
Including an excessive number of internal links on a page (excluding navigation; aim for 2-3 per page)
Including a huge footer navigation.

B. Good Link Juice Manipulation

Effective link equity manipulation involves linking your website to simplify comprehension for both users and bots. If you observe that your site has abundant high-quality links pointing to a specific page, you can utilize that page to enhance the ranking of other pages.

This idea involves distributing link juice throughout your site, which can be achieved through various methods, such as:

Identifying pages with substantial link juice and naturally adding internal links to other crucial SEO pages.
Creating a map of internal links that logically categorizes your pages.

How do 301 Redirects work?

Many SEO professionals use the 301 redirect to optimize link equity. This involves redirecting pages with high link juice to pages that require a boost to rank well. Some even redirect entire domains to acquire more link equity.

As with any SEO technique, there are positive and negative ways to implement 301 redirects.

Google has said that 301 redirects transmit the bulk of the original authority, therefore SEOs shouldn’t be concerned about losing link equity during a 301 redirect, it is vital to remember. However, this is not always the case.

Google can distinguish between a proper 301 redirect and one intended to manipulate link equity and will regard irrelevant 301s as soft 404s, effectively nullifying any link juice.

GSQI conducted studies that confirm this. Conducting a thorough SEO audit can help identify whether your site requires additional 301 support.

Know more about: What Is Link Popularity In SEO?

How Can I Use 301s Properly?

That’s an excellent question! Let me answer it. It’s essential to ensure that your 301 redirects are relevant and direct users to a specific and appropriate page. The anchor text you use is also crucial.

For example, if you’re redirecting a page about cricket bats, avoid redirecting it to a page about flowers.

Instead, redirect it to a relevant page about cricket bats. If you acquire a new domain, redirecting all of its pages to your homepage can be beneficial, but it may result in losing a significant amount of link juice.

It’s best to conduct a comprehensive 301 redirect project to ensure that all URLs are correctly redirected to the appropriate pages.

Moz has an excellent graphic about 301 redirects that you may find helpful.

This visual representation is an excellent way to understand how to use 301 redirects to manipulate link juice effectively. It’s worth noting that unless a page redirect is temporary, using anything other than a 301 redirect is unnecessary.

404 Pages & Link Juice

One of the article’s most practical tips is to find 404 error pages with backlinks and write 301 redirects to a similar page.

This can instantly transfer link equity. If there is no similar page, create one and write the 301 redirects, then pass the link equity to another page using an internal link.

However, ensuring that the link equity manipulation is user-friendly and not unnatural is important.

If creating a new page for the 301 redirects is impossible, you can retain the link equity through outreach by contacting third-party websites and asking them to update the URL to a working page.

It’s crucial to ensure the new page is contextually relevant when pitching it as a replacement for the 404 page.

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Conclusion

Link juice plays a crucial role in SEO by influencing a website’s authority and search engine rankings. Building high-quality backlinks is essential for obtaining link equity and improving website visibility.

However, ethical practices and avoid manipulating link equity in unnatural ways are important, as this can result in search engine penalties.

By following the tips discussed in this article, such as internal linking, leveraging 301 redirects, and using 404 pages to retain link equity.

Website owners and SEO professionals can effectively manage and enhance their link equity to boost their website’s search engine rankings and overall success.

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Shahid Shahmiri

Shahid Shahmiri is a digital marketer who helps online businesses grow with smart marketing tactics to improve sales and leads. He is passionate and driven to grow businesses online and is responsible for analyzing marketing, SEO, growth and managing promotional and media channels.