Using Link Juice Effectively to Boost Rankings & SEO in 2024

Often we come across articles chewing Google ranking factors.

There are very few factors that last ever crucial. LINKS are one among those.

You can’t ignore it for any cost.

By the way, such valuable links are hard to earn too.

So, how links are much valuable? What is link juice? How to use link juice to boost SEO rankings?

Let’s discuss the power of links and link juice in SEO today.

What is SEO Link Juice?

Link juice is a virtual and non-technical SEO term that refers to the SEO value of a hyperlink from or to a particular page or a site.

Link juice helps to boost your page authority significantly.

Link juice a.k.a. link equity, link value, link authority – a similar thing in different words. It can flow from or to other domains via backlinks or within your site pages with internal linking.

How does Link Juice Works?

Search engines analyze the links on a particular page to determine its ranking positions for a specific search query.

Is it how?

Let’s take it this way.

If a page ‘X’ links to page ‘Y’ – it means the link juice flows from page ‘X’ to page ‘Y’

If the page ‘X’ is authoritative, influential the link juice that flows to page ‘Y.’ And, higher the value will be. Indeed, this helps the page ‘Y’ to rank high on search engines.

More the pages are linking to page ‘Y,’ more the link juice the page ‘Y’ receives and higher the ranking potential it has.

“More (quality) links – more link juice flows – better rankings.”

On the other hand of the sphere, if any spam or low-quality page links to page ‘Y,’ the contrary the output will be.

I hope you have got some idea about how link juice works to improve the page authority, i.e., the ranking potential of a particular page.

How do you check or calculate link juice?

There may not be a steadfast metric to measure the link juice. But, other few popular metrics like Moz Page Authority, Majestic Citation Flow and Trust Flow helps you to get your link juice data.

Link Juice in action (Different cases)

Links are not so simple to understand, as it sounds like. Let’s see how link juice flows when:

Number of external links pointing to any site

Consider a page ‘X’ gets four backlinks from different sites, whereas the page ‘Y’ receives from two of the same authority and trust. In this case, page ‘X’ has more link juice and likely to rank higher than ‘Y.’

Number of external links exclusively pointing to sites

Consider a page or website that links to page ‘X’ also links to multiple other pages while the page that links to page ‘Y’ exclusively links to it (not to any other sites or pages).

In such a case, the page ‘Y’ receives more link juice than ‘X’ since the link juice (of a page that links to ‘X’) gets distributed among multiple pages it links to.

Pages with multiple (Dofollow) links

In case a page has four outbound links – the link juice is equally distributed to all the four outgoing links. Hence, you want to get links from a page or site that has minimal OBL (outbound links).

Even there is a Nofollow link among the four, the link juice gets distributed (as said above). Only thing, the target page to which that Nofollow link is pointing to does not receives it (link juice goes useless).

How long does it take a link to pass link juice?

It varies…

Backlinks may take a while to pass link juice to your page. Several factors are deciding it.

It also includes the time Google takes to index your backlink.

How much Google likes to crawl and index the page where your backlinks are from?

If the particular domain frequently publishes well-optimized pages, then Google loves indexing it more often.

Links from those sites are more likely to pass link juice to your pages so quick.

Here are some of the other things that impact the link value to either make or break your pages.

• Anchor Text
• Text-around
• Link Position
• Link Velocity
• Relevancy
• Domain Age
• Link Tiers

By the way, these are the critical factors that determine the link quality too. Analyzing these, you can evaluate how valuable a backlink is.

And of course, quality wins quantity these days. A single quality backlink is far influential than any number of random or low-quality backlinks.

Indeed, it’s all about the link juice your page has from links.

It can be either through internal links or backlinks again…

So, how to improve the link juice of your pages?

Let your link building be the most effective all the way.

Get the utmost out of your link building campaigns and hence, improve your SEO rankings.

Let’s see how it is…

How to improve link juice to your site?

Here are the simple ways to boost your link juice with slight changes in the website architecture and link building strategy.

List your categories in the Menu

When you here to improve your site link juice, I’m sure yours is not a new blog. It has some meaningful domain age. And obviously, you will have at least a few posts published.

Have you categorized those posts? You’d be in the order of newest to the oldest.

By the way, categorizing your posts and interlinking between those spreads link juice to each other.

It makes your content easy to access by both the search engines and the users. That’s a good sign of better rankings.

Over and above, you can also nab the authority of the home page to boost its effect further.

List your categories in your homepage menu via a drop-down menu like how Adam Connell did.

How does it help?

All your pages or posts link to their category. And your menu is constant there.

So, listing your categories in the navigation menu evenly spreads out the homepage authority to your entire inner posts as they are interlinked to the category.

Sounds good, isn’t it?

Also, you can do it this way – individually listing your categories in the menu (instead of drop-down).

Otherwise, try out this how we (SGS Mediasoft) keep our important money pages or posts directly in the navigation menu.

And, this is also a reason that our digital marketing training Coimbatore page ranks better.

You can also have keyword-rich anchor texts, in this case. That’s an extra advantage.

Rush to try all these, if you haven’t done so far.

While doing so, you are likely to improve the user experience of your site also as people get quickly what they are interested in.

Use the power of influential pages in your site

Linking your category to the navigation (as seen above) would make your entire pages more powerful. That’s good too.

Still, every blog or site will have some superpower pages with all other vital pages linking to it.

Here is a sample.

Enstine Muki’s ‘About Me‘ page is a power page as all other important posts in the blog links to it. It stands high in the site architecture.

While skimming through it, you will get to know how other important or money pages (Tools I use here, Affiliate Marketing For Bloggers eBook, etc.) are linked to it.

More the link juice a page gets means it has plenty of link juice to distribute.

So, identify the power pages in your site that have more backlinks and ranking high. You can otherwise call it ‘Top Pages’ of your website.

Link all your money pages to it.

Then, bring it to the navigation menu to further boost the link juice of all the money pages linked.

Sitemap on homepage

A sitemap is an excellent way to showcase all your pages and posts to the search engines and the users.

And, the sitemap will have the posts in hierarchical order.

Bring it to your home page to boost the link juice to flow free among all the pages. Leverage the authority of the home page.

Improve external juice

Stop building links for the sake of doing.

Only get links from the authority sites that have a good citation and trust flow.

It’s an authority signal or vote of recommendation that your site is a resource of quality content for the users.

Try out guest blogging, influencer marketing, roundup contributions, etc. to gain the most authoritative backlinks to get more powerful link juice flows to your site.

Final Words

Not just links, it’s all about the link juice it passes make sense to your page.

If you want to boost your money pages ranking, link to it from all other authority pages in your site. More link juice it gets from top pages, higher its potential to rank.

Nothing but, passing the link juice from high-authority or influential pages to your important pages (that you want to rank higher).

Do it via strategic internal linking as well as getting more authority backlinks.

Extract the most out of your every SEO input for exponential ranking benefits.