Link Juice, or “Click Juice,” as some marketers like to call it, is not just about what a site has but also how it ranks in search engines. Link Juice is essentially nothing more than the percentage portion of a site’s ranking potential being transmitted to the landing page when a link is clicked. Let’s imagine that we are ranking for a particular keyphrase, such as “How to Lose Weight.” Suppose we were to submit that page to an authoritative directory, for example, which might have been found via a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign. In that case, there is a good chance that our landing page will rank within the first three pages of the search results. But if we do not use SEO to get there, or we do not have any backlinks. This example is analogous to saying that PageRank (PR), the basis for measuring link popularity, will be distributed to our page as a sort of “indirect” traffic.
Link Juice can be defined as the “raw” or “total” value of the one-way relationship that a site shares with another. Link Juice can be one of the most influential factors in Search Engine Rankings. The “one-way” relationship is a two-way street, in other words, one link is not necessarily equating to one vote, or one impression, or even one visit. The concept is rather that there can be many “links” from many different websites or pages on the web, all of which are influencing and all of which are potentially having a positive effect on the Search Engines results page (SERP).
In fact, one of the main ways that Search Engines determine a page’s page rank is by analyzing the “link juice” that a particular page has with other pages that are of a similar topic and theme. This concept is often referred to as “topical relevancy.” The higher the page authority of a particular page, the more “juice” is transferred to that page. In essence, this means that the more relevant the information that you provide and the more unique your topic, the more juice you transfer and the higher a page rank can rise. This is called “bounding relevancy.”
There are four types of PageRank, the first of which is called “nofollow” and contains the highest amount of weight. “Nofollow” is also the most troublesome for Search Engines, as it means that a link that you provide will count against you if another site that is linked to does not have a valid backlink pointing to it. This is one of the most significant factors in determining page rank.
The next most important of the Search Engine ranking factors is “inbound links,” which include only inbound links from related sites. These sites must have some sort of relationship to you, or your website, in order to be considered relevant. Backlinks from unrelated sites do not carry any weight with Google, and Google will not give much value to them. “Inbound linking,” therefore, is one of the most important and potent SEO factors. Nofollow links have been known to dramatically increase a site’s ranking; however, they are also known to take a considerable amount of time to create.
One way that companies attempt to increase the amount of link juice is by hiring a service called “link reclamation.” This service allows a company to take an existing website, or a “sister site,” and replace all of the pages that contain text links with a single HTML page, called a “backlink.” Linking building through link reclamation is often less time consuming and more cost-effective than other types of linking techniques, but it has its own drawbacks.
One of the more popular ways that companies try to improve the quantity of link juice is through what’s called “harpooning.” Basically, if a company has an existing webpage, and then sends out thousands of posts on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, they hope to tap into a group of readers who share the companies’ promotional message. Companies that use the harping method sometimes only send out the posts one at a time, which greatly decreases the amount of exposure that their webpage receives. For this reason, companies who use this method will often prefer to hire a professional SEO firm that can perform a comprehensive link analysis and determine the best outreach strategies.
One of the main things that search engine optimization firms try to do is ensure that the keywords that are being used for a page are ones that will be most beneficial to that page’s target audience. A good example of this is when a search engine bans the use of certain keywords from a webpage. The affected webpage may either lose a significant amount of its search engine rankings or completely disappear from the index altogether. For this reason, SEO professionals will often focus their attention on changing the keyword phrases that are causing the problem in order to allow the website to regain its footing. Link juice is a highly important aspect of SEO, but getting backlinks pointing to your website from quality sources can go a long way towards increasing your link juice.