Link juice – what affects link power and how to check it?

There are many theories circulating on the web regarding what specifically affects a site’s search engine position. Many of them talk about the waning influence of link building activities, but we addressed this issue in an article on link profile 

And what is the situation with Link juice? Is there any confirmation that it has an impact on site positioning? Let’s find out!

What is link juice?

Let’s start with what the term link juice itself means and what it refers to.

Link juice is a term that operates in the SEO world and refers to the power of links passed between websites. It refers to both external and internal linking. 

External links sourced from sites with greater authority and better performance convey more 'SEO power’ and help a site achieve better search engine results. 

Internally linking, on the other hand, conveys power to pages deep within the site’s structure and improves navigation within the site.

What influences transmitted link power?

Many factors influence what value a link will convey to our chosen site. In the process of planning a link building strategy, it is important to take a holistic approach and consider various aspects.

Thematic linking – links acquired from pages with similar topics will have more value than those that do not relate in any way to the content on the site. Google’s algorithms are so precise that thematic verification of sites and related links is not a problem for them.

HTTP status – it is good practice to constantly monitor the links leading to the site. The portals from which you obtain links may return different server responses. Be sure to monitor for errors or poorly executed redirects on the page that links to our site.

Site authority – sites with higher authority are theoretically more valuable and it is worth acquiring links to your domain from them. 

Security of the site – the authority of the site is also built through the security measures in place. A link from a site with an up-to-date security certificate will be considered more valuable. We mentioned the proper implementation of security features and their role in the SEO process in our article on SSL certificate

Link Location – when placing links on external portals, it is worth paying attention to their final placement. Links placed directly in the content, in an appropriate textual environment will convey more value than links placed in the footer of the page.

Indexing the site – the page from which we acquire the link must be indexable. When it has the specified attribute ‘noindex’, the link power is not transferred.

Number of links on the site – choosing the places of publication of links leading to the site, it is worth paying attention to the number of links that are already on a particular subpage. The more links coming out of one page, the juice link will have less value.

Nofollow and dofollow attribute

Besides all the factors that have been mentioned above, a very important issue is the attribute that has been specified for the links leading to the site. 

We divide them into nofollow and dofollow links, and depending on which attribute is specified for a particular link depends on whether the link juice is passed or not. 

Links for which no attribute is specified are automatically received as dofollow links. This provides information to search engine robots that the site is valuable and trustworthy. Thus, the linking site passes its link juice to the linked site. If it meets the other conditions, we can be sure that the link will positively affect the position of our site in the search engine.

Links for which the attribute has been defined as nofollow do not pass their value to the linked pages, and thus do not affect their position in the search engine. However, defining the attribute is a suggestion to search engine robots. 

This is a parameter automatically given to links that may be considered spam. Most commonly, these include links in forums and links posted in comments under blog posts. 

So for what purpose to use the nofollow parameter?

Despite the fact that links with the nofollow attribute do not convey link juice, it is worth using them. For algorithms evaluating the link profile, link diversity is important. 

There is no clearly defined rule saying what the ideal ratio of dofollow to nofollow links should be, so it’s worth acquiring both types of links and constantly monitoring how they affect a site’s search engine position and how the metrics that tell the link profile change.

How to study link juice?

Link juice is not a directly measurable value. There are many tools with which we can analyze the links leading to the site, their profile and their variability over time, and on this basis we should draw conclusions about the power of links. 

Assessment of link profile is based mainly on indicators developed by developers of tools for analyzing sites for SEO.

Trust Flow and Citation Flow

These are metrics that we can find in the popular tool Majestic SEO 

Trust Flow determines the credibility and quality of a site, while Citation Flow is concerned with assessing the number of inbound links. The most favorable scenario predicts that the two metrics will have a similar value to each other. If the CF value significantly exceeds TF, it is worth analyzing your link profile and checking it for spam. 

Domain Rating 

DR was developed by the developers of the Ahrefs tool. This indicator reflects the quantity and quality of links, taking into account the link profile of other domains. It takes a value from 0 to 100, depending on how the links leading to the domain in question were rated. The higher the Domain Rating, the better, but it is worth noting that domains with a DR greater than 30 are already considered domains of value. 

Domain Authority

Domain Authority is an indicator developed by MOZ that takes into account, in addition to the thematic linking of a site, the quantity and quality of links that lead to it. It is expressed on a scale of 0 to 100. The higher the value succeeds, the more valuable the site will be perceived by search engine robots and its position in the SERPs will increase.

Effect of link juice on SEO

Despite differing opinions on link juice and Google’s constant algorithm updates, link building is still a very important part of website positioning 

When preparing a linking strategy, it is worth considering the factors that affect the transfer of power between links to be sure of their positive impact on a site’s positions in search results.