Story Based Question
Imagine you’re running a content-heavy website with a variety of blog posts, product pages, and resource articles. You’ve recently started focusing more on SEO, and while working on your internal linking strategy, you’ve come across the term link equity. You’re wondering how internal links contribute to the distribution of link equity across your site, and if that could help boost your SEO rankings. How does link equity work, and what role do internal links play in passing it through your website?
Exact Answer
Link equity, also known as “link juice,” refers to the value or authority passed from one page to another through links. Internal links pass link equity throughout your website by connecting various pages. The amount of equity passed depends on factors like the number of links, the page’s authority, and how relevant the linking page is to the target page.
Explanation
Link equity is a crucial concept in SEO because it affects how search engines evaluate the importance and relevance of your website’s pages. When one page on your site links to another, it transfers some of its authority or “link juice” to that page. This helps search engines understand which pages are more important and should be ranked higher in search results.
Internal linking plays a big role in this process. When you link from one page to another within your site, you’re passing link equity to the linked page. Here’s how it works:
- Passing Link Equity:
When a high-authority page on your website links to another page, some of its link equity is passed to the linked page. However, not all link equity is passed through. Some equity might be lost, depending on the structure of the link (e.g., “nofollow” links don’t pass link equity). But generally, the more internal links pointing to a page, the more equity it receives. - How Internal Links Work:
Internal links connect different pages on your site, guiding users (and search engine crawlers) to other relevant content. For example, if you link to a related blog post from a popular landing page, that blog post gets a share of the authority from the landing page, improving its chances of ranking higher. - Link Equity Distribution:
Internal linking helps distribute link equity across your site, ensuring that important pages receive a boost in visibility. For instance, if your homepage or a high-ranking blog post links to deeper pages on your site, those pages get some of the authority from the more powerful page. This distribution can help boost SEO for less visible pages, leading to better rankings overall. - Link Relevance and Context:
Link equity is passed more effectively when the links are relevant to the content. For example, if a blog post about “healthy eating tips” links to another article about “vegan meal plans,” the link will pass more relevant authority due to the content’s contextual alignment.
By strategically using internal links, you can spread link equity across your website, prioritize your most important pages, and enhance the overall SEO value of your site.
Example
Let’s say your website is a blog about healthy eating. You have a popular blog post called “The Ultimate Guide to Healthy Snacks” that gets a lot of traffic. Within this guide, you decide to link to a lesser-known page titled “5 Quick and Easy Smoothie Recipes.”
- Passing Link Equity:
Since “The Ultimate Guide to Healthy Snacks” is a high-traffic, authoritative post, the link pointing to the “5 Quick and Easy Smoothie Recipes” page passes link equity to it. This helps boost the smoothie page’s authority, which can lead to higher rankings in search results over time. - Effective Link Distribution:
You continue this strategy across your site by linking to other relevant blog posts from the authoritative pages. As a result, the less prominent pages on your site start to gain more equity and become more visible to both search engines and users. This helps strengthen the overall SEO performance of your website.
Link equity, or “link juice,” is the value passed through links on your website. Internal links are essential for distributing link equity across your site, helping less visible pages gain authority and improving SEO rankings. By strategically using internal links, you can enhance the SEO value of your entire site.