Off-Page SEO
Link Equity
Link equity, sometimes called link juice, is the ranking value passed from one page to another through links.
It flows through both external backlinks and internal links, and is influenced by the linking page's authority and relevance. Strategic internal linking spreads equity from strong pages to ones you want to rank. Nofollowed and broken links do not pass it.
Equity routing is the actionable half of the concept: you cannot easily change how much arrives, but you fully control where it goes. The classic audit finds the site's strongest pages by incoming links, then checks what they link to; the usual answer is policy pages and dead campaigns, while money pages starve three clicks away. Redirect chains leak equity at every hop, and links to 404s drop it entirely. One internal-linking pass moving equity from strong pages to commercial targets routinely outperforms months of new link acquisition.
Example
A homepage with strong links passes value to whatever it links. One retailer's homepage linked 9 category pages and 140 footer links to policy pages, splitting its equity 149 ways. Trimming the footer to 20 essential links concentrated the flow into the pages meant to rank. Two category pages moved from page two to the top five with no new external links.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I direct link equity to important pages?
- Link to them from your strongest pages, in context, with descriptive anchors, and keep them within a few clicks of the homepage. Trim decorative links from templates so what remains carries meaning, and fix chains and 404s that bleed equity in transit.
- Do nofollow internal links preserve equity?
- No, and nofollowing internal links to sculpt flow is a dead technique: the equity is simply discarded. Control flow by deciding what you link to at all, not by tagging links you already made.
Related terms
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