What is Link Equity?
Introduction
Link equity is also referred to as “Link Juice.” It is a search engine ranking factor that basically passes authority and value from one page to another. The given authority and value are based on several factors like HTTP status, Page authority and more. The page links passed to other pages determine a ranking on the Search engine result page.
How it is Determined?
Internal links and external links can pass the link equity. But a few important factors determine the link equity:
The linking site should be authoritative. It should be from a trusted website. And the essential thing is links should be from websites that have already been built up, not from new websites.
The link should be crawlable. The link won’t pass the equity if the page blocks the crawler via the robots.txt file.
The number of a link placed on the page. There is no amount on how many links you can add but adding more links will increase the chances of people clicking on them.
The link should be relevant to the page you are linking to. For example, suppose you wrote content about health-related and linked the page with bikes. The link is probably not relevant. So make sure there should be relevancy.
Page Rank and Link Equity
Usually, people think page rank and link equity are the same. But page rank is the old google algorithm. It is the first algorithm to calculate the site ranking based on the number of backlinks given. Then, it was the most used algorithmic calculation, but now it is not. Since there are hundreds of ranking factors google looks for. Its value has decreased.
At some point, link equity can be understood, like how one-page ranking power is passed to another page. If the link is given from a very authoritative page to a smaller site page, it is like confidence to the linked page and will provide a certain amount of authority to it.
How to Improve Link Equity?
Let us now see how we can improve link equity. Here are a few crucial points you should consider while adding links to your page.
The most important thing is that external links are more essential than internal links since the external links are given from different domains, which can provide more ranking power and value to your page than internal links (links from exact domains).
Google does not consider your website authoritative, and if your page does not have external links, it will be hard for your page to gain organic visibility. So it would be best if you first gained value through external pages.
Now you think internal links are not necessary. No, there are essential too. If your page has high authority, you can gain excellent organic visibility with internal links, even with fewer external links.
The next thing is that the link quality is more important than the many links on the page. This means quality over quantity. The value of one page to other is passed through value-driven links even if they are less in number. If they are not value-driven and you have hundreds of links, it won’t make any difference on the page.
The last thing you should consider is that the well-linked pages are more quickly ranked than the poorly-linked ones. It is because well-linked pages mean the pages with high value and essential pages will have easier passing of link equity.
Anchor text can also improve the link equity since its highlights the particular page. Also, it helps google determine the relationship between the linked page and the page’s link given. And also, the anchor text is relevant. This will significantly improve your linking equity and page rankings
What if You Don’t Want to Pass Your Link Equity?
There is no harm in passing link equity to other websites. It just tells users that you can visit another website or page too. So it is a great SEO practice. Still, if you don’t want to pass link equity for any reason, you can use “nofollow” attributes on the page.
There are chances where you can receive a google penalty if you pass the links that are spammy or manipulative to other websites
