Link equity or “link juice” is a level of authority or value that is passed from a linking page to the page or pages it links to. That value depends on several factors such as the topical relevance and authority of the linking page, the authority of the site that the linking page is on, and more.
Both internal and external backlinks pass link equity.
Link equity influences PageRank as the more relevant and high-authority pages link to a certain page (pass on link juice to that page), the higher that page’s PageRank will be. In other words, link equity is the value that is passed from one page to another, while PageRank is the relative importance of a page based on the link juice it receives from other pages.
Link equity is important because it’s connected to PageRank, which is a confirmed ranking factor for Google. The more link equity a page receives, the higher its chances of ranking well.
In general, link equity indicates the strength of a backlink. By understanding how link equity works, you can focus your link-building efforts on getting high-quality links that will move the needle.
The link equity one page passes to another depends on a few things:
1. The PageRank of the referring page. Since we don’t have the exact PageRank numbers from Google, we can use replacement metrics such as Ahrefs’s URL Rating (UR).
2. The relevance of the referring page. The more relevant or related a linking page is to the page it links to, the more value or link equity it will pass to that page. For example, a page on dog food brands will pass more link equity to a page on dog diets than a page on gardening will.
3. The authority of the referring website (as calculated based on its backlink profile). At Ahrefs, we call this metric the Domain Rating (DR) and you can check it using our Website Authority Checker.
4. The general authoritativeness of the referring website. This comes down to the likeliness of people trusting the linking website and depends on things such as the quality and usefulness of its content, and the qualifications or reputation of its content creators.
5. Page indexability. Only indexable pages can pass link equity, and only via “followed” links. Noindexed, not-crawlable, non-canonical pages can pass no link juice.
6. The number of outgoing links on the referring page. The link equity a page can pass on is distributed among the number of pages it links to. So the more outgoing links a page has, the less link juice will be passed through those links.
7. The relevance of the anchor text. The more relevant an anchor text is for the page it links to, the more link equity will be passed along that link.
No. Link equity is the value that passes from a linking page to a page it links to, while PageRank is the relative importance of a page on the World Wide Web based on the link juice it receives from other pages.
No. You cannot accurately measure link equity. You can only estimate it based on the factors listed above and your own experience with things such as domain authority, page authority, and link building.
When a page passes link juice to another page, it doesn’t lose its own link juice. It’s not like receiving an apple from someone and then passing that apple onto someone else, leaving you appleless. You don’t decrease the link value of your page by linking to other pages.
The worst that can happen is that you receive a manual penalty from Google for “unnatural links from your site”. However, this would only happen if you are sending loads of ugly, spammy, manipulative links to other websites.
Simply linking out to a source of information or recommending your users check out another website by linking to it causes no harm. In fact, it helps readers and is a good SEO practice.
However, if for some reason you still don’t want to pass link equity, you can use the “nofollow” attribute on your links.