Link Equity

Link equity (historically and informally called 'link juice') is the ranking value or authority that passes from one page to another through hyperlinks. It's the conceptual currency behind how links influence rankings: a link is a vote that transfers some of the linking page's authority to the linked page, and the cumulative link equity a page receives — from external sites and from internal links — is a major factor in its ability to rank. Modern search ranking is far more complex than the early PageRank model, but the underlying intuition (authority flows through links, and links from authoritative, relevant pages are worth more) remains foundational.

Link equity flows and can be managed: EXTERNAL link equity comes from backlinks (more authoritative, relevant, editorial links pass more value — the quality-over-quantity link-building principle), while INTERNAL link equity is distributed by your own site structure (internal links channel authority between your pages — which is how a strong page can lift a weaker one, and why internal-linking strategy matters for topical authority and for getting important pages ranked). Equity can LEAK or be WASTED: links to low-value pages spread it thin, broken links and orphaned pages waste it, and excessive linking dilutes the value each link passes. The management tools: deliberate INTERNAL LINKING (channel equity to the pages that need to rank), 301 REDIRECTS (which preserve most link equity when URLs change — critical in migrations, the difference between keeping and losing rankings), NOFOLLOW and related attributes (which historically signaled not to pass equity — now treated as hints), canonical tags (consolidating equity from duplicates), and site architecture that flows authority efficiently from your strongest pages to your most important ones. The honest caveat: 'link equity' and 'link juice' are useful mental models, not literal mechanics — Google's actual algorithms are vastly more sophisticated than equity-flow metaphors, so treat the concept as directionally true guidance, not a precise system to game.

Link equity matters in every SEO decision involving links and structure: link-building strategy (earning authoritative external equity), internal-linking architecture (distributing equity to rank important pages — a high-leverage, fully-controllable lever), site migrations and URL changes (where 301 redirects preserve equity and their absence destroys rankings), and consolidation decisions (merging pages to concentrate equity). It matters most as the mental model behind why authority and structure drive rankings — useful for making good decisions (concentrate equity on what matters, don't leak it, preserve it through changes) without overfitting to a metaphor that's simpler than the real algorithm.

*Reconstructed from SEO practice; no single coiner is on record. 'Link equity' (and its informal predecessor 'link juice') descends from Google's original PageRank concept (Brin and Page, 1998), which modeled authority flowing through links; the terms became standard SEO vocabulary in the 2000s, even as Google's actual ranking grew far beyond the simple equity-flow model.

Etymology: source.

Search interest for this term over the last five years:

View interest-over-time on Google Trends →

Areas of marketing where link equity is a core concern: