Link juice is an SEO term that defines the value transferred between two pages when linked together. Websites generally get link juice when some other website links to them.
Link juice can also flow within a website. In this case, there is no external website factor. This is achieved by internal linking, where within a website, your higher authority pages pass link juice to lower authority pages.
In the real world, instead of the actual juice, the authority of the connecting website or pages gets shared in the process. The term link juice is often used when people are talking about getting backlinks or building links for their website.
So, if you are an SEO professional, digital marketer, or a startup managing an in-house team, you might have heard this term and know how it impacts your domain authority.
But let me tell you a secret. Getting link juice to your website from a backlink is just one part of the story. How to let that link value flow through your website is the real deal.
So that’s why the article. Here’s what you will know.
- How does Link Juice Flow Through a Website?
- What Happens When Link Juice Stays on One Page?
- How to distribute link juice with internal links
- Tools to help you execute the whole process
- Common Mistakes to Avoid while doing the process
Let’s get started.
How Does Link Juice Flow through a Website?
To understand how link juice works, it’s essential to revisit two core SEO concepts: PageRank and Link Equity. Google initially used PageRank as a key factor to evaluate and rank websites based on their backlink profiles.
Websites with high-quality backlinks were considered more authoritative, passing what is now commonly known as “link juice”—a measure of value or authority transferred from one page to another through links.
While Google’s algorithms have evolved significantly, the principle of Link Equity remains crucial in SEO today.
Every link that points to your website can pass value, influencing your rankings based on factors like the linking site’s authority, relevance, and the context of the link itself.
Now, let’s get to how link juice flows through a website.
Step 1: Backlinks Are the Primary Source: They Deliver Direct Link Juice
When you earn a backlink, it’s like a direct infusion of authority that the page receives. This page, now, has a much better chance of outranking its competitors in search results.
Step 2: Internal Links Redirect the Flow
Internal links work like distribution channels. They direct that incoming authority to other pages across your site.
For example, say your homepage gets a powerful backlink. Instead of letting that link juice sit there on that page, you strategically link the page to your other important pages on the website such your product pages, your service pages, or any other key content.
Step 3: More Links Means Less Juice Per Link
The more internal links a page has, the more it has to share its authority.
For example, if a page links to three other pages, each gets roughly 33% of the link juice. If it links to ten pages, the juice gets diluted further. That’s why thoughtful internal linking is crucial.
You want to direct that precious link juice to the pages that will benefit the most.
When you are strategic about linking your pages together, you can guide valuable link juice to the pages that matter most to your business.
Now we are clear about how backlinks provide the initial boost of authority and how internal links distribute that authority across your site.
But what happens when link juice becomes concentrated on a single page? Many websites make this mistake. Here’s what you should know.
What Happens When Link Juice Stays on One Page?
When link juice gets stuck on just one page of your site, it can create an imbalance and prevent other important pages from reaching their full potential.
Here are the consequences of not distributing link juice:
1. Uneven Link Distribution
What happens when your homepage or a single blog post receives a flood of backlinks? It grows stronger, goes high up the SERPs and pulls in a lot of traffic.
But what about your product or service pages? They are too the heart of your business. These pages are where you convert visitors into customers or generate leads. Without enough internal links leading to them, they remain isolated and weak. They struggle to rank well in search results because search engines see them as less important.
For example, say you own an ecommerce site selling fitness equipment. You wrote a blog post on “10 Tips to Improve Your Workout Routine,” which goes viral and gets hundreds of backlinks.
It’s great, no doubt! But if that post does not link strategically to your product pages, the traffic and link equity stay confined to the blog. As a result, your product pages stay hidden, cannot rank well, and fail to attract potential sales.
You can fix this by building internal links from that high-ranking blog post to your product pages. This way, the link juice can flow from your blog to your product pages and help them get higher rankings.
2. A Lopsided Website Structure
Poor internal linking can make it really hard for both search engines and users to navigate your site. This happens because some pages get the majority of authority while the rest of your website struggles to get noticed by search engines.
Let’s say you own a travel website. Your homepage might have plenty of backlinks and traffic and rank well. But is the same happening with your internal pages such as evergreen contents – like guides for individual destinations.
If your homepage does not link to these pages or if those pages don’t interlink with each other, they are essentially left out of the spotlight.
When search bots crawl your website, they look for a logical flow of link equity between pages. If they see that only a few pages are highly linked and others are not, they perceive it as a lack of focus or imbalance in your website structure.
Visitors landing on your homepage may not easily find deeper or more relevant pages, which may cause them to leave frustrated. This could hurt engagement metrics like time on site and bounce rate.
To distribute link juice effectively, you need to build a more interconnected site. Use contextual internal links within blog posts and other pages.
Create a clear hierarchy and ensure your homepage links to category pages and those category pages link to individual content or service pages.
Use breadcrumb navigation to connect pages logically and help users and search engines understand how your site is structured.
3. Content Silos Remain Isolated
Content silos occur when different sections of your website remain disconnected.
For example, your informational blog posts might not link to your service pages. Or your valuable case studies might not be easily accessible from other relevant content.
This lack of cross-linking can prevent search engines from understanding the thematic relationship between pages. As a result, your website’s overall visibility and authority can suffer.
Imagine you run a digital marketing agency. You have:
- A blog post titled “5 Strategies to Boost Your SEO Rankings”
- A service page for SEO Consultation Services
- A case study on “How Our SEO Strategy Increased Client Traffic by 200%”
If these pages don’t link to each other, they remain isolated. Visitors reading your blog might not know about your services and might even miss your impressive case studies. Meanwhile, search engines cannot see the thematic connection between your content, so they fail to recognize your expertise in SEO.
You could fix this with strategic use of internal links. In that blog post, include “Need personalized help? Check out our SEO Consultation Services.”
On your service page, link to the case study: “See how we have delivered results for our clients in this SEO success story.”
In the case study, link back to the blog: “Discover 5 actionable strategies in our SEO guide.”
Why internal linking is the solution:
Internal links are the bridges that connect all the different parts of your website. They guide both visitors and search engines by helping them navigate through your content.
Strategically linking your strongest pages to those that need a little extra support makes sense.
This creates a website that’s easy to navigate and feels natural to explore. It’s a win-win! You improve your search engine rankings. And your visitors have a much better time navigating your site.
Now let’s explore how to distribute link juice with strategic internal linking.
Strategic Internal Linking: The Key to Distributing Link Juice
1. Link to High-Priority Pages:
High-priority pages are your important assets. For example, service pages, product pages, or evergreen content- they are the pages that directly contribute to your business’s success. To help these pages perform better, you need to pass along some authority from these pages to those that need it most.
For example, if you have a blog post with consistent high ranking and plenty of backlinks, use it to your advantage.
Add internal links from that blog post to key pages you want to boost, like a service page for SEO consulting. Place these links naturally within the content using descriptive anchor text that makes sense to the reader, such as “Learn more about our SEO consulting services.”
It helps search engines see which pages are the most important while also guiding users to take meaningful actions.
When you link thoughtfully, you are creating a positive feedback loop. You are helping users find what they are looking for. This improves your site’s overall structure and ultimately boosts your rankings SERPs.
2. Use Contextual Linking:
When you link internally in a way that makes sense to a human reader, you are helping search engines understand how your pages relate to each other.
Why is it helpful? Search engines try to figure out what a link is all about by carefully understanding the context of the link within the overall conversation of your page.
Contextual links help search engines understand what the destination page is about and what’s the importance of it within the overall structure of your site.
Example: If you wrote a blog post about “How to Improve Website Traffic”, which has multiple backlinks, link to your “SEO Services” page. Use anchor text like “SEO strategies for driving traffic.”
Thus, you are making sure that the linked page is relevant to the current topic, which helps both readers and search engines understand the connection.
3. Build Topic Clusters:
Let’s say you have a big topic to discuss.
So, you create a main (pillar) page that talks about all the different aspects of that topic. Then, you create smaller pages (cluster) that delve deeper into each of those aspects. And you link all these pages together.
By this, what you are doing is that you are creating a network of interconnected articles that help both readers and search engines understand your website better.
Example: A pillar page titled “Complete Guide to Digital Marketing” could link to subpages about SEO, PPC, and social media marketing. These subpages could be linked back to the pillar page.
Not only does it help search engines understand the hierarchy of your content but it also allows link juice to flow naturally between related pages.
4. Optimize Anchor Text:
Anchor text tells search engines what they can expect to find on the other side of that link. It gives context about the linked page and helps search engines determine its relevance.
It might seem like a small detail but it’s not.
So, instead of linking with vague phrases like “click here” or “learn more,” use anchor text that describes exactly what the linked page is about.
For a service page on SEO consultations, write something like: “Explore our SEO consultation services designed to boost your search rankings.”
This is how you tell both search engines and users why the page matters.
Following are a few best practices you can follow for anchor text optimization:
- Be specific and use descriptive phrases that naturally include target keywords
- Avoid generic phrases like “learn more” or “click here”
- Keep anchor text concise, focus on clarity and keep it to the point
- Make sure the anchor text directly relates to the content on the destination page
This simple act can make a world of difference in how search engines view your website and how easily customers can find what they are looking for.
5. Link Deep Into Your Website:
Most people make the mistake of only linking to the important pages on their websites – be it the homepage or main category pages. By doing this, you are missing out on a huge opportunity.
Think about it. Those deeply buried, less authoritative pages need your attention, too. They also have valuable information, which can greatly benefit from internal linking.
Example: If you have a detailed blog post about “Beginner’s Guide to Keyword Research,” link it to a detailed case study or an FAQ page on keyword tools. This way, those less-visited pages receive link juice and show up more often in search results.
6. Avoid Link Dilution:
Link dilution happens when you scatter too many internal links to a single page. If you overload a page with too many internal links, you risk diluting the link juice and making it less effective at boosting the rankings of your target pages.
Here is what you should do, instead:
- Only include links that genuinely guide users to valuable content or pages aligned with your business goals.
- Don’t flood a page with dozens of internal links. Stick to a reasonable number that serves the user and keeps your content focused.
- Skip linking to pages like “Terms of Service” or “Privacy Policy” in your main content. These pages don’t need authority and often get enough visibility from the footer or navigation menu.
We have discussed some very important internal linking strategies above to maintain a healthy link juice flow in your website.
But without the knowledge of how to implement these strategies with the right tools, it’s impossible to effectively improve your site’s visibility. This is what our next section is about.
Tools to Help Optimize Internal Linking to a better Link Juice Flow
Executing a strategic internal linking plan requires accuracy and precision. With the right tools, you can make the process seamless. So, here’s how to use the tools to audit and optimize your website’s internal link structure:
1. Screaming Frog:
Use this tool to identify the link structure of your website. Identify pages with most or the least internal links. Here’s how :
Step 1: Crawl Your Website
Launch Screaming Frog, enter your website’s URL into the search bar. Click the “Start” button to initiate the crawling process.
Step 2: Analyze Internal Links
Once the crawl is complete, navigate to the “Internal Tab,” select it to view all internal URLs.
Use the filter to display only “HTML” pages to ensure you are analyzing relevant content.
Review “Inlinks” column, which shows the number of internal links pointing to each page. Click on the “Inlinks” column header to sort pages in ascending or descending order:
- Pages with a low number of inlinks may be underlinked.
- Pages with a high number of inlinks might indicate overlinking.
Step 3: Utilize Link Score
Screaming Frog provides a “Link Score” metric that estimates the relative value of a page based on internal linking. In the “Internal” tab, you will find the “Link Score” column to assess the importance of each page within your site.
Step 4: Export Data
Click “Bulk Export” > “All Inlinks” to download the list of internal links.
2. Ahrefs:
Let’s find out how to visualize link flows and spot opportunities for improvement using Ahrefs:
Step 1: Conduct a Site Audit
Log in to your Ahrefs account. Select the Site Audit tool from the dashboard. Enter your website’s URL and configure the audit settings and initiate the crawling process.
Step 2: Analyze Internal Links
After the auditing, navigate to the “Internal Pages” report. Review Link Distribution, where you will see a breakdown of how many internal links point to a page.
Step 3: Visualize Link Flows
In the internal pages report, utilize the graph visualization option if available. This feature allows you to see how link juice flows between pages. Look for pages with a high number of incoming links and assess their outgoing links to see if they effectively distribute link juice to key areas.
Step 4: Spot Opportunities for Improvement
In the “Links” report, select the “Issues” tab to find orphan pages that need linking. In the “Internal Pages” report, click on any identified broken links (4XX errors).
Navigate to the “Internal link opportunities” report within Site Audit. Review suggestions provided by Ahrefs on where new internal links can be added. Add links to high-traffic or high-value pages that need more authority.
3. Google Search Console:
Now, let’s get into the step-by-step process of finding orphaned pages (pages with no internal links) using Google Search Console:
Step 1: Access Google Search Console
Log in to your Google Search Console account. Choose the website you want to analyze.
Step 2: Gather Page Data
On the left sidebar, click on “Performance.” This report will show you the pages that have received impressions and clicks in search results.
Click on the “Export” button and download the data in your preferred format (CSV or Google Sheets).
Step 3: Identify All Pages on Your Site
Click on “Coverage” in the left sidebar. This will show you all indexed pages on your site. Export this data to get a comprehensive list of all indexed URLs.
Step 4: Cross-Reference Data
Open both exported files in a spreadsheet application like Google Sheets. Create a new sheet and copy URLs from the Coverage report into one column and URLs from the Performance report into another column.
To identify orphaned pages, use the below formula in a new column:
=FILTER(Coverage!A:A, ISNA(MATCH(Coverage!A:A, Performance!A:A, 0)))
This formula will return URLs from the Coverage report that do not appear in the Performance report. These URLs might be orphaned.
Step 5: Analyze Orphaned Pages
Examine the list of URLs identified as orphaned and determine their relevance and need for internal linking.
4 Common Mistakes to Avoid While Doing Internal Linking
1. Creating Irrelevant Internal Links
Linking to irrelevant pages on your site wastes valuable link juice and can leave your readers feeling lost. Make sure each internal link connects to related information. This makes it easy for readers to navigate your site and understand your content.
2. Overusing the Same Anchor Text:
Using the exact same anchor text for every link can look suspicious to search engines. It feels like you are trying to manipulate them. To avoid this, use a variety of descriptive words or phrases that accurately tell what the page is all about that you are lining to.
3. Ignoring Orphan Pages:
Not addressing pages with no internal links is like hiding them from the rest of your website. Plus, these orphaned pages don’t benefit from link juice and can be difficult for both search engines and visitors to find. So, it’s important to regularly check for these pages and connect them to relevant content.
4. Excessive Linking:
Overloading a page with links can dilute the authority (juice) that flows to each link. Instead of quantity, focus more on quality and only link to high-value pages that deserve more attention.
But how do you know if all these efforts are actually paying off? Let’s now explore how to measure the success of your internal linking strategy.
Measure the Effect: Impact of Link Equity Distribution
Measuring how link juice flows across your site is a must. It helps refine your internal linking strategy.
Without having a proper tracking system in place, it’s not possible to know whether your links are effectively boosting important pages or leaving them weak.
Here’s how to measure the impact of link equity distribution:
Monitor ranking improvements
Keep an eye on how your most important pages rank in search results. If they are climbing the ladder, it’s a good sign that link juice is flowing effectively.
Make sure search engines can easily index all pages you have linked to
Check how deep the bots have to crawl to reach these pages, and confirm that they are actually being included in SERPs.
Use analytics tools to see how much organic traffic is landing on your linked pages
Look for pages that see a noticeable increase in traffic after you have adjusted your internal links. Thus, you can have clues about which links are most effective.
To Conclude
Strategic internal linking is the key to unlocking your website’s true potential. Distributing link juice effectively can help your website big time.
For an effective strategy that works, it’s wise to use SEO tools like Screaming Frog and Ahrefs to identify weaknesses and opportunities in your internal linking strategy.
Always make sure to:
- Check your links regularly to make sure there is no valuable content left unseen
- Steer clear of irrelevant linking, overused anchor text, and orphaned pages
If you are handling a big website or you’re new to seo and want to make sure these things are always taken care of.
Look no further and schedule a 5 mins meeting with our SEO expert today for a tailored strategy.