Link equity (historically called PageRank or link juice) is the ranking power transferred from one page to another through a hyperlink. When a high-authority page links to yours, it passes a portion of its authority — helping your page rank better. When a low-quality or irrelevant page links to you, it passes minimal equity (and in the case of spam links, can be actively harmful).
Factors That Affect Link Equity
- Authority of the linking page — links from high-DA pages pass more equity
- Relevance — links from topically related pages are worth more than random ones
- Number of outbound links on the page — equity is divided among all links on the page; a link from a page with 200 outbound links passes less equity than one with 5
- Link placement — in-content editorial links pass more equity than footer or sidebar links
- Follow vs. nofollow —
rel="nofollow",rel="sponsored", andrel="ugc"links pass no (or reduced) equity
Internal Link Equity
Link equity flows through internal links too — not just backlinks. Your homepage typically has the most accumulated equity. Strategic internal linking distributes that equity to your most important pages. Orphaned pages (with no internal links) receive almost no equity and tend to rank poorly.
Equity Leakage
If your site links heavily to external sites without nofollow, you may be bleeding equity outward. Audit your outbound links and add rel="nofollow" to links that don’t deserve to receive your site’s equity.