‘Link juice’ is the informal term used to describe ‘link equity’ or ‘link authority.’ In search engine optimization, it represents the concept that a backlink effectively transfers a measure of authority or trust to the website it points to.
As a ranking factor, link juice has a long history. It was one of the initial criteria evaluated by Google’s original PageRank algorithm. Furthermore, Yahoo’s TrustRank system employs a similar assessment of links.
The quantity of link equity transferred from one site to another depends on various considerations. These factors include the relevance of the linking site, its overall authority, the link’s location on the page, and more.
As search engine ranking factors continue to grow and evolve, the term link juice has somewhat decreased in literal significance. However, the underlying concept of transferred authority remains an essential element to consider when optimizing a website.
Some site owners may attempt to manipulate how much link juice is transferred by applying nofollow tags, which instruct crawlers to ignore certain external links. However, this is usually not highly effective because nofollow links can still indirectly contribute to domain authority and build awareness for the site in question.