Link Juice 101: What it is, and How to Get High-Quality Link Juice

“Link juice” is slang in the search engine optimization (SEO) world for how authority and value we get from any external link (also known as backlinks) pointing to our websites. They are essential to ranking your website since they have an impact on your visibility and reach on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Understanding what affects how much link juice you get from every backlink is crucial—this understanding will help you get the most link juice from the least amount of effort. 

In this article, we’ll go in-depth on how to get high-quality link juice for the most important pages on your website. 

What Determines Link Juice?

A website effectively transfers some of its authority, trustworthiness, and ranking power to the connected page when it connects to another one. Search engines use this flow of link equity, also known as link juice, to evaluate the significance and relevance of a webpage.

In short: the more links your pages get, the more Google thinks your page is valuable and worth promoting.

In simpler terms, Google sees any link-back to your website as a vote of confidence. It’s as if other websites are saying, “Hey, this page is pretty informative and useful. Users will benefit from seeing this page.”

But not all links are made the same. If you want links that provide high-quality juice, then you have to know where it comes from. 

Link Relevance

Link relevance is a key element in assessing links. Backlinks that are coming from websites that are in the same industry as yours (or are in some way related to what your website provides) are considered more valuable than any other random website link. 

The more relevant they are, the more Google is pushed to acknowledge your website’s content is reliable and worthwhile. 

So, it is essential to concentrate on building links from sources that are, in some way, relevant to the pages you want to boost. 

You can determine the link’s relevance by the website’s industry, of course. But aside from that, you should look at their domain authority. 

Link-building efforts reap the most rewards when they come from a website that has a high domain authority. 

We use tools like Mozbar from Moz and Backlink profile from Ahrefs to quickly get the domain and page authority of websites. These also show us other backlink data we need to consider in our link-building strategy.

I highly recommend focusing your efforts on websites that have a domain authority of at least 25. Anything less than that won’t give enough link juice, in my experience. The more authoritative the other website is, the more links built will raise the authority of your website. 

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the text that’s clickable and highlighted when you create a hyperlink. The anchor text you use for your links gives context regarding the linked page to both users and search engines.

Striking a balance between optimization and naturalness is crucial, too, when it comes to anchor text. You can learn how to do that in my guide on how to effectively use anchor text for SEO.

But to summarize my points from that guide: the anchor text you use needs to give a crystal-clear explanation of what people will find when they click on your link.

Descriptive and keyword-rich anchor text would show search engines that the information is very, very important to the given topic. But of course, the anchor text you use and the page you’re linking to have to be related.

For example, if I wanted to make a guest post on a gardening website, and link back to my page on organic gardening, I can use anchor text like “best organic gardening tips,” or “organic gardening supplies,” depending on what my guest post is about, and what content my page has. 

However, try to avoid over-optimized anchor text. I don’t recommend keyword stuffing, or being repetitive in your anchor text. Otherwise, it raises red flags with Google—and puts you at risk for penalization. 

Instead, put your focus on making anchor text that offers a seamless and user-friendly experience.

Link Quantity & Quality

When it comes to link building, it’s quality over quantity. Just one backlink from a trustworthy, high domain authority site within your industry will give your website more link juice than 10 spammy backlinks from random websites.

Take this backlink one of our recent articles got from SERoundtable, for example. This provides a ton of link juice. 

Start by locating reputable websites in your niche with high domain authority and a proven track record. The next step is outreach. Approach them with collaborative efforts like guest blogging, expert interviews, or featured pieces to build connections from these sites.

That said, the quantity of backlinks does have some significance in the eyes of Google. I just don’t recommend focusing on quantity alone, as it does not always benefit your page rankings. 

But when it comes down to it, you have to consider: would it be more cost-efficient to focus your outreach towards 10 websites with good domain authority, which are more likely to respond positively—or spend weeks trying to contact a high domain authority website just for a slight chance at one or two backlinks?

You need to be smart with how you approach this. Focus on a balance between quantity and quality to get the best possible ROI. If possible, I recommend hitting a varied backlink profile. In my experience, it’s the most natural-looking to Google and still boosts your rankings.

Lastly, you should always maintain regular monitoring and analysis of the links that are pointing toward your website. This is essential in helping you spot any spammy or low-quality links, which you can quickly disavow before they harm your rankings. 

Why is High-Quality Link Juice Essential?

On-page and technical SEO is foundational to your page’s performance—but off-page SEO (a.k.a, your backlinks) is what sets your page apart from the thousands of other similarly-optimized pages out there. That’s why getting high-quality backlinks to gain the most link juice possible for your pages is essential.

Once you get that, it provides a ton of benefits SEO-wise, such as:

Improved Search Engine Rankings 

No matter what industry you’re in, or niche you’re targeting, there will always be other websites competing for the same keywords. 

If every page competing for the same keyword had all things equal in terms of site speed and usability, content, and on-page optimizations, what would make Google consider your page to be better than the rest?

The answer is your backlinks. It’s the one way you can be competitive in your SEO. The more backlinks that give great link juice to your pages, the more likely they’re going to be ranking high on the SERPs. 

Remember that several factors go into your website’s rank—link juice is just one piece of the puzzle. But it is a very important piece you should not forget.

Increased Organic Traffic

With improved rankings, increased organic traffic tends to follow. This is expected because a majority of people only really look at the first page of the SERPs—maybe the second page, sometimes. So higher rankings equals higher chances that people see your stuff.

But aside from that, good backlinks also serve as another funnel for traffic toward your website. For example, if an article on say, Healthline, links to one of your articles, or links your supplements or other health-related products that you sell, you can bet that many of their readers will click on that link. 

High-quality backlinks overall increase the likelihood that visitors will explore your website, read your content, and engage with your business.

Faster Indexing and Crawling

The visibility and availability of your pages in SERPs are determined by the crawling and indexing activities of search engine crawlers (like Google’s Googlebot).

You can improve how quickly your new pages are indexed, and even how frequently your existing pages are crawled by continuously building links from reputable and authoritative websites.

Crawlers look at all of the content on each page, including the links in them, and where they lead to. So if many websites are pointing towards your pages, then these pages are more likely to start appearing in search results substantially faster than if there were no links at all. 

It’s important to keep in mind that crawlers will scan and index your content more frequently if they keep seeing other websites and pages linking back to you.  

How to Get High Quality Link Juice

It all comes down to the quality of the external links your website has. You can get high-quality link juice if you focus on these three things: your content, how your content is presented, and your outreach strategy.

Content is Key

Focus on producing link-worthy content as the cornerstone of your link-building strategy. The better your content is, the more likely people will read it—and reference it in their writing. 

To make this happen, you need to publish educational, worthwhile, and captivating material that appeals to and answers the needs of your audience. 

Google themselves even makes it a point to only reward content that they consider helpful and valuable to users, which I and my team make it a point to do. I covered how to rank for Google’s Helpful Content update in a different guide if you’re interested in the strategy I use for my articles.

Incorporate Different Formats

There are now a bunch of other materials you can use to pad your articles, such as photos, infographics, report snapshots, videos, and more. 

Consider adding these visual elements in your posts when you can to grab your readers’ attention, and make your pages more visually appealing. 

Do what you can to make your content more engaging. The more engaging it is, the more likely users will read through the whole thing, and potentially link your page to their content or posts. 

Build Connections with Webmasters

I mentioned this point earlier, but I have to emphasize how important it is to do your outreach strategies right and build good connections with other webmasters. I have four backlink outreach strategies that my team uses in our work that you can try in your niche. 

Just as getting external links is important for your SEO, it’s important for others’ SEO as well. Google rewards articles and pages that contain external links, they may help search engines understand its topic and niche. Plus, they are valuable to users as they offer more information and resources. 

So reaching out to other industry leaders and reliable websites can result in a win-win relationship for you both. You get external links, they improve their page’s quality and user experience. 

Key Takeaway

For link building to be effective, high-quality link juice is essential. To generate that almighty link juice for your site, keep the strategies I just shared in mind. With the right balance and effort, you can get more and more link equity to boost the performance of your website.