Posted by: Edwin Huertas
May 19, 2009
Issue #676

Make Your Site More Popular
With “Link Juice” Power

You already know how powerful links can be when it comes to your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. As Search Engine Specialist Alexis Siemon says: “A link is a shortcut to quickly get you from one website to another. If you can harness the power of the link, you can make your website a force to be reckoned with. That means higher search engine rankings, more traffic to your site, and, eventually, more customers and more money in your pocket.”

But though more and more online marketers are learning about SEO and how it can help deliver lots of quality traffic to their sites, the powerful little link is still a mystery to many. One question I frequently get is about “link juice.”

What is link juice? It is the key to your popularity with the search engines. The more you have, the higher you can rank in the search engines’ results.

To understand link juice, you first need to understand another SEO term: Link Popularity.

Link Popularity is a metric that most search engines use to gauge the “popularity” of a Web page based on how many other Web pages link to it. You could think of it this way: Each link to a Web page that a search engine finds on the Internet counts as a vote for the page it’s linking to. The more links that are pointing to one of your Web pages, the more “popular” a search engine will consider that page to be.

Search engines consider popular pages to be highly relevant. Since they are interested in presenting the most relevant search results to their users, they’ll give popular pages a high ranking. And this will improve your SEO, put your website in front of more search engine users, and ultimately result in more traffic and more potential sales.

But that doesn’t mean you should ask all your friends to link to your site. You don’t want a link from just anybody. You want links from sites with lots of link juice.

Link juice is a way to describe the “weight” a specific link might carry. A link with more weight is going to be more important to the search engines.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Let’s say you’re trying to get a job. Your potential employer is going to be more impressed by recommendations from your boss at your previous company than she will by recommendations from your mailman or your dentist. You could have 100 letters of recommendation from your college buddies, but one powerful letter from the CEO of a business you used to work for will do a lot more to convince her to hire you.

It’s the same with the search engines. Each Web page has a certain amount of clout - or link juice - that it can pass to another page. How much is not really something you can accurately measure, but you can get an idea of how good a link is (how much link juice it has) by looking at a few variables:

1. How many links are pointing to the page? If a page has hundreds or thousands of links pointing to it, chances are the links on that page have good link juice that can be passed on to outside pages (like your page).

Let’s say MortgageBroker.com has a ton of link juice. If you are in the mortgage brokerage business and get this site to link to you, it could pass on a lot of link juice. (It’s like getting a job recommendation from the top dog in your industry.)

2. How many outgoing links does that page have? Pages with too many outgoing links (20 or more) usually have less link juice than pages with 10 or fewer outgoing links. That’s because sites with too many links to outside sites aren’t as choosy.

Think about it this way: If a food critic rates every restaurant she visits as “5-star,” you might not believe she’s got a very discerning palate. But if she gives her top recommendation only to a few restaurants, you would be more inclined to try them out. After all, they are the only restaurants she likes out of thousands.

If a page has lots of links pointing to it and a small number of links pointing out, it’s probably a good page with plenty of link juice. A link on that site pointing to your site would be beneficial to you.

3. Is the page that links to you in a similar niche? It’s important to build up links to your site, but you must make sure those links come from sites that complement yours. In other words, don’t request links from sites that are about mortgages if your business is about sporting goods.

4. How much real content does the page have? Pages that have very little content and are mostly made up of outgoing links have less link juice to offer. The best links are usually from pages that have lots of “real” content and a small number of incoming links.

Once you’ve found a site that has a lot of link juice, request a link from it. Remember, the more link juice you can get, the higher you will rank with the search engines.

Contributed by Edwin Huertas
Guest Contributor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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9 Comments »

1. Comment by dan — May 19, 2009 @ 3:10 pm

   Could you recommend very insightful books on the topic above?Your proposition is wow!

2. Comment by Neil Campbell — May 19, 2009 @ 3:31 pm

   Hi,
   good stuff but how do you go about requesting a link?
   Most large sites would simply reject a one-way link; is that not why ‘advertorials’ are becoming more common?

3. Comment by Tim Thach — May 19, 2009 @ 5:52 pm

   An important point that Edwin makes is that all links are not created equal.

   The best way to begin getting links to your website from authoritive websites usually starts with discovering which keywords you can easily rank well for in the Search Engine Return Page (SERP).

   Then note the sites which will allow you to submit content; such as video, articles, press releases, etc. Create the content yourself, or outsource it. But you also should know that not all content is equal, and neither are the results from that content.

   In-bound links to your website are only one aspect, albeit an important one, of Search Engine Optimization for your website.

   I heartily recommend starting at http://www.seobook.com/

   ‘Till then,

   Cheers!

4. Comment by John Deck — May 19, 2009 @ 8:43 pm

   Here is another way to look at passing rank (link juice) with back links.

   Each page that a search engine indexes gets a “ranking” (page rank). Now if there are 10 outbound links from that page, then the link juice that gets passed is divided by 10. For page with a Google PR5, then each link is worth 5/10 = 0.5 The search engines I sure use something more complicated but that gives a good representation.

   So what does that mean? A link from a page that has a PR2 rank with only one outbound link passes more link juice than a link from PR5 page with ten outbound links.

   So you need to note the Google page rank but also the number of outbound links already on the page.

   The page rank (PR) that Google shows on the Google tool bar gets updated every few months so it is often out of date. Plus Google knows every SEO specialist in the world looks at the number, so the PR that the bar shows is an approximation. There is also evidence that questions how accurate it is.

   Also critical and not mentioned in this article is the need to have the link text (anchor text) is specific to the page subject being linked to. If the page is about “basket weaving” do not have anchor text be “Hot Mustangs”.

   I have seen cases where the SERP (search engine results position) for a page improved greatly by going back an improving the anchor text for inbound links.

   John Deck

5. Comment by Dan Schulz — May 20, 2009 @ 1:41 am

   Hey John,

   I’ve been conducting a lot of research on link building for an article I’m writing (which I’ll either be submitting to SitePoint.com for publication or just post it on the Search Engine Optimization section of the forums if they reject it). Would you mind if I shared some of the links (about 20 of them) as a resource for those who would like to learn A LOT MORE about link building and SEO in general?

   (By the way, I’m an Advisor on the Design Team over at the SitePoint forums, and an administrator over at the SEO.com forums; if for whatever reason you don’t have or can’t get my email address, feel free to contact me on either forum via PM if you want to preview the links before deciding whether they should be posted here.)

6. Comment by Dan Schulz — May 20, 2009 @ 1:41 am

   Er, I meant Edwin and Clayton, not John. Sorry. That’s what I get for commenting so late at night.

7. Pingback by ‘Make Your Site More Popular With ‘Link Juice’ Power’ - ‘The Total Package’ — May 20, 2009 @ 6:44 am

   [...] Make Your Site More Popular With ‘Link Juice’ Power… [...]

8. Comment by Edwin Huertas — May 20, 2009 @ 12:04 pm

   Dan: I am in the process of writing a complete (online) SEO course, which will include a chapter on Link Popularity. I will update Clayton when it is done so he can let his subscribers know about it.

   Neil: The best way to build up your links is to request them one by one from Websites that are similar to yours. I know it can be time-consuming, but it really is the best way. If you don’t have the time you can try using link exchanges (like link-market.net), but I would research each Website thoroughly before accepting any trades.

   Tim: Great comments thanks

   John: Great comments also. I didn’t get into the whole anchor text thing (though I should have), but I’m glad you brought it up here. The article was more about Link Juice and what it means, but you have brought up an excellent point.

   If you are going to request a link from another Website, please make sure that the TEXT they use on the link has your key words within it. Google will see this link and read the text, which in turn gives them an idea of what your site is about (based on the text link pointing to you)

   Dan Shulz: I would be happy to contribute in any way I can help I’m not sure which 20 links you are referring to though. I would not mind you sharing any links to articles I’ve written if that’s what you mean.

9. Comment by Dan Schulz — May 20, 2009 @ 2:59 pm

   What I meant was that I had collected a list of links to articles that talk about acquiring authoritative incoming links from other Web sites and wanted to know if it was okay to share them here in the comments so others could learn from them right away.

   Since you’re writing your own guide to search engine optimization (how ironic that I’m doing the same thing), I’d be more than happy to help spread the word for you on SitePoint, SEO.com and the other sites I frequent. (When I write something related to Web design, development and SEO, people tend to listen and take what “little ole’ me” say seriously.)