Link juice

Link juice describes the "power"/authority that is passed on through links: Many and high-quality backlinks strengthen pages, internal links distribute the value. Through link sculpting, you control which subpages receive more link juice.

Digital recommendations for pages on the World Wide Web hold high value in search engine optimization, including for Google. These page recommendations in the form of backlinks provide search engines and users with insights into how "valuable" a website is. If it has many recommendations, meaning many links, the page also seems to be relevant. The recommendation or value of the website is transmitted through the so-called link juice. This "juice" is a dynamic construct influenced by various factors and is constantly in flow, which is why many symbolize link juice as a flowing body of water. Generally, it includes all positive attributes that can influence a website.

About the distribution of link juice on a page

There are two important factors for a positive page ranking related to link juice for search engines like Google. Firstly, it's the number of linking websites—how many webmasters set a link? Secondly, the quality of these websites is significant, which was represented by the so-called PageRank a few years ago. Any website that sets a link with a "dofollow" attribute to another page passes on a portion of this PageRank, which in turn is influenced by various factors. The link juice of a website is equally divided among all links. For a website with 50 outgoing links, each reference receives 1/50 of the "juice." Assuming a portion of these backlinks is marked with the "nofollow" attribute, meaning they don't pass on link juice, the ratio is still 1/50 per link. If a website has only a few outgoing links, each individual reference is worth more than if there are few recommendations to other websites. Until 2008, there was not this same distribution because previously, the link juice was distributed among all links with the "dofollow" attribute. A "nofollow" link therefore had no PageRank. Today it does, which is why the backlink juice is essentially "wasted."

Control the link flow specifically on the website

The link juice that flows through the website can be controlled. This way, more value can be given to important pages through the link flow, and less important ones can be excluded. If a website receives many external links, it has a lot of link juice that wants to be distributed to its own subpages, so that only a small portion flows out through outgoing links. Controlling or directing the link juice is called link sculpting. This allows a page to be highlighted as particularly important for the search engine. While a few years ago this was simply done by setting the "nofollow" attribute, today link sculpting is done using, among other things, JavaScript, htaccess files, and iFrames.

Internal link juice is also relevant to Google

But also, anyone who sets an internal link on their website passes link juice within the domain. Both external backlinks and internal links and their juice are taken into account by search engines like Google and affect the ranking of a page. Internal links also help the crawler (such as the Googlebot) navigate through a website faster and include it in the index. But of course, here too, a link can be set to "nofollow" to inform the web crawler that a particular page should not be indexed, while other websites are prioritized through targeted distribution of link juice.