It's A Backlink! It Has The Juice

Those who have dabbled in the art of SEO might know a thing or two about backlinks. In summary, backlinks are links directing people to your website. They come from external sources - like social media sites, blog pages, directories, etc. We won't go into much detail on what backlinks are and how they're beneficial, as we've already written about them here. Feel free to read that article if you need more information on backlinks before returning to this one! 

Instead, today's focus is all on something called link juice. 

What Is Link Juice?

In terms of backlinks, link juice is a slang term that refers to a single backlink's power. The aim of the game is to generate as much link juice as possible, strengthening your website. Effectively, it looks at your website's value from that link. 

How Does Link Juice Work?

We think the best way to understand link juice is to consider how it works. Every single link will provide your site with some power level or value. When a website links back to your site, it transfers some of its power or benefits to you. A website with a lot of authority, known to be trustworthy by search engines, will provide some serious link juice when pointing to your site. 

Why? Because Google - and other search engines - notice that a high-authority site is linking to you. Therefore, it assumes that your site must be pretty decent if a site like the other one links back to you. Think of a backlink as another website recommending you, which search engines pick up on and decide you must be trustworthy and authoritative, so they push you up the rankings. 

The more high-value links you get, your site will have more link juice. 

What Determines Link Juice?

A page on your website could have six backlinks from various other sources. However, another identical page could have three backlinks, yet they have more link juice. So, what makes some backlinks generate more juice than others? 

Why is this the case? Well, backlinks are analyzed based on these key factors: 

• Relevance
• Trust/Authority
• The type of link
• Link location
• Quantity of links on the same page

Is your website relevant to the original site? Relevance refers to the content on the page that's linking to your site. For example, your site offers social media marketing services, and someone writing a blog post on social media marketing tips links back to you. This is relevant, so the link has more juice. Relevancy is checked to prevent people from setting up websites that generate random backlinks to any other site to manipulate SEO. 

Trust/authority is as simple as looking at how highly valued the original site is by search engines. Those that constantly create great content and are authoritative will generate more link juice than those that aren't. 

The type of link refers to "dofollow" or "no-follow" links. Search engines place more value on "dofollow" links, so if the one pointing to your site is a "no-follow" one, it will lack some juice. 

Link location means the location of the link on the page. Research has shown that search engines place more value on links in the body of a piece of content. Links in footers are commonly seen as less valuable, so they are less juicy!

Finally, the quantity of links on the same page is significant. Going back to the blog example, if this blog post only links to your site, it's a very high-value link. Comparatively, if there are loads of outbound links in the same post, it devalues the quality of your link, meaning it loses some juice. 

How Do You Get Backlinks With A Lot Of Juice?

This is where things get tricky. Ultimately, the best way to generate backlinks is to create a website and web pages that others deem valuable. Give people a reason to link back to you - this could be through great content on your blog or just by demonstrating awe-inspiring services/products that others are likely to recommend. 

However, if you want to supercharge your site with a lot of link juice, you need a proper link-building strategy. Contact Soap Media today and ask about our SEO services to learn more.