What Is Link Equity (Link Juice) and Why Does It Matter?

When one website links to another, it passes a degree of trust and authority along with that link. SEO professionals call this ‘link equity’ — though you’ll often hear the informal term ‘link juice’ used to describe the same concept. It’s one of the foundations of how Google evaluates the importance of web pages.

Understanding link equity helps you make better decisions about how you structure your site, which pages you prioritise for link building, and how you use redirects. This guide explains the concept in plain English and shows you how to apply it.

How Link Equity Works

Google’s original algorithm, PageRank, was built on the idea that a link from one page to another is a vote of confidence. The more high-quality votes a page accumulates, the more authority it has — and the better it tends to rank. That authority is link equity.

A single link from a highly authoritative site (a major national newspaper, for instance) passes considerably more equity than dozens of links from obscure, low-quality directories. The relevance of the linking site also matters — a link from an industry-related website carries more weight than one from an unrelated niche.

Link equity is also diluted when it’s spread across many outgoing links. A page that links to 100 other pages passes less equity to each individual page than a page that links to just five. This is why quality and context matter more than sheer volume of links.

Internal Links and Link Equity Distribution

Link equity doesn’t only come from external sites — it also flows through your own internal links. When your homepage (typically your most authoritative page) links to a service page, it passes some of its authority to that page. This is why internal linking strategy matters so much for SEO.

Pages that are buried deep in your site structure and rarely linked to internally receive little equity, even if the rest of your site is strong. Auditing your internal links periodically and making sure your most important pages are well-connected to the rest of your site is a straightforward way to improve their ranking potential.

Redirects and Link Equity

When you move a page or change its URL, you should use a 301 (permanent) redirect from the old URL to the new one. A 301 redirect passes the vast majority of link equity from the old page to the new one, preserving the authority you’ve built up over time.

Using a 302 (temporary) redirect or simply letting old URLs return a 404 error will cause you to lose that link equity. If you’re redesigning your site or migrating to a new domain, planning your redirect strategy carefully is one of the most important steps you can take to protect your SEO performance.