What Is Link Equity?
Link equity is a value that is passed from one web page to another through a hyperlink. All web pages contain some level of popularity and authority (called PageRank), and some of that value is transferred as link equity to the hyperlinked URL. Link equity can be passed internally through links on the same domain or to other websites with outbound links. Also known as link juice.
The link equity value depends on a myriad of factors ranging from the link’s on-page location if a reasonable surfer would click on the link, and to its relevancy for a given topic. Links from authoritative websites tend to have more equity than those on relatively new and unknown sites.
Links that are labeled with the rel=nofollow attribute tell search engine crawlers to ignore the link and not pass link equity to the target URL. However, this attribute is a hint and not a directive.
Placing a high amount of links on the same page decreases their overall outbound link equity value because the PageRank authority for the originating page gets split between each of the outbound links.
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The Editorial Staff at SEO Chatter is a team of search engine optimization and digital marketing experts led by Stephen Hockman with more than 15 years of experience in search engine marketing. We publish guides on the fundamentals of SEO for beginner marketers.
