What Is Link Juice and How Does It Flow?

"Link juice" is SEO slang for the ranking value a hyperlink passes from one page to another. Google's own name for the underlying mechanism is PageRank: a page accumulates value from the links pointing at it, then passes a share of that value on through its own outbound links. More authority in, more to give out.

Where the idea comes from

It isn't a metaphor someone invented for a blog post. It's a simplification of a real algorithm.

The 1998 Stanford paper in which Sergey Brin and Larry Page first described Google set out a page's score as a function of the scores of the pages linking to it, divided by how many outbound links each of those pages had, multiplied by a damping factor of around 0.85. Value flows along links, splits when it arrives, and decays a little at each hop.

Google's ranking systems today are vastly more complicated than that formula, and the public PageRank toolbar was retired in 2016. But the core mechanic — value travelling along links and being divided among them — is still how link equity behaves, and it's still the right mental model.

Two clarifications worth having up front:

Link juice is not a number you can look up. Nobody outside Google can see it. Ahrefs' URL Rating and Moz's Page Authority are third-party attempts to approximate it, not readings of it.
"Link equity" is the same thing in more professional clothing. Use whichever term you like; they're interchangeable.

How it splits — the part that changes decisions

A page divides its outgoing value among its outbound links. This has a consequence people consistently underestimate.

A link from a page carrying a lot of value that links out to five places is worth far more than a link from a page carrying twice as much value that links out to five hundred. That single mechanic explains a large amount of otherwise puzzling behaviour in link building:

Why a resource page listing 300 tools passes almost nothing to any of them.
Why a link from a modest but focused article often outperforms one from a much higher-authority page stuffed with links.
Why the raw Domain Rating of a linking site is a poor proxy for the value of the link.

The practical version: when you're evaluating a link, look at the page the link will sit on and count the outbound links on it. That number matters more than the domain's authority score.

What increases or reduces the flow

Position in the page. Links inside the main body of an article carry more weight than links in a footer, sidebar, or navigation block. Google's "reasonable surfer" patent describes weighting links by how likely a user is to actually click them — and nobody clicks the footer. It's the single strongest argument for insisting that any link you earn or exchange lives inside real content.

Total outbound links on the page. As above — fewer links, larger share each.

Relevance. A link from a topically related page contributes more than one from an unrelated page, independent of any authority score.

Nofollow and its relatives. rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored" and rel="ugc" tell Google not to pass ranking credit. Since 2020, Google treats these as hints rather than absolute directives, so the behaviour isn't fully binary any more — but you should still plan on a nofollow link passing little to no equity. It's also worth knowing that nofollow does not redistribute a page's value to the remaining links. Attempting that — "PageRank sculpting" — stopped working in 2009, when Google changed nofollowed links to still consume their share.

Redirects. A 301 or 302 redirect passes link equity. Google confirmed in 2016 that 3xx redirects don't cause PageRank loss, which retired years of folklore about "losing 15% through a redirect." Long redirect chains are still worth fixing, but for crawl efficiency reasons rather than equity leakage. What a 301 redirect is and when to use one covers the mechanics.

Broken links. A link pointing at a 404 passes nothing. This is the entire basis of broken link building — finding dead links on other people's pages and offering a working replacement.

It flows inside your site too

Most discussion of link juice is about backlinks, which misses half the picture. Every internal link on your own site moves equity around, and unlike backlinks, you control all of them.

Your homepage is usually the page with the most equity, because it's what most external links point at. Whatever it links to inherits a share. Whatever those pages link to inherit a share of that. Pages nobody links to internally — orphan pages — sit at the end of the chain with nothing.

This gives you a lever that costs nothing:

Link from your strongest pages to the ones you want to rank. If a guide of yours has earned twenty external links, the pages it links to benefit.
Don't strand important pages. A page reachable only from a paginated archive gets very little.
Use descriptive anchors. The anchor text tells Google what the destination is about — see what anchor text is and how to use it.

Internal links goes through the full method. It's the cheapest ranking work available, because it requires nobody's permission.

Where it leaks

Some of it leaves your site whether you like it or not, and mostly that's fine — linking out to good sources is a quality signal, not a cost to be avoided. Hoarding equity by refusing to link out is a bad trade.

Genuine waste looks different:

Redirect chains that go through four hops before landing.
Links to pages that no longer exist on your own site.
Duplicate URLs competing for the same equity without a canonical tag to consolidate them.
Parameter and session URLs splitting one page's value across dozens of addresses.

Fixing those recovers value you already earned. It's usually a faster win than building new links.

Getting more of it in the first place

All of the above is about routing value efficiently. Increasing the amount of it means the same thing it has always meant: more links from more distinct, relevant sites — referring domains, not raw link count.

When you're choosing where to get those from, the mechanics in this article are the checklist. Is the link inside body content or in boilerplate? How many other links share the page? Is the page indexed? Is the site about anything close to your subject? A direct exchange lets you check all four before anything goes live — Backlinkster matches you with a site owner in a related niche, keeps both links inside real editorial content rather than a footer, and verifies each placement live by code.

Frequently asked questions

What is link juice in simple terms? It's the ranking value a link passes from one page to another. A page builds up value from the links pointing at it, then shares that value out through the links it points at. More authoritative pages have more to pass on, and every page splits what it has among its outbound links.

Is link juice a real thing or just SEO jargon? Both. "Link juice" is informal jargon, but it describes a real mechanism — PageRank, the algorithm Google was built on, in which value flows along links and divides among them. The slang is imprecise; the underlying behaviour is genuine.

Do nofollow links pass link juice? Generally no. rel="nofollow", sponsored and ugc tell Google not to pass ranking credit. Since 2020 Google treats them as hints rather than absolute directives, so the behaviour isn't strictly binary, but you should plan on a nofollow link passing little or nothing. Nofollow links can still bring traffic and brand exposure.

Do 301 redirects lose link juice? No. Google confirmed in 2016 that 3xx redirects do not cause PageRank loss. The old "you lose 15% through a redirect" claim is outdated. Long redirect chains are still worth cleaning up, but for crawl efficiency rather than lost equity.

How many outbound links is too many on one page? There's no hard limit — Google dropped its old 100-links guideline long ago. What matters is that each additional link reduces the share every other link receives. A page with 300 outbound links passes very little to any one of them, which is why links from sprawling resource lists are worth so much less than they look.

Does link juice flow through internal links? Yes, and it's the part most sites neglect. Every internal link moves equity between your own pages. Linking from your strongest pages to the ones you want to rank redistributes value you've already earned, at no cost and without needing anyone else's cooperation.

The bottom line

Link juice is the value a link carries, it splits across every outbound link on the page it comes from, and it decays as it travels. That single model answers most practical link questions: prefer links from focused pages over crowded ones, insist on in-content placement over footers, don't fear linking out, fix the redirect chains and orphan pages quietly wasting what you have — and keep adding new referring domains, because that's the only thing that increases the total.