What Is Link Juice?
One of the most bizarre terms that internet marketing has come up with is Link Juice. So what is it and why are links so juicy?
Well link juice refers to the hypothetical (but probable) weight that Google puts on incoming links to your site.
The easiest way to explain link juice is with an example
Lets say you have two sites, Site Blue and Site Red and both of these sites are targeting the same keyword.
Google will try and rank them based on their link juice (currently nothing) and other factors.
Now lets say that Site Blue is linked to from another site (Site 1). All of a sudden it has more link juice so can potentially out rank Site Red.
Lets mix this up a bit. Site Red now gets linked to from Site 2, so all is roughly neck and neck, but Site 2 is linked to from Sites 3, 4 and 5.
Wow. So all of a suddenly Site Red has much more link juice because it is linked to from a site that in turn has many incoming links.
Of course, no one really knows how Google works (if they did they would be incredibly rich and wouldn’t tell you or me about it), so in part it’s conjecture but it has been based on a lot of SEOs tests so is at least in the ball park.
So how does this affect your sites?
It means you need links. And not just crappy paid for links or links from a site you own with no links itself.
It means that your article needs to be shared by others, whether on social networks or referred to by other bloggers (always great for links). The more popular the site is that links to you (meaning it has a lot of inbound links) then the more link juice you get from that one singular link.