---
title: "Link juice"
description: "Link juice is the informal term for SEO value a link passes to its target. Learn how it flows, the role of nofollow and how to manage it across a site."
url: "https://nodea.io/en/glossary/link-juice"
lang: "en"
updated: "2026-07-13"
---

# Link juice

> Link juice is the informal term for the SEO value a link passes to its target page, influencing that page's authority and search rankings.

**Link juice** is an informal, industry-slang term for the SEO value that a link passes on to the page it points to. The idea grew out of the [PageRank](https://nodea.io/en/glossary/pagerank) algorithm and captures the intuition that links "pour" a share of the linking page's authority into the destination.

## How link juice flows

Every page holds a certain amount of authority, derived from the quality and quantity of [backlinks](https://nodea.io/en/glossary/backlink) pointing at it. When that page links out, some of this equity transfers to the link's target. How much flows depends on several factors: the authority of the source page, how many links it contains (the value is split across all of them), where the link sits within the content, and its attributes. A link carrying the [nofollow](https://nodea.io/en/glossary/nofollow-attribute) attribute traditionally passed no value, though today Google treats it as a hint.

## Practical application

Understanding how link equity flows helps you design site structure deliberately. Thoughtful [internal linking](https://nodea.io/en/glossary/internal-linking) lets you channel link juice from strong pages — the homepage or popular blog posts, say — toward the pages you want to promote, such as product pages, service pages or pillar articles.

In practice it pays to limit an excess of outbound links on a single page so you don't dilute its equity, and to eliminate orphan pages that no internal link reaches. The old "PageRank sculpting" trick — artificially steering equity by blanket-applying nofollow inside a site — lost its effectiveness after algorithm changes and is no longer recommended. These days link juice is best treated as a helpful metaphor rather than a precise, measurable metric.

### Does a nofollow link pass link juice?

Classically, nofollow was meant to block the transfer of value, so such a link did not build the target's PageRank. Google now treats nofollow as a hint rather than a strict directive and may consider it, but in practice a dofollow link from a trusted page still passes noticeably more value than a nofollow one.

## Related

- [PageRank](https://nodea.io/en/glossary/pagerank)
- [Backlink](https://nodea.io/en/glossary/backlink)
- [Nofollow attribute](https://nodea.io/en/glossary/nofollow-attribute)
- [Internal linking](https://nodea.io/en/glossary/internal-linking)
- [Anchor text](https://nodea.io/en/glossary/anchor-text)

---

Languages: [pl](https://nodea.pl/pl/slownik-pojec/link-juice.md)  
Site index: [llms.txt](https://nodea.io/en/llms.txt)