What does Link Juice mean in SEO?

"Link Juice" is a slang term referring to how powerful a certain link (within a site or from one website to another) is or could be.

The idea is that a link from a well known website that is trusted by the search engines will pass more "juice" than one on a pointless directory.

When a search engine like Google adds up all the "juice" from the various links it has some idea on the popularity of a website and uses it as one of the factors in ranking that website.

Thus you might often here the term, "That won't give you any link juice".

One of the misunderstandings of Google's Penguin updates (aimed at removing spammy links) is that a website with a large number of poor quality links has been penalised.

In reality Google has identified the origin sites as only existing to provide links and has decided they should have no juice to pass through. Thus the website that has been "hit" by a Google update has really only lost juice rather than being actively penalised.

Factors which affect the potential juice of a link include:

• Where the link is on the page (links higher up pass more juice than those lower down.
• If the link is within the text content of the page (rather than alone in the footer or a side bar.
• How much link juice that page has to offer in the first place