Linkjuice

Link juice is the value that a web page passes on to another page via a hyperlink, thereby giving the receiving page more authority in search engines such as Google. Each link acts as a recommendation: the stronger the linking page, the more link juice is passed on. This is important for small and medium-sized businesses because a smart distribution of link juice determines which pages appear higher in search results.

How link juice flows through your website

When Google visits your website, the search engine follows all internal and external links. Each page has a certain amount of authority, built up from factors such as the quality of backlinks, the age of the domain, and the relevance of the content. That authority is distributed to other pages via links. For example, if your homepage contains ten internal links, the link juice is distributed across those ten destinations. The more links you place on a single page, the more diluted the value per link becomes. In practice, we often see with SMB clients that important product pages receive too few internal links, while less relevant pages—such as terms and conditions —unintentionally receive a lot of link juice.

Why Linkjuice Was Created and Why It Still Matters Today

The concept of “link juice” stems from the PageRank algorithm that made Google famous. The idea was simple: a link from page A to page B is a vote of confidence. The more and better votes a page receives, the higher that page ranks. Although Google now takes hundreds of other factors into account, the quality and distribution of links remain among the most important signals. For Dutch small and medium-sized businesses, this means that with a well-thought-out internal link structure, you can determine which pages receive priority without relying solely on external link building.

What Linkjuice Offers Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

By strategically distributing link juice, you can boost strategic pages—such as services, product categories, or landing pages—in search results. For example, an ecommerce store with 500 products can prioritize bestsellers by linking to those products from blog posts and the homepage. A B2B service provider can help important case study pages or white papers rank higher by linking to them prominently from relevant blog posts. This requires no additional budget, just a conscious choice in your internal linking structure. At Monkey Vision , we integrate this approach as standard into our SEO projects because it is one of the most underrated levers for organic growth. You can find more information about how search engines interpret link signals in Google’s official documentation on crawlable links.

Now that you know what link juice is, things get interesting: how do you use it tactically? Most SMB websites let link juice leak to pages that have no commercial value, while pages meant to attract customers receive too little internal link equity. Below are four ways to strategically leverage link juice.

Prioritize conversion pages via internal links

If you know which pages generate leads or revenue, you can strengthen those pages by linking to them from relevant content. For example: an installation company publishes a blog post about energy savings and links from that article to the service page about HR boilers. That service page then receives link juice from both the blog and the homepage. Google recognizes that this page is important and gives it more weight. In practice, we’ve noticed with SMB clients that this effect becomes visible in the rankings within a few weeks, provided the internal links are logical and relevant. Avoid generic anchor text such as “click here”; instead, use descriptive anchor text that summarizes the content of the destination page.

Redistributing link juice via a streamlined site structure

Many websites contain pages that no longer hold any value: old blog posts, expired offers, empty categories. If those pages are still in the navigation or footer, they dilute the link juice of your entire site. By removing these pages, merging them, or redirecting them to relevant alternatives, you concentrate the link juice on the pages that matter. An ecommerce store with 200 products, 50 of which are no longer available, can redirect those 50 pages to similar products or categories. This preserves the link juice and makes the site structure clearer. This kind of cleanup is part of a thorough technical SEO approach.

Attracting external link juice with linkable assets

Link juice doesn’t come solely from internal links. External links from other websites are often more valuable because they signal that your content is authoritative. Small and medium-sized businesses can create linkable content such as industry studies, free tools, comprehensive guides, or infographics. For example: an HR consulting firm publishes an annual salary survey for the region. Other websites and trade publications are happy to link to it, which means the page receives external link juice. You can then pass that link juice internally to commercial pages by linking from the survey to relevant services. This way, you combine thought leadership with SEO power.

When link juice is the right choice—and when it isn’t

Optimizing link juice pays off if you already have a website with multiple pages and content that attracts organic traffic. It’s less effective if your site has only five pages or if your domain doesn’t yet have any external links. In that case, it’s more important to first create high-quality content and build external links. Also, keep in mind: link juice is no substitute for relevant, well-written content. A page that is supported solely by internal links but offers no value to the reader will not rank well in the long term. So use link juice as a booster, not as your main strategy.