Link Equity

When one page links to another it passes along some of its own authority. That transferred value is link equity (the older slang is link juice). It is why a link from a widely-cited page is worth more than one from an obscure page, and why where you link from inside your own site matters, not just how much you link.

There are two practical levers. Externally, earn links to pages that can convert or that support the pages that do. Internally, route equity deliberately: link from your strongest pages to the ones you want to rank, keep important pages within a few clicks of the homepage, and use descriptive anchor text so the link says what the target is about. Watch for leaks — equity dissipates through redirect chains, is lost when a linked page 404s, and gets diluted when a page links out to hundreds of low-value URLs. Broken and redirected internal links are usually the fastest recoverable win in an audit.

Treat internal linking as budget allocation, not housekeeping. Every site has a finite pool of authority and most sites spend it badly — nav and footer links flatten the distribution while the twenty pages that generate pipeline sit five clicks deep receiving almost nothing. The senior move is to map equity flow against commercial value and correct the mismatch, which is often worth more than a quarter of link acquisition. Be equally clear about what equity is not: a substitute for relevance. A well-linked page that answers the wrong intent still loses to a weaker page that answers the right one.