Link Equity
Also called Link juice, Authority transfer.
Link equity is the SEO value that flows from one page to another through a hyperlink, reflecting the linking page's perceived authority and topical relevance.
What it means
Link equity is the conceptual currency of off-page SEO: the value that flows through links from one page to another, signaling authority and trust to search engines. The original PageRank algorithm formalized this idea mathematically, and while modern ranking systems have evolved well beyond PageRank, link equity remains a foundational concept.
Three factors shape how much link equity transfers: the linking page's own authority (a link from a DR 90 page passes more than a DR 30 link), the topical relevance of the linking page to the linked page, and the structural attributes of the link itself (dofollow vs. nofollow, anchor text, position on the page).
Modern link equity is contextual, not just authoritative. A topically-relevant link from a DR 50 page in your exact niche often outperforms a DR 80 link from an off-topic page. The 2018 era of chasing high-DR links regardless of relevance is over — Google now treats relevance as a multiplier on raw authority.
Key takeaways
- Page authority + topical relevance + link attributes together determine link equity transfer
- Topical relevance now outweighs raw Domain Rating for most queries
- Internal linking redistributes link equity across your own pages
- nofollow, sponsored, and UGC link attributes signal different transfer behavior
- Link juice
- Authority transfer
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Domain Rating
Also: DR, Domain Authority, DADomain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs' proprietary metric that scores a website's backlink profile strength on a 0-100 logarithmic scale, widely used as a proxy for a site's ability to pass link equity.
Link buildingRead moreAnchor Text
Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink — and the words used as anchor text are one of the strongest topical relevance signals search engines use to understand what the linked page is about.
Link buildingRead moreInternal Linking
Also: Internal links, Internal link architectureInternal linking is the practice of hyperlinking pages within a website to each other, distributing link equity, establishing site architecture, and signaling to search engines which content is most important.
On-page SEORead more
Knowing what Link Equity is, is the easy part.
Implementing it on your site is what moves the needle. Get a free SEO audit and we’ll show you where link equity fits in your roadmap.