The Old Days Of Link Building
There was a time not too long ago when link building was one of the most vital components of search engine optimization. The more links a website received, the higher it ranked. As time went on, Google tweaked and updated its link ranking algorithms. Link building became as much about quality as it was about quantity.
It didn’t take long for the SEO community to coin a new term in order to describe the process by which a link valued (or devalued, as it were) a page. Link Juice, as it’s known, became a common phrase in any discussion of Search Engine Optimization. The idea was that whenever a page linked to another, some of that page’s ‘value’ would transfer to the target.
In essence, this meant that the more links you had on a page, the lower that particular page would rank, and the more links your page was targeted by, the higher it would rank. There were caveats to this, of course – a site with a high PageRank would confer more ‘juice’ than one with a low PageRank, while large collections of low quality or ‘spammy’ links could ultimately cause a site to drop in the rankings.
Was Link Juice Ever Really A Thing?
This was all theory, of course – and there’s always been some contention as to whether or not link juice really even existed. Some, like Portent’s Marianne Sweeney, consistently felt link juice to be “SEO Pixie Dust…a poor substitute for what turns out to be a complex part of the PageRank algorithm.”
The propagation of the phrase, Sweeney feels, is the result of “various SEO practitioners who lack a clear understanding of the Hilltop Algorithm; this algorithm introduced the concept of authority status for certain pages based on links from other authority pages on the same subject.” Her ultimate stance on the topic is quite clear:
“There is no such thing as link juice. There is page authority – of which links are part of a long list of contributors.” As to whether or not she’s correct, well…
Ask five different SEO experts, and you’re liable to get five different answers. Let’s move on.
Link Building And Modern Optimization: The Hummingbird Update
Now that we’ve established the flaws in the core concept of Link Juice – and the general role of link building in page authority – let’s talk a bit about the role links play in modern SEO. See a little over a year ago, Google introduced a change to its algorithms that many cried would kill SEO. It didn’t just change the rules – it started playing an entirely new game.
This update was called Hummingbird.
This was the latest in what would end up being a long line of algorithm tweaks, all designed to make search more organic, semantic, and streamlined. ‘Gaming’ the system – using SEO tweaks and shortcuts to up one’s PageRank – was made increasingly difficult. Instead, search was gradually becoming about what it should have been in the first place – relevance and value.
So…what does this mean for link building?
Links Are Only Part Of The Equation
At the end of the day, links are still incredibly important to optimization – but not for the reasons one might expect. At this point, links are one of over 200 complex signals that contribute to rank. Links are still valuable, not least for the traffic they can bring in, but obsessive link-building is a misallocation of resources.
As for link juice?
Honestly? Just focus on making your site better. That’ll rank you up way faster than fiddling around with your links.