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Who's Drinking All Your Link Juice?

Written by: Karen Scharf

Article Overview: You might have heard the term "link juice" before in the discussion of search engine optimization and traffic generation. Link juice is actually a loosely defined term, but it generally refers to the combination of link relevance, page importance and anchor text.

Who's Drinking All Your Link Juice?

You might have heard the term "link juice" before in the discussion of search engine optimization and traffic generation. Link juice is actually a loosely defined term, but it generally refers to the combination of link relevance, page importance and anchor text. If we can assume that each web page is awarded points and these points were distributed to the links on that page according to the importance of those links, that points distribution would be the link juice. And just to set things straight, no I did not make up that term, and I don't have the foggiest idea where it came from. If you have any insight into where the phrase originated, drop me a line, I'd love to hear about it.

As you might imagine, link juice is a precious resource that you want to cultivate and protect. One great way to preserve your juice is to pay attention to your page architecture. You might be committing a very common mistake that is poking holes in the bottom of your cup and letting your juice pour right out. (Yeah, I hear you moaning over that terrible play on words! I guess I'll leave the comedy to the experts.)

When a particular link appears over and over again in a website, the spiders assume it's an extremely important link, and so it is awarded a hefty portion of the juice.

But take a look at your website... Go ahead, take a peek way down at the bottom of the page. Now take a look at your next page, way down there at the bottom. And the next page, and the next. Are you seeing repetitive links to your privacy policy page? Your terms of service page, your sitemap, your affiliate pages?

Your footer navigation can be a serious source of link juice leak. Since those links appear over and over again, the spiders will assume they are important, so you want to protect them from being awarded any of your juice.

The easiest way to protect yourself against this link juice loss is to use NoFollow in your footer, sidebar, or any repetitive navigation. If you want to get really serious about generating traffic, it's time to get proactive. Decide which pages on your site YOU consider the most important (don't leave this critical issue up to the spiders!) and create an information architecture strategy to ensure that your pages are ranked accordingly.

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Article Tags: internet traffic, link juice, SEO



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Re: Using Craigslist SEO to Promote Your Website - [quote:372g7ueu]2) Trent: could you explain more about building solid backlinks? What constitutes as solid? Do you go to relevant articles and try to set up a link to your content that relates to that topic?[/quote:372g7ueu] Article marketing Guest blogging Blog commenting Link exchanges Directories Forums Link wheels Social bookmarking Link bait Quality content Also, you want your links to be keyword anchored if at all possible. Links from sites relevant to yours are better too.
Re: Search Engine Optimization - simply trying your hand at doing it yourself :- Directory Submissions - targeted links at high PR directories Blog and Forum Postings - to high PR and frequently crawled sites Social Bookmarking Classified Ads Article Marketing - submit to high PR directories, could also serve as link baits Link Exchange - with relevant sites authority sites Link Baits - for organic linking
Re: Upcoming inventors exhibition - Thanks Ringo, That was a great Link. Great information and contacts Regards
Re: Traffic! How do you get it? - Hi Robert, Yes you are right, the full name is Link Directory Submitter, I'm not sure when it happened but the site is owned by Tom Dahne and Paul Martin. regards, Mal.
Link exchange - Link exchange is the popular method of increasing page rank and generating maximum incoming traffic. But generating enough links is not as easy as it seems. There are many important things you should take care of before starting your link exchange campaign. Before discussing link exchange tips, we should understand exactly what a link exchange is. Link exchange is simply the exchange of your links with others. Every Webmaster wants the maximum number of visitors coming to his site for obvious reasons; his revenue and site popularity both increase with the increased number of visitors. But the basic question remains on how a Webmaster will be able to generate enough links coming to his site? There are two popular methods for creating the targeted links, one is manual and the other is the use of automated linking programs. Whatever method you choose for your linking campaign, remember that each has its own pros and cons. For instance, manual linking may take months to complete and automatic linking can result in untargeted and irrelevant links.


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