Link equity: Shorthand for the ranking value a link is thought to pass from one page to another. It is a way of talking about PageRank-style signals, not a number any search engine publishes.
Where the idea comes from
The term grew out of PageRank, in which a page’s importance flows along its links to the pages it links to. Google says PageRank has evolved a lot and is still part of its core ranking systems. “Link equity” and “link juice” are SEO-industry shorthand for that idea rather than Google’s terms, and Google does not publish how much any link passes.
What it is useful for
As a mental model, it explains a few things that are true in practice:
- Pages that earn links from other sites — a recipe that went viral, a calculator that journalists cite — have something to share through their internal links.
- A page that nothing links to, an orphan page, receives nothing from the rest of the site.
- Links through redirects and to dead pages are wasteful, so it is worth pointing internal links at final, working addresses.
Where the model misleads
Taken literally, it leads to bad habits. People add nofollow to internal links to “save” equity, which does not work; Google treats nofollow as a hint, not a valve. Others refuse to link out at all, or cut useful links to keep the count down. There is no published per-link value to optimise, so decide links on whether a reader would want them.
A practical way to use the idea on WordPress: find your pages with the most backlinks inSearch Console’s Links report, and make sure each one links, in context, to two or three pages you want to rank. The guide to how many internal links a page should have covers the numbers side.