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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It didn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s \u2018value\u2019 would transfer to the target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Essentially, this meant something simple. If a page had more links on it, that page would rank lower. Also, if more links pointed to your page, it would rank higher. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, there were exceptions. A site with high PageRank gave more “juice.” A site with low PageRank gave less. Large amounts of low-quality or “spammy” links could make a site drop in rankings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was just a theory. Of course, people have always argued about it. Did “link juice” even exist? Some people thought not. Marianne Sweeney from Portent was one of them. She always felt “link juice” was like “SEO Pixie Dust.” She thought it poorly explained a complex part of the PageRank algorithm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sweeney believes the phrase spread because some SEO experts didn’t understand the Hilltop Algorithm. This algorithm introduced an idea. Certain pages have “authority status.” This is based on links from other important pages on the same topic. Her final opinion is very clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere is no such thing as link juice. There is page authority – of which links are part of a long list of contributors.\u201d As to whether or not she\u2019s correct, well\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ask five different SEO experts, and you\u2019re liable to get five different answers. Let\u2019s move on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that we\u2019ve established the flaws in the core concept of Link Juice – and the general role of link building in page authority – let\u2019s 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\u2019t just change the rules – it started playing an entirely new game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Hummingbird](\"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Hummingbird.webp\")
Link Building And Modern Optimization: The Hummingbird Update<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n