Once you understand PageRank, you know it’s vital to earn links from pages with many links themselves.
In SEO, we go further by maximizing this effect.
In the distant past, SEOs would sculpt links. This meant adding nofollow attributes to internal links that led to non-SEO pages. This no longer works as link juice flows but then evaporates.
More harmless assumptions are still unproven.
Many SEOs, myself included, feel that body links are valued higher than navigational ones in the footer or sidebar. However, this is not known for sure.
2 solid principles are ironclad though, leading to several actions:
- Limit link dilution: Start be removing unnecessary, thin content pages from your site. Limit excessive linking from authoritative pages like your homepage, following a pyramid structure that emphasizes hub pages.
- Improve link quality: Firstly, seek backlink opportunities that aren’t oversaturated. Ensure they are relevant. (Note: you can provide your own context.) Have key pages are featured prominently in your header’s navigation menu & body content, especially leading directly from authoritative pages due to the damping factor. Nofollow links externally may or may not be ignored.
Much of what I do as an SEO is act on solid principles according the resulting foregone conclusion, maximizing all the resources a client has at their disposal, link equity included.