Link equity

How equity flows

A page with N outbound links distributes its accumulated equity (roughly) equally across those N links. So:

• A page with 1 outbound link gives almost all its equity to that target
• A page with 100 outbound links gives ~1% to each
• The mathematical model is iterative — equity recirculates through the link graph until it stabilizes

The classic PageRank formula:

PR(page) = (1-d)/N + d × Σ (PR(linking_page) / outbound_links_count(linking_page))

Where d is a damping factor (~0.85) and N is total pages.

What affects equity flow in 2026

Beyond the original PageRank math, modern signals modify equity flow:

• Topical relevance — a topically-relevant link is worth more than an off-topic one
• Position on page — in-content links pass more than sidebar/footer
• Anchor text — descriptive anchors pass more contextual signal
• rel attributes — nofollow / sponsored / ugc may pass less equity (Google treats them as hints since 2019)
• Linking page’s own age + authority — established trusted pages pass more
• Surrounding content quality — link from a thin page is devalued

Why it matters for internal links too

Internal linking is just link equity routing within your own site. Decisions like:

• “Should I link from homepage to /services/seo/ or /services/ai-search/?”
• “Should this blog post link to /contact/ or to a service page?”
• “Should this page have 30 outbound links or 10?”

…all materially affect which pages accumulate ranking-relevant equity.

Common myths

• “Each link loses 15% of equity” — outdated; the actual math is more nuanced
• “Nofollow links are worthless” — Google treats nofollow as a “hint” since 2019; some equity still flows
• “More outbound links is bad” — only if they’re irrelevant or dilute focus; relevant outbound links help context
• “Internal links don’t pass equity” — they absolutely do, and they’re far easier to control than backlinks

Practical application

The Resocial internal-linking-agent computes a PageRank-equivalent score for every page on a client site, identifying which money pages are under-receiving equity and prescribing structural fixes.