How does Google decide how much value flows through a given internal link?

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1. List, guide, or comparison, which format for a given query? The one the searcher's task calls for. A list suits someone who wants options to choose from, a guide suits someone who needs to understand or do something, and a......
2. At what point do extra internal links start diluting the value each one passes? At no fixed number. Google has not published a link count at which dilution starts, and its link guidance says there is no ideal number of links for a page.......
3. Should you nofollow internal links to low-value pages to focus equity? No. The idea, known as PageRank sculpting, assumed that a nofollowed link's share of a page's value would be passed to the page's other links instead. Google had already changed......
4. Which internal links pass the most value, first-paragraph or footer? Google has not published a weighting for links by position, so neither can be ranked by a documented rule. What can be said is that a link in the body......
5. What makes Google decide a page is “worth” indexing at all? Google does not publish a checklist, but it says what it prioritizes and what it filters out. Its guidance on asking for a recrawl says its systems give fast inclusion......
6. How do you decide a topic isn’t worth pursuing at all? Weigh it against four tests: whether the results are held by sites you have no realistic way to match, whether anyone searches for it, whether you can add anything the......
7. How do you decide which pages to prune vs keep? Decide page by page on value, not on a traffic cutoff. Keep a page that earns visits, ranks for something, attracts links, serves visitors who need it, or holds a......
8. Should you merge, rewrite, or delete thin pages, decide which? Merge a thin page when another page on your site already does its job better; rewrite it when it answers a question of its own that people search for; delete......
9. Internal link from a high-traffic page or a topically-closer page, which wins? For telling Google and readers what the target page is about, the topically closer page; for sending visitors, the high-traffic page. A link from a closely related page sits among......
10. What happens to rankings when you remove an internal link a page has relied on? It depends on whether that link was one path among several or the only real path to the page. If other internal links still point to the page, removing one......
11. How long does a 301 take to pass value, and does any leak? There is no fixed timeline: a 301 takes effect as Google recrawls the old URL and reprocesses the change, which happens sooner for a page Google visits often and later......
12. Does blocking low-value pages free up crawl budget for important ones? Only on a site where crawl budget is a real constraint, and only if the block is permanent. On a large site wasting crawls on parameter and filter URLs, disallowing......
13. Does linking out to authoritative sites help the linking page or leak value? It does not leak anything you need to protect, and Google encourages it where it serves readers. Its link best practices say: "Linking to other sites isn't something to be......
14. How many low-value indexed pages does it take to drag a site down? Google publishes no threshold and no ratio. For your own audit, a useful working measure is proportion, not count, as a way to set priorities rather than a figure Google......
15. When is gated content worth the lost SEO value? When the leads the gate captures are worth more than the search traffic the open version would have earned, and when the asset is something people will trade their details......