What Backlink metric do you trust less than before ?

Church Priest

Church Priest

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When I first started looking at backlink opportunities I pay a lot of attention to the popular metrics beacuse they are known as the quick way to judge a website.

But after spending more time in SEO I have notices that some sites with impressive numbers do not always deliver the result you are expecting. at the same time, I also see the websites with average metrics that becomes more valuable. Because of that I do not look at the websites in the same way I used to.

Is there any backlink metric that you trusted a lot in the beginning but paying less attention now ?
 
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Church Priest said:
When I first started looking at backlink opportunities I pay a lot of attention to the popular metrics beacuse they are known as the quick way to judge a website.

But after spending more time in SEO I have notices that some sites with impressive numbers do not always deliver the result you are expecting. at the same time, I also see the websites with average metrics that becomes more valuable. Because of that I do not look at the websites in the same way I used to.

Is there any backlink metric that you trusted a lot in the beginning but paying less attention now ?
Click to expand...
one measure that I do not believe anymore is the DR/DA because one can easily manipulate it using spammy backlink. What really mater to me is the organic trafic and topic relevancy, which can determine how much gogle trust the website.
 
For me, it’s Domain Rating (DR). I used to lean on it a lot, but nowadays I don’t trust it as much, I focus way more on topical relevance, genuine organic traffic, content clarity and also where the links are placed. The numbers help as a fast screening, but they can’t promise SEO wins.
 
For me domain level metrics carry less weight than they used to I've seen plenty of sites with strong numbers that offered little real value while smaller sites delivered much better results
 
I used to put a lot of trust in authority metrics but not so much anymore I've seen sites with average scores send better signals simply because they were more relevant and actively maintained
 
TF and DR lost a lot of weight for me. decent looking metrics can hide dead sites. i spend more time checking relevance, traffic trends and if the backlinks are actually indexed. that's where the real value shows.
 
For me it was DA/DR. I used to focus on those numbers a lot but now i pay more attention to relevance and whether the site gets real traffic. I have seen high metric sites that passed little value and lower metric sites that performed much better.
 
probably DR for me. years ago i used to check that first, now it's more of a quick reference than an actual decision maker
 
RN, I would prefer getting a backlink from a highly relevant page that perfectly matches my website's niche If that page also gets organic traffic even better In my opinion, DA/DR doesn't matter as much in that case. But of course, the saying is true, the more effort you put in, the better the results. Obviously, if the site also has strong DA/DR, then that's a big bonus
 
For me it is Domain Authority and similar third party metrics

When I started in SEO I relied on them heavily to judge backlink opportunities but over time I realized that high scores do not always translate into rankings or traffic Now I pay more attention to relevance real organic traffic and overall site quality A link from a relevant website with genuine traffic is often more valuable than one from a site with impressive metrics but little real influence
 
INCC said:
Nothing worse than Moz DA.

How many people even use Moz these days?
Click to expand...
People are beginning to game search traffic metric by inflating their search appearance, especially with fictitious searches for the brand name of a very random general blog. You'll see a site with 50k search traffic, 70 to 90% of that all go to the homepage/brand name. The rest all go to very random useless keywords.
 
I would personally say ifor me its DR/DA and estimated traffic. I still check both but not nearly as much as I used to. I have come across plenty of sites with impressive numbers that were not worth the cost in the end
 
DA & DR for sure used to trust it a lot now it's easy to fake & doesn't guarantee real value, now I look more at real traffic relevance & backlink quality instead
 
For me it's Domain Authority. I still check it but I do not depend on it as much as before.
These days I pay more attention to whether the website is relevant to my niche and has real traffic.
 
Hey Brodi,

I do not trust Ahref's organic traffic graph. It is highly inaccurate!
 
I used to rely alot on domain authority but now I don't trust them as much. they can be easily manipulated and don't always reflect real traffic or link value.
 
Domain authority is the metric i pay less attention to now. i have seen sites with high DA that brought little value because they had weak traffic or were not relevant to niche now. These days i look more at topical relevance, orgnanic traffic and whether the site has real engagement. those factors have been much more reliable in the long run.
 
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