Is Domain Rating Overrated in Link Building?

The whole thread has gone DR 30, so I will take the other side for a minute -> both numbers are domain level, and the link does not land on a domain.

A DR 70 with thin traffic is not automatically a link farm. Old regional papers, trade bodies and dead-ish industry directories stop publishing but keep links nobody can buy today. That is different from a pumped profile, and the way to tell them apart is to look at where the links came from, not at the traffic chart.

The DR 30 with real traffic has its own failure mode. The traffic belongs to four or five pages that rank. Your link goes on a brand new post with zero referring domains, nothing linking to it internally, and no path from anything that ranks. The site is alive, your page is not.

So before either, I check the page: has it got any links of its own, does anything on the site link to it, and has it ever ranked for anything itself. A quiet DR 70 with a well linked page beats a busy DR 30 with an orphan.

i would pick real organic traffic over inflated domain rating numbers any day.

DR is just a 3rd party metric and a higher score doesn’t automatically mean the site is good or that the link will help. I’d check whether the site gets consistent organic traffic.

ElenaB77 said:

Would you rather get a backlink from a DR 70 website with low traffic or a DR 30 website with strong organic traffic? it is interestong to get to know your thoughts

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IMO, take DR 30 site with solid organic traffic, assuming niche relevance and linking page are good. DR 70 looks nice on paper but metric alone doesn’t tell how much value that link bring.

It depends wether the traffic of DR 70 website is worthful or not, same goes for DR 30 site, becouse not just traffic is the metric the Relevant Traffic is actual metric.

Hands down the DR 30 site with real organic traffic. DR is easy to inflate with redirect loops and spam links, but real traffic proves that Google actually trusts the domain. Traffic and niche relevance beat third-party metrics all day long.

I would always choose the site with the right audience, even if its DR is lower, because relevant visitors matters more.

Don't rely too much on DR. Instead, you can check whether the sites are relevant to our topic, ranking for real keywords, traffic sources, linking pages, etc.

I’d go with the DR 30 site if it has strong, relevant organic traffic. DR is useful, but I don’t think it should be the only metric.

I always choose backlinks from websites with high organic traffic. Quality traffic is my top priority when selecting backlink sources.

I’d prefer the DR 30 site with strong organic traffic and niche relevance. DR is just one metric; real traffic and link quality matter more.

Yes, DR is just a third-party metric, not a Google ranking factor. I’d prioritize relevant traffic, organic visibility, topical relevance, and a clean backlink profile over DR alone. A low-DR niche site can sometimes be more valuable than a high-DR site with no real audience.

I would prefer the DR 30 site with high organic traffic which has a relevant niche to my site Although the DR is high which signifies a healthy amount of backlinks I would still choose organic traffic and topical relevance over it I believe those are more vital signs for a high quality backlink

Yeah it’s way too easy to pump. I look at organic traffic trend and what keywords the site actually ranks for. DR alone tells you almost nothing