The 8 Most Important Link Building Metrics You Need to Know

Whenever we talk about link building, there are specific metrics that frequently come up. Some are more important than others, but all of them help us assess whether a potential link is valuable. When doing SEO work, we should at least focus on the following:

Domain Authority

Domain Authority is the easiest way for anyone to assess the strength of a domain, especially in comparison to others. Moz calculates this rating on a scale from 0 to 100. The Moz crawler uses various signals to determine this score, with the goal of predicting how well the domain performs in search engine results. This is the first metric you want to look at when analyzing a domain to determine if it is suitable for link building.

Page Authority

In an ideal world, we’d get a backlink from the homepage of a domain, but this is rare. In fact, the norm is to get a link from an internal page, usually from a blog post.

When we receive a link from an existing page on a website, we need to analyze the Page Authority of that page. This metric helps us determine whether the page is valuable for us or not.

Simply put, Page Authority is another metric developed by Moz. It is similar to Domain Authority, with the main difference being that it applies to a specific page, not the entire domain. Generally, a higher Page Authority indicates greater value.

PageRank

In modern SEO, we rarely talk about PageRank because it is a mostly obsolete metric. It was used by Google to assess the relevance of a website, in theory. In practice, it was a score assigned to a website, showing how important the site was on a scale from 0 to 10.

The reason I mention PageRank is that Google still uses this rating, and it is assigned to every single page on every website. We used to be able to check it using the Google Toolbar, but updates for it stopped in 2016.

Google still uses the metric internally, and it is most likely a significant part of the algorithm. Obviously, it is much more advanced now than it was before, and we will probably never know much about it since it is one of the search engine’s secrets.

The important thing to remember about Google PageRank is that people who discuss it without mentioning the fact that there is no way to see its value are likely behind on technology and should not be trusted with any SEO campaigns.

The following metrics are the ones you should focus on:

Anchor Text

Anchor text is simply the text used to link to a website or webpage. For example, if you link to website X with the hyperlinked text “blue shoes,” the anchor text is “blue shoes.”

Anchor text is critical in SEO because it is a major part of the ranking algorithm. It tells Google what the linked page is about. In the example above, Google learns that the page is related to blue shoes. Variations of the anchor text also convey the same message.

For years, SEO was all about getting as many links as possible to the pages we wanted to rank. However, algorithms have become much more complex in recent years. The anchor texts used to link to pages-and even the number of times they are used in relation to all the link texts-matter.

For example, let’s say a page has 100 backlinks, and 98 of them use the anchor text “blue shoes.” This would be seen as a sign of spam, and Google would recognize that most of the backlinks were created artificially to boost the page’s ranking. Google doesn’t like this, and there is a high chance that the page or even the entire site could be penalized.

On the other hand, if the anchor text “blue shoes” is used only about 60% of the time, with several other anchor texts pointing to the same page, this would seem more natural. This is because it reflects the way we typically link to pages.

When we write an article and want to direct visitors to a shop selling blue shoes, we will use the anchor text “blue shoes.” However, we will also consider using variations like “buy blue shoes,” “here,” “buy blue shoes here,” “in this shop,” or even “BRAND NAME blue shoes.”

Thus, the backlink profile required for a successful SEO campaign must include several variations of the target phrase, as well as other naturally occurring phrases (like “here”) and even the URL of the domain.

Generally speaking, the anchor texts you use must be natural. This is much more complex than it seems, and I’ll expand on it in a future post.

The most important thing to remember about anchor text is that it must be varied. If you use the same anchor text repeatedly to link to your pages, there is a good chance your site will be penalized.

Number of Links and Linking Root Domains

SEO specialists usually talk about these two metrics in separate sections, but I believe they should be discussed together, as they are closely connected.

The number of links refers to how many links point to a site or page, while linking root domains refers to how many distinct domains link to a site or page. For example, if you have 10 links coming to your site from different pages on Entrepreneur.com, you would have 10 links but only 1 linking root domain.

The number of links helps us by:

• Measuring the success of our SEO backlink campaigns
• Comparing one site with that of a competitor

If we see that our competitor has 1,000 links pointing to their page about blue shoes, and we only have 10, there is a high likelihood that they rank higher than us. (This doesn’t mean we need 1,000 links to improve our ranking; it just highlights the difference in backlinks accumulated over time.)

However, linking root domains is a far more important metric than the total number of links. It is a much better indicator of how popular a website is.

Google essentially treats backlinks as votes. A website can only have one “vote” per domain, just like in an election. You can mention your favorite political candidate 100 times, but you can only legally vote for them once. Google handles backlinks in a similar way.

With this in mind, we must also consider that having multiple links from a single domain can occur in various scenarios. One common scenario is receiving links from several content pages on the same site, such as a news website that covers your business multiple times. Another significant scenario involves sitewide links, which appear on every page of the domain. These are often found in blogrolls or footers (e.g., “designed by X”).

Sitewide links have limited value. In-content links are much more valuable. Sitewide links are often paid advertisements or spam, and Google knows this. If you receive them, ensure they point to your homepage and use your brand as the anchor text. You don’t want a sitewide link pointing to a page that sells blue shoes; instead, you want the link pointing to the domain that sells the shoes.

Linking Page Relevance

This is arguably the most important SEO metric to analyze. There is still some debate about whether this is a strong signal, but let’s settle it: it absolutely is.

When you build a site, you want targeted traffic. If you sell blue shoes, you don’t want traffic from a site that sells video games. This would not be relevant. Always aim to place your links on sites and pages that are as relevant as possible to your content.

There are exceptions where you can ignore relevance at the domain level. For instance, if your business is featured in the news and BBC picks up the story, you’ll get a link from a page on BBC that links to your site. While BBC as a whole may not be directly relevant, the specific page could be, and a link from such a reputable site could be extremely valuable. However, the link’s value depends on the relevance of the content on the linking page as well.

Link Position on Page

Google analyzes the position of links on pages and assigns different values based on their location.

The reasoning behind this is straightforward. If you have a blog about New York City and mention the best coffee spots, you would naturally highlight the top option first. Google assigns more value to that first coffee shop recommendation.

Google also evaluates all backlinks to your site and can identify if something seems unnatural. If more than 50% of backlinks come from footers or sidebars, it signals that you might be buying links, which Google does not like. Link brokers often place links in these areas.

To maximize link value, you should aim to get links from as high up in the content as possible. While footer or sidebar links can still be valuable, the highest value comes from links above the fold.

Final Thoughts

These are the most important metrics you need to understand. There are other metrics you will eventually need to master, but if you’re focused on link building, we will cover several of them in a future article.

The key takeaway is to find the best possible links to your pages-those that are the most relevant. The metrics I discussed will help you achieve that.

Originally published at http://cruce.business.blog on December 4, 2024.