“ Do yourself a favour : stop wasting your link budget on meaningless metrics and instead look at the factors that really matter ” came up with their own metrics , TrustFlow and DA ( Domain Authority ). Later , Ahrefs introduced its own DR ( Domain Rank ).
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TRAFFIC
B uyers of domains can be roughly split into two groups : those who buy domains for SEO reasons and those who are domainers . What constitutes value for a domain differs greatly between these two groups . If domainers value short domain names , dictionary words in domain names or simply cool-sounding names , SEOs place ( or at least should be placing ) more impact on domain age , existing or potential traffic , ranking history , existing links …
All good and reasonable considerations , but sometimes people go completely crazy because of SEO tools ’ metrics , particularly Ahrefs ’ DR ( Domain Rank ) or Moz ’ s DA ( Domain Authority ). We ’ ll get back to this last point in a bit , but first let ’ s look at how domain auctions work .
BATTLE OF THE BIDDERS
When a domain is sold on an auction , all the interested parties can place their bids for it over a predefined period of time , with the highest bidder getting the domain . The setup varies a bit depending on the platform but this is the general principle .
When bidding happens , interests of SEOs and domainers can clash . Many bidders can use autobidding features of platforms during an auction – i . e . when someone places a higher bid than yours , the system automatically places a bid on your behalf above the competing bid by a pre-determined amount .
Usually a bidder can define the highest volume of the bid they are willing to place , but the process can still lead to domain prices in an auction getting inflated far beyond a domain ’ s actual value . Some domains which never even had a live site are resold for increasingly higher prices every few months .
At this point , the domainers ’ domain market can be viewed in a similar light as cryptocurrency or NFT markets .
But the SEOs ’ domain market can be equally chaotic and unreasonable , especially when SEO metrics come into play . Why ? Because metrics are just a shortcut , a conventional value based on a formula or algorithm which may or may not take into account all the important factors . But it ’ s quick and convenient to be able to estimate or describe a value using a number , so SEO metrics exist and are used .
PAGERANK PITFALLS
Historically , SEOs used to evaluate domains and links based on Google ’ s toolbar PageRank – that was the first SEO metric . PageRank is one of Google ’ s key algorithmic principles still used by Google internally to rank sites and pages ; Toolbar PageRank was its simplified representation in the form of a green bar going from 0 to 10 . The price and desirability of domains and links used to depend on this little green bar . But as soon as somebody puts a number on a value , that number will get manipulated . By the mid-2000s , faking PageRank had become a widespread practice among linkbuilders and tools appeared to identify fake PageRank .
By 2013 , Google had stopped updating Toolbar PageRank and soon after dropped support for it altogether . To give SEOs something measurable they could use instead of now-defunct Toolbar PageRank , third-party tools such as Majestic and Moz
“ Do yourself a favour : stop wasting your link budget on meaningless metrics and instead look at the factors that really matter ” came up with their own metrics , TrustFlow and DA ( Domain Authority ). Later , Ahrefs introduced its own DR ( Domain Rank ).
These third-party metrics soon became so successful that some SEOs even expected Google to use them . Google representatives kept explaining again and again that Google did not use these metrics and they played no role in Google ’ s ranking algorithms .
Again , where there ’ s demand there will be supply . If a site ’ s DR defines how much the links from that site will cost , some site owners will try to artificially increase their sites ’ DR . A quick search on Fiverr shows dozens of “ providers ” ready to accommodate them . There are entire clusters of sites created for the sole purpose of manipulating SEO tools ’ metrics – often , this is done in the form of posting lists of links and nothing more .
Does it work for artificially inflating DA or DR ? Yes . Does it add any real value to the domain or correspond to better rankings , organic visibility or traffic ? Absolutely not .
So next time you are tempted to buy a “ high DR ” domain or get email spam offering you “ high DA ” links , keep this in mind . Chances are very high that those metrics will be pretty meaningless and / or manipulated .
A high DR does not necessarily correspond to a site ’ s ability to rank , or even its current high rankings . On the contrary , sometimes domains with high DA or DR will have a history of drops and may be long past their prime . Furthermore , neither DA nor DR tell you anything about a domain ’ s topical relevance to whatever search vertical . In this regard , TrustFlow is better because Majestic also has something called Topical TrustFlow and the top topical category is reflected in a site ’ s or URL ’ s TrustFlow . But that also can get manipulated .
14 • ISSUE 94 • iGB AFFILIATE LONDON 2024