Authority or Relevence?
-
Example:
Let's say I sell whiteboard markers (I don't) and I have a chance to get a link from one of these pages: Assume all anchor text is the same
-A PA 70 page about a completely unrelated topic (not a directory, or a spammy site, let's say it's a friend's blog for example)
-A PA 30 page about office supplies, that maybe mentions whiteboard markers once.
-A PA 18 page that is ALL ABOUT whiteboard markers - they live and breathe whiteboard markers and their entire blog is about them.
If, hypothetically, you had a choice of only one of the three which will give the biggest boost in rankings?
Is it all about DA/PA or would a fairly low authority but HIGHLY RELEVANT link be better?
-
I'd go for the one with the best DJ passed.
-
I like the question and I agree with the responses except for one problem...we are all guessing. SEO involves a lot of guessing but we are really stretching on this one. It would be nice if SEOmoz or another group with the resources could do some testing in this and other areas to determine the answer.
Any company with access to sites with varying domain and page authority could create test links to another site and help find the answers to questions like this one.
-
As would I - it's the obvious choice - I just wanted to get a feeling for peoples thoughts on how worthy relevancy is.
-
I dont have a theory for my choice, but if i were you, i would have picked the PA 70 page for sure
-
Although not the question, I believe we would go for all three sites.
While I agree with Dejan, there is always a decent chance that Google and other search engines may begin to understand the relevancy in relationship to the site in question. It hasn't happened yet, but we only need a "Hulkster" Google update to change that, if you know what I mean.
-
I thought long about what to answer here and if I really put myself in the situation I would go for the juiced up domain as the first choice. Why? Most of my testing shows that search engines are not that great at picking up relevance and sites with completely unrelated but diverse and strong link portfolios still rank really well.
Would I base my entire link building strategy on this principle? Absolutely not.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Hello, our domain authority dropped significantly overnight from 37 to 29\. We have been building good links from high DA pages and producing quality, regular content.
Hello, our domain authority dropped significantly overnight from 37 to 29. We have been building good links from high DA sites and producing regular, good quality content. Anyone able to offer any ideas why? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | ProMOZ1231 -
Domain Authority and Links drastically decreased in less than a month
I'm fairly new to SEO, and am left completely perplexed about why our two SEO client's links and DA decreased so drastically in so little time. Looking at their stats on Moz, between May and June, their DA's went down by 3-5 (which, they were fairly low to begin with), and external links were halved! This is rather concerning to me as building their external links has been my focus for the past few months for both of them. There are a number of tweaks that I could make to site structure in terms of meta descriptions and page title length (though I can't fix that as the clients want to keep the titles as is), however there are no critical errors. I have also placed a lot of filters on both of their Google Analytics pages as they were getting what I just now realized was a ton of spam, though I don't see how that would affect anything. I just can't imagine what lead to all of those external link suddenly dropping. I imagine the drastic drop in those lead to the DA decrease, but again, I'm very new, so I'm not certain. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. I have been panicking quite a bit since I've seen this!
Reporting & Analytics | | everestagency0 -
Domain authority si down. What to do?
My domain oasisoftheseasallureoftheseas.com is down from 23 to 17. What to do? Thank you!
Reporting & Analytics | | NadiaFL0 -
Is there a way to calculate Domain Authority and Domain Trust on a large scale?
Hi there! Since on of our websites is hit by the Penguin update I'm trying to find spammy and low quality external links from our domain. I'm using Xenu to get all the external links. Now I want to know about the quality of the external websites our domain links to. Is there a way to calculate domain authority and domain trust on a large scale in Excel or Google spreadsheet? Kind regards, Mark
Reporting & Analytics | | StephWeigert0 -
Large recent drop in "Domain Authority" and backlinks through OSE
Hello, I've noticed that our sites domain authority has dropped enormously this past week according to Open Site Explorer. It also shows us as having lost about half of our backlinks. Google webmaster tools doesn't show a corresponding drop in links and we haven't done anything to our domain recently. Anyone have any ideas what might have happened? Our site is at: http://www.GoldMaxUSA.com Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | JFritton0 -
What is domain authority?
Hi, I am very new to SEOMoz and just getting to know the terms in the thrown up in the results. Can you tell me what domain authority actually is and how can I increase it? thank you louandel15
Reporting & Analytics | | louandel150 -
Difference between page/domain authority
could anyone explain the difference between Page Authority and Domain Authoity to me or give me a link to a site where it is explained? Sorry if It's really obvious and I'm just too stupid to find out, but I've searched and haven't found anything.
Reporting & Analytics | | mtueckcr0 -
Linking domain dropped followed by significant decrease in Domain Authority
A relatively high ranking site disappeared from the linking root domains of a client site, and the site dropped significantly in domain rank, authority, and trust. Oddly enough, traffic is almost double the previous week, and search results for keywords remain strong. I checked OSE and the linking domain is not listed. There are also several other linking root domains that have never shown in the domain analysis, but we'll leave those for a later topic. I visited the linking root domain that disappeared from the analysis and found everything to be in order. The site is a major local forum with a relatively high domain authority. All links are still there, and there hasn't been any change to the site as far as links are treated according to the owner. The only thing that has changed since the last site analysis is an event campaign ran with unpaid ads posted throughout the forum. The site being analyzed is a catering company that is cooperating with the forum owner and local bar to host a local celebratory event. Of course I'll wait for the next indexing to see if things change, but what could be going on here? This is more of an SEOmoz question, as we're talking over 10 point deduction in domain authority, although search results are still strong.
Reporting & Analytics | | kwoolf0