Figuring out your links power metric allows you to seriously scale out link building & start ranking for some cracking stuff 🚀
In the last 10 years, I have used various metrics to calculate my power metric for judging links, but the one constant has always been that I base it on what I think are valuable rankings, says Tryggvi Rafn.
Some big SEO accounts on Twitter often advise ranking for low-hanging, easy-to-get keywords.
That’s flawed advice if you ask me.
It’s because they have yet to figure out their power metric and outsource links to other agencies that also have yet to figure this out.
Waist money on dead links without power.
So what are we looking for? Let’s break this down…
The most powerful links you can get have high domain authority on relevant domains, as confirmed by their rankings, traffic, and CPC.
It’s an important concept, so read that again – you want the DR backed up by hard-to-get traffic.
Oh.. you have a DR 70 for $35 you say, ranking for “how old is Tom Cruise”? 🤡
Confirm the authenticity of the domain power by checking the rankings and the value of the actual traffic.
Most tools link builders use pull in multiple metrics and filter out the bad ones, DR under 40 and traffic above 10,000 for example.
☑️ Domain Rating/Authority by Semrush and Ahrefs
☑️ Traffic
☑️ Organic keywords
☑️ Relevancy (Majestic categories)
☑️ Trust Flow (Majestic)
☑️ Citation Flow (Majestic)
☑️ Link Research Tool’s PTD
☑️ Keywords in the top 100
☑️ Keywords in the top 10
☑️ Traffic value
☑️ Etc etc etc
The problem is that most of these metrics can be manipulated; $5 gigs on Fiverr take your domain rating above 70 in days… traffic and keywords bloated with celebrity rankings.
The only real metric is the value of the actual rankings.
So, the primary metric to look at is Traffic Value, and you want to figure out the average traffic value per visitor, which means creating a metric that combines keywords, rankings, and traffic value NOT the DRs of this world.
If you take 100,000 links and create a filter based on DR, Traffic, Trust Flow, PTD, and keywords, you end up cutting off a ton of good domains and end up with a big % of bad domains in your end result.
Instead, lower that filter, apply your power metric as the primary filter, and then filter based on that metric.
Once you figure out your power metric, you can judge it based on its impact and tweak the calculation to fit your workflow better.
