There has been a lot of talk about the role domains play and the metrics behind them that help you rank within the SERP’s. As a matter of fact, after all the changes within Google, we understand which metrics are vital in getting your website boosted within the SERP’s. It’s no secret that old fashion SEO techniques like authority link building are still important because this is the backbone of Google, however, what are the other elements we need to keep a close eye on? For example, I often get asked the following questions…
- How important is PR?
- How important is MOZ rank?
- What is the role domain authority plays in rankings?
- How about page authority?
- What about Trust and Citation Flow?
These are all good questions and I’d like to go over some of them now. Personally, they all play an important role, however, it’s important to know exactly how.
Google Page Rank
This metric of Google’s search engine was named after Larry Page, who is one of the founders of the company. It’s a way for them to measure the importance of websites pages, which is calculated by the number of quality links that point to a given page. However, the definition of Page Rank has evolved over the last several years as we begin to understand how search engines produce results. It’s all about relevance and Page Rank can be increased if we focus on relevant links that are of high authority. For example, a website page is considered of value if it receives links from other high authority “relevant†websites.
Here’s something interesting…
A high Page Rank does not mean it will outrank someone with a lower number within the SERP’s. Google has made it clear there are close to 200 rankings factors and it’s important to focus on all of them. Next, Google recently announced this metric will not be calculated on the user-side, but they’ll keep track of it on the back-end. Another thing is “Page Rank†gave you a quick history of the domain or website. The higher the PR, the more valuable it was considered. High PR domains tend to have been around longer and produced value online.
Domain Authority
In a previous post, I wrote about the importance of “Domain Authority†and what it means. Here’s a quick breakdown.
Domain Authority is a metric introduced by Moz.com and measure a combination of “3†factors; Age, Popularity, and Size. The higher this number, the longer domain has been around and has built credibility over time with its readers. Credibility can be determined by links pointing to the page from other authority websites. A website that is popular has produced enormous amount of links through blogging, interlinking, commenting, social media, and article marketing. Next, a high “DA†number means it is a large website and has enormous interlinking pages within the root domain.
Many people ask if this number is important for ranking your website and the answer is “Yesâ€. These are the fundamental metrics used by Google when ranking websites within the SERP’s. For example, the higher ranking websites have older, popular, and large websites with hundreds of pages. If you want to check your current DA, head over to OpenSiteExplorer.org to get started.
Page Authority
This refers to a specific sub-page on the domain and calculates the likelihood of the page ranking within the SERP’s. It takes into account a interlinking within pages and relevance. After the Google Panda updates, this metric plays a more important role as the update wanted to eliminate “thin†content websites. Google follows an internal linking pattern to determine if the content on the page is “thin†or of lower quality compared to others within their database.
Here’s something to think about.
Each page is valued entirely separate so it’s difficult to rank a complete domain and its sub-pages. The websites that have all their pages ranking high in the SERP’s have been around for years and built a solid reputation for providing only the best content, product, or services. This is a benefit for you as it creates a fair playing field and provides beginners a chance to showcase their credibility by creating awesome content that generates user engagement and ranks high within the SERP’s.
Trust Flow
This is a metric calculated by Majestic.com to add a score to the domain and its value. It’s a predictive score as the number is an educated guess on how trustworthy the URL is, depending on how others link to the page. It follows the same pattern as “domain authority†and “page authorityâ€. It’s safe to say the Majestic Trust Flow calculation does play an important role in ranking a website because many of the top ranking websites have a high “TF†number.
In short, here’s a quick definition from Majestic…
“Trust Flow is a number predicting how trustworthy a page is based on how trustworthy sites tend to link to trustworthy neighbors.â€