Dan Grant: Which SEO metrics should we use in link building? Links are on pages — source pages, linking pages, referring pages — and they have anchor text. We measure risk there, and they have power measured by LRT Power or URL Rating. That power is passed over to the target page, the anchor text is passed over, and the risk is passed over. Risk is only available in Link Research Tools. Detailed links are highlighted: Link 1, Link 2, etc. The Link Detox Risk metric is calculated on a page level.

Trust is also being transferred from other pages. The more trusted pages that link to a target page, the higher the trust. This is not available in Ahrefs, this is not available in Semrush, but Link Research Tools has a trust metric called LRT Trust. However, it's easy to manufacture power. Trust is not easy to manufacture.

Let’s go back to the question: which metrics should we look at? In this chart we see this page and the target page and a lot of metrics, but we do not see the domain. That is because a link is always placed on a page. A page links to a target page — not a domain. A domain is only a collection of URLs, a collection of pages. That means any domain-based metric is always an aggregate of these metrics. In other words, you cannot judge by looking at the average for the whole domain. A link can only be judged by looking at the metrics for the link.

Let’s back this up with some data. Here is Ahrefs, and here is the LinkResearchTools.com domain, and we’re sorting by DR, Domain Rating, a very popular metric used by link builders. Link builders often get paid based on the DR of the links they get. Let’s look at the strongest link measured by DR. This is a very popular quote by my friend. It’s a YouTube video — actually it’s a nofollow link. And we see here that the last time Ahrefs updated this link was July 16. That’s many years ago. Maybe that also explains why the number of referring domains is not listed, or there’s no keyword data.

Let’s look at the video for a moment — it’s not there. It’s switched to private. There is no video, no link, not even a title. So sometime between now and July 16, a lot has changed. The target page doesn’t link to the case studies anymore; it redirects to our subdomain.

We clearly see this doesn’t look like the best link. When you judge links by DR, you’re falling into the same trap: it measures the backlink profile of the whole domain. It takes all links and makes an average, including data that has nothing to do with this page.

That’s where URL Rating comes in. When we look at URL Rating it says 21 — but from 0 to 100, I don’t think that’s a 21. What is this? It’s not even a link. When we check what’s actually linking to this URL, we see only one link with power, and it’s from a really old post.

Now when we sort by URL Rating, we get very different links: Backlinker, TechExpedia, OutreachMama — those look a lot better. They make more sense. I’m not fond of looking at five-year-old link data, so at least those powerful URLs are fresh. The others show up in the live index even though they aren’t live at all. I don’t know why they’re in there.

We can check Link Research Tools and see the data. This specific link has a different redirect trace. The source page power-trust is zero. The domain is strong — it’s YouTube — but again, it’s not a real link.

Looking at documentation for PowerTrust, you’ll see Ahrefs and Semrush don’t have metrics for power and trust. It makes a big difference if you have a weak link on a trusted page, or a very trusted page, or a not-trusted-at-all page. Natural links have power but the trust isn’t there — these are the links that get you into trouble. A weak link is one that has no power and no trust.

We want superstar links with maximum power and maximum trust. Looking at this overview of metrics — source page power-trust, source page power, source page trust — you see a lot of different metrics. It matters. If you look at this on a domain level, you’ll see a 36, but that’s not the best link you can get. The best link you can get is a 4–4, but that’s on a domain with a 12. Does that make sense?

Pages themselves earn power and trust. Then it aggregates to the domain. A strong domain does not mean all links on it are strong or trusted. Power comes from other pages and trust comes from other pages. Internal links, network links, external links — but the calculation is done on the URL level. Google confirmed they don’t have any domain-wide metric.

To sum this up, these are the metrics you should be looking at:
– The strength of a page: measured with Ahrefs URL Rating or LRT Power
– The anchor text
– The risk: measured with Detox Risk
– The trust: measured with LRT Trust

PowerTrust combines both power and trust multiplied.

Because all this sounds complicated, we should talk about the Link Simulator. It helps you do all these checks not only for existing links but also links you don’t have yet. That’s why it’s a simulator. You add your links, and each one has a risk. You might see risks above 1,000 — terrible. Reject those.

If you look at only one metric, look at Detox Risk. If there’s no risk, judge power. Filtering by low detox risk might leave you with only 22 link opportunities. Then you judge the power of the pages.

You’re not getting a link on the homepage — it will be a subpage. To simulate risk for a link in that category, you can’t upload domains because it’s pages that matter. If the page doesn’t exist yet, simulate a similar page — another article in that category. You can’t know how many links the page will get, but it’s the closest estimate of power, trust, and risk.

You don’t want links with low trust. You don’t want links with high risk. If you only build links with high power and ignore trust and risk, you are in trouble. You could get a penalty for building only powerful but low-trust or high-risk links.

I hope that was useful. Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll happily answer them.