advice Why PR And SEO Aren't Equal When Establishing Domain Authority

[News]

As a leader at an SEO agency, one misconception I frequently see among prospects and companies in general is that public relations (PR) and SEO hold the same weight—and can be used in place of one another—when it comes to building domain authority. In this article, I'd like to dispel this and break down some of the differences between the two strategies. While our agency does have a small PR offering, we typically work with outside PR agencies to help produce SEO-worthy links.

Tips For Building More Domain Authority​

In addition to making sure your website is well optimized for search engines, an important way to build domain authority is with high-quality backlinks that point back to your site. Unlike most PR content, these off-site articles link back to a specific, relevant page on your website and should be educational and informative and not self-promotional, though they should mention you and your product/service.

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[equity78]

Not a bad read, thanks for posting, missed it when first posted here.

 

[bhartzer]

It's just too bad that "domain authority" isn't a real thing... it's just a made-up metric by Moz (and ahrefs).

The problem is that "domain authority" has nothing to do with actual search engine rankings.

And "domain authority" can be faked, just like people used to fake the PageRank toolbar data years ago.

 

[equity78]

It's just too bad that "domain authority" isn't a real thing... it's just a made-up metric by Moz (and ahrefs).

The problem is that "domain authority" has nothing to do with actual search engine rankings.

And "domain authority" can be faked, just like people used to fake the PageRank toolbar data years ago.

Do you Domain Authority as worthless Bill? Seems like many seek out those kind of names and I get emails all the time from people looking to buy links on a high authority blog.

 

[bhartzer]

Do you Domain Authority as worthless Bill? Seems like many seek out those kind of names and I get emails all the time from people looking to buy links on a high authority blog.

Yes, "domain authority" is a useless, made-up metric. The theory behind domain authority is that a page put on a "high DA" domain will automatically rank well in the search engine results because it's on a "high DA" domain. It's doesn't work that way.

A good example would be links that I have from a prominent .EDU (University) site in Texas. I volunteer to speak regularly with an internet marketing class every semester. The professor has me in as a guest speaker. He links to my site on his class page. That page is so buried, very deep, on the EDU site. It would be difficult to find it from the site's home page. It may not even be linked from the rest of the site, it may be just a page on the EDU site. That link to my site means nothing, doesn't help me in any way at all. If there's something called "Domain Authority", then my site would have benefited and I'd see increase rankings. Nope. Nothing.

Domain Authority can also be easily faked and manipulated. People are manipulating Domain Authority so they can sell links to you and sell "high DA" domains.

 

[equity78]

Yes, "domain authority" is a useless, made-up metric. The theory behind domain authority is that a page put on a "high DA" domain will automatically rank well in the search engine results because it's on a "high DA" domain. It's doesn't work that way.

A good example would be links that I have from a prominent .EDU (University) site in Texas. I volunteer to speak regularly with an internet marketing class every semester. The professor has me in as a guest speaker. He links to my site on his class page. That page is so buried, very deep, on the EDU site. It would be difficult to find it from the site's home page. It may not even be linked from the rest of the site, it may be just a page on the EDU site. That link to my site means nothing, doesn't help me in any way at all. If there's something called "Domain Authority", then my site would have benefited and I'd see increase rankings. Nope. Nothing.

Domain Authority can also be easily faked and manipulated. People are manipulating Domain Authority so they can sell links to you and sell "high DA" domains.

Thanks for the reply Bill, interesting stuff. I thought .edu links valuable. But it would not make you just rank for anything correct? What would you want the link to help ranking for ?

 

[bhartzer]

Thanks for the reply Bill, interesting stuff. I thought .edu links valuable. But it would not make you just rank for anything correct? What would you want the link to help ranking for ?

What people have thought is that they want an "EDU link" no matter what they have to do. Well, the only way that an EDU link (that I've seen) that can help you rank is if you're a professor and your professor profile links to your website. Then there were "scholarship links" that so many created scholarships just so they could get links. Google pretty much as made that useless at this point when it comes to any link value.

There are still people out there that want an EDU link, and I think that comes back to "domain authority", they think that if they get an EDU link that somehow their DA goes up and rankings go up. That couldn't be further from the truth.
Personally, at this point, I'm not into getting links from EDUs... in fact, I'd rather team up with a university professor to write some scholarly content about SEO and domain names, or just domain names. If I get a link, fine. If not, then that's okay as well.

When it comes to getting a link, I'd rather get a link on a page that has links pointing to it, and the page needs to be completely "on topic" to my page that it's linking to. That on-topic is key, it's not about DA or EDU or anything like that.