Don't Look At Rating Metrics
When you start getting into SEO and affililate blogging, there's a lot of talk about "metrics" to look out for. Two big ones are DR (domain rating) PR (page rank).
The thing is, these metrics are basically useless for the day to day work of making money with your website. Sure, they might be useful for some things like comparing two websites you are considering buying, but as a blogger buliding a business from the ground up, you absolutely shouldn't worry about them, and here's a great example.
Here are three Domain Rating metrics for three of my blogs.
Domain Rating 28 "Sucks"
The domain rating system in Ahrefs is from 1-100, so a DR of 28 pretty much sucks. The website is 5 years old, so it looks like it hasn't made much progress, right?
What that doesn't tell you is this website makes over $10,000 per month.
Would you rather have a high DR website or a $10k/month paycheck? I think the answer is obvious.
You'll also notice a DR 0 website at the bottom of that screenshot. That website has currently earned over $100 for the month of December this year. It's only 1 year old. Imagine that! A website with a domain rating of zero can still convert affiliate sales and earn money!
A "Good DR Website"
Here' an example of a higher DR website. Still, it's not very good, but way better than 28 right?
This website also makes six figures per year, but definitely not 2x or 3x the DR 28 website. This is just a good example of how DR doesn't relate to the most important thing - the money.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the DR 61 website doesn't necessarily rank "better" or "easier" than the DR 28 website.
So, overall, Domain Rating is a pretty useless metric for the day to day operations of a profitable, successful affiliate blog. I think a lot of these SEO metrics people talk about fall into this same category, so I really don't pay much attention to them.
So What Do You Do Instead?
So if you aren't paying attention to this stuff, what is important to pay attention to?
The main thing to keep in mind as you're buliding out your blog is to look at what specific thing you are helping people with. I say it like that because in the world of blogging, "helping people" isn't enough IMO. You have to get your website discovered in order to help those people!
I see this. a lot with the self help crowd, where people write stuff like, "how to live a beautiful life". Nobody searches in Google, "how to have a beautiful life", so this article is ineffective at helping people.
Someone would more likely search for something like, "how to improve my relationship with my son", or "best side hustles for woodworkers", or "how to destress in the evenings without alcohol". Specific questions require specific solutions.
The two main ingredients for a successful, profitable blog are great keyword research and great content. Find things people are looking for online, then write articles about that stuff. It's a pretty simple formula. It takes a lot of work to build out that base of content and start getting traffic, but that's the formula.
Ditch the SEO metrics and start focusing on what matters in 2021!
Recent Comments
86
Domain ranking may not matter if you are blogging for couple of years. I agree.
How is the page rank irreverent with respect to money making? It is hard for me to buy into this.
People search, traffic, competition and ranking etc are the key metrics of a blogger .
You solve problems through your research and engage with your audience to offer the solution.
Phrase your keyword to funnel your customer in and your blog should engage them. When they leave your site either they an actionable plan or a great solution to their problem. If you have the right points they get your suggested product and you make money.
That is my take here.
Nathaniell, thank you for sharing and enlightening us with your experience. It is good to find out that it is not always about the numbers. At least not all the numbers. I think sometimes we can get caught up and overwhelmed with trying to reach certain numbers and we forget about what we are really trying to achieve.
I've wasted too many hours caught up in this stuff, so I always try to help people out with these "time hacks", sharing what was a time waster for me, and what was a results booster in contrast.
That's a cool thing about a community like Wealthy Affiliate. We learn as a group, and can help each other avoid mistakes, as well as "skip ahead" and jump to the tasks which get real results.
We definitely benefit from each other by sharing what's working and what's not!
Great food for thought there Nathaniell,
No matter if you have all the tolls in the world every needed to conduct a task if you don't know how to use them properly they are pretty much useless.
Much like all and analytical tools free and available to use; if you don't know how the information they produce applies to your website and its potential of making you money again they are useless.
I particularly like the KISS system, this saves hours of headaches trying to decipher information that may not even help my website or me to improve my website's performances.
Thought provoking and interesting,
Calvin
It's a destructive sap of a person's time and productivity looking at metrics, I know, I waste so much time doing it too. Not as much as I used to but still enough to probably knock out an extra post or two a month.
Wish I could just leave it alone but it's kind of addictive. :)
Great info as always Nathaniell.
Haha. I definitely know from experience as well. It's easy to get stuck looking at metrics because it seems easier to add a "1" to the scoreboard than it is to just "have a better business". We want to improve in specific ways, so it's hard to feel good about what you're doing if there's no objective metric. It's natural to feel that way.
That doesn't mean it's not a waste of time though, and I always have to remind myself of that.
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This is exactly what needs to be seen when someone is starting out otherwise they can get discouraged and focus more on the metrics instead of the most important things - content and conversions.
It's interesting how books and other online sources advocate backlinks and guest posting to boost up your blog whereas it's not really necessary. Thanks for sharing this Nathaniell, it's a solid post for the community. Wishing you continued success.