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!