Search engine optimization metrics

This article has multiple issues. Please help or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article possibly contains original research. Please by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (September 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) This article may rely excessively on sources too closely associated with the subject, potentially preventing the article from being verifiable and neutral. Please help by replacing them with more appropriate citations to reliable, independent, third-party sources. (July 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

A number of metrics are available to marketers interested in search engine optimization. Search engines and software creating such metrics all use their own crawled data to derive at a numeric conclusion on a website's organic search potential. Since these metrics can be manipulated, they can never be completely reliable for accurate and truthful results.

Google PageRank[]

Google PageRank (Google PR) is one of the methods Google uses to determine a page's relevance or importance. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results. Google PageRank (PR) is a measure from 0 - 10. Google PageRank is based on backlinks. PageRank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. The underlying assumption is that more important websites are likely to receive more links from other websites.^[1] However, Google claims there will be no more PageRank updates, rendering this metric as outdated.^[2] As of 15 April 2016, Google has officially removed the PR score from their Toolbar.^[3]

Alexa Traffic Rank[]

Alexa Traffic Rank is based on the amount of traffic recorded from users that have the Alexa toolbar installed over a period of three months. A site's ranking is based on a combined measure of Unique Visitors and Pageviews. Unique Visitors are determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day. Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. Alexa's Traffic Ranks are for domains only and do not give separate rankings for subpages within a domain or subdomains.^[4]

Moz Domain Authority[]

Domain Authority (DA), a website metric developed by Moz, is a predictive metric to determine a website's traffic and organic search engine rankings. Domain Authority is based on different link metrics, such as number of linking root domains, number of total backlinks, and the distance of backlinks from the home page of websites.^[5]

Netcraft[]

Similar to many other websites like Alexa, Netcraft features a toolbar that provides users with the ability to view page-hit popularity and various web server metrics along with aggregated user provided website feedback.

Moz Page Authority[]

Compared to Domain Authority which determines the ranking strength of an entire domain or subdomain, Page Authority measures the strength of an individual page.^[6]

It's a score developed by Moz on a 100-point logarithmic scale. Unlike TrustFlow, domain authority does not account for spam.

References[]