It’s frustrating to put so much effort into website health and fixing errors, only to see a site with low DR and tons of issues outrank us.
Photo in the first comment.
DR isn’t everything. Health and errors matter, but proper content, keyword clusters, and quality backlinks (even those hidden from tools like Ahrefs) can make a big difference.
Boston said:
DR isn’t everything. Health and errors matter, but proper content, keyword clusters, and quality backlinks (even those hidden from tools like Ahrefs) can make a big difference.
Tell me more about this. I thought DR in Ahrefs reflected backlinks.
@Quinn
Yes, DR reflects backlinks, but a high DR doesn’t always mean strong SEO. For example, you can quickly boost DR by creating profiles on high-DR sites, but it won’t improve your rankings. Also, some agencies use PBNs and block tools like Ahrefs from crawling them. These backlinks are visible to Google but won’t show up in Ahrefs or affect DR.
@Boston
That makes sense. I feel like there’s also a gap in topical authority we need to address. I’ll test this in the coming weeks. Still, the number of errors on the other site is shocking, especially since I stress over every small error on ours.
@Quinn
It’s great that you care about keeping the site healthy! But not all errors are critical. Things like alt tags or meta descriptions are good to fix, but proper keyword optimization and quality backlinks should take priority.
@Boston
I get why it’s upsetting. Some things, like Google’s algorithm, are out of our control. It’s frustrating, but don’t let it get to you.
DR doesn’t affect rankings, and Health Score is just a made-up number. Focus on what the actual errors are. Most of them probably aren’t serious.
@Palmer
I’ll share more tomorrow. Logging off for now.
Quinn said:
@Palmer
I’ll share more tomorrow. Logging off for now.
Wait, this forum is social media? Oh no!
DR is just a third-party metric that’s easy to manipulate. It’s not part of Google’s ranking algorithm. There could be many other factors involved.
It might have to do with the rise of AI-generated content and search engines struggling to distinguish between human and machine-generated material. Sometimes, Google relies more on domain authority than topical authority. New tech like RAG could improve rankings for niche sites with relevant content.
