Should bloggers run after domain authority and page rank

Newbie bloggers are seen asking this question in number of forums and groups. To answer bluntly, having a high page rank and domain authority without the supportive content is like cheating. What are the situations where these two metrics matter. Where does content figure in all this. What can be a typical strategy.

Understanding Domain Authority & Page Rank

Let us begin with the origins of Page Rank which began as a research project in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. Both students on successful completion of project, went on to create Google Inc and Google Search Engine.

Page Rank of your blog is calculated by the number of links and quality of links which point to your blog. So if you are a travel blogger and your article has featured in National Geographic with a mention of your name and a link to your blog, Google will pick it up and raise your reputation by a small bit. Page Rank is a mathematical formula. Google crawlers also known as spiders or crawlers move from website to website searching and hunting for links and them feed the data to Google Servers who process the mathematical formula to decide Page Ranks.

Domain Authority is relatively recent introduction by Moz. It takes into account a large number of factors to rank your blog on a scale of 0 to 100 to determine the probability of your blog featuring in Google Search Results. Nature of content is also taken into account which means, your blog may not have a high Page Rank but can still come up in search results due to high quality and unique content. New blogs will start with DA = 1.

Abuse of Page Rank and unleashing of Panda updates

Since Page Rank is an algorithm, it is easy to fool it. SEO experts realized this and started manipulating search results by inserting artificial links in exchange of money. This way the page rank of a website increased in no time without relevant content. Authors and Webmasters started cheating on their audience by posting crappy content and yet figuring high on the Page Rank. Spammers went a step ahead and created high ranking websites with absolutely unreadable content. Once these websites achieved a high page rank, their links were sold to new websites to gain overnight popularity. Blogers too started boosting their articles to make them “sellable” to sponsors. It soon dawned upon Google that it has to do something drastic just to stay relevant as a search engine.

Though Google is the king of search engines, it Google had to work hard to strike a blow to these SEO experts. By 2009 Google began developing more advanced version of Page Rank and began rolling it out in 2011. Within days, large number of websites lost their ranking and relevance on Google. In a single swoop, the Google Panda updates cleansed the internet and the search world of the most horrific of manipulations. At the same time, Google urged webmasters not to focus too much on Page Rank. It went on to add that, many site owners seem to think that Page Rank is the most important metric for them to track which is simply not true. As a final death blow, Page Rank was last updated in 2013 and Google turned off display of Page Rank from 2016 on wards.

Till date Google keeps telling everyone the importance of high quality content and has not put up any technology in place of Page Rank.

Panda update has put many SEO experts out of business. There were Schools of Digital Marketing which taught the entire course focused on just how to improve DA and PR by manipulating back links.

Plan for Bloggers

0 – 1 years – Fine tune blog design, post regular content. Research well. Put your social media plan in place and stick to it.

1-3 years – Connect with fellow bloggers and expand your reader base. Increase your social circle. Master your keyword strategy.

4 years on wards – Your blog has enough authority now. Contact popular websites and magazines to offer your services as blogger. Reputation will ease the process.

Problem is that there are too many SEO experts out there with crappy ideas and plans to boost your blog. As a blogger do your own research and devise a plan. As a human remember the age old saying, “There is no substitute for hard work and patience”