Do not rely too heavily on traditional metrics like domain authority

SEO has become pivotal to the functioning of the modern economy; whether you’re a billion-dollar corporation or a local mom and pop shop, there’s a good chance you’re making use of an SEO campaign to establish a vibrant digital presence for your brand which can accrue clicks and viewer interest.

Despite the fact that more businesses are beginning to pay attention to SEO now than ever before, however, the metrics by which we measure SEO performance are arguably outdated and sorely misleading in many cases.

When it comes to SEO, you must be careful when it comes to measuring success. Here’s why we need to rethink how we measure SEO, and where the future of the industry might take us.

Followers and domain authority aren’t everything

In this day and age, the most important element of an SEO campaign is whether it’s bolstering a website’s domain authority and increasing the overall number of followers a brand can call upon during its next commercial crusade.

It’s indisputable that certain authority and rank metrics like domain authority can be useful metrics in many cases, but they’ve become so authoritative and all-encompassing that other measures of success have slowly but surely become hard to come by.

Thus, many modern SEO campaigns are oriented in the wrong direction from their very inception, failing to produce the stellar results that were promised to whoever was unlucky enough to be holding the checkbook.

Companies like Moz have gone to great lengths to establish domain authority metrics which mirror those of a search engine ranking algorithm, as they want you to rely on their services so that they can establish an impressive name for themselves.

Also Read: Experts weigh in on the importance of brand and search visibility, here are 5 tips

While Moz’s well-trusted domain authority is useful for many SEO purposes, relying on it too much can ultimately blind you to progress elsewhere, and it’s crucial to keep an open mind when it comes to measuring your SEO success.

Given that domain authority is highly dependent upon links, for instance, it can lead many SEO campaigns to indulge too heavily into link-building exercises, which are important but can nevertheless backfire if you vest too much of your campaign’s success into them.

Becoming well-versed in the specifics of domain authority is highly useful if you’re an SEO professional or a business looking to bolster their digital presence, but it’s nevertheless imperative to understand that you need to be surveying a broad list of metrics which can help you more comprehensively rank the successes and failures of your SEO spending.

Sometimes, this may entail consulting an expert, so don’t be afraid to look around your local area for credible SEO masters you can rely upon. If you’re looking for local SEO in Pheonix, for instance, solicit the advice of those you’re about to hire when it comes to domain authority and how it compares to other metrics rather than trusting what you read online.

The adtech industry is rife with fraud

The adtech industry has been growing swiftly over the past few years, largely to the benefit of SEO providers and others who can leverage increased consumer interest in digital spending into commercial gains for themselves.

What relatively few small business owners and even a good deal many SEO professionals fail to understand, however, is that the adtech industry is rife with fraud and in dire need of additional regulations.

Many promising metrics which ensure you of the success of your SEO campaign may thus be highly suspect, especially if they’re being provided by an unknown and untested marketing firm which promises stellar results but produces little in the way of meaningful results.

New technological marvels like artificial intelligence are addressing the slew of fraud in advertising, but it may be some time before SEO professionals and the small businesses relying on them for help can trust many of the metrics and advertising benchmarks which have become popular in the past few years.

Experts have confirmed that Google isn’t giving sites authority rankings which can be easily parsed and usefully leveraged, so be cautious when advertisers and SEO experts talk highly of your authority rankings and how to boost them.

The best way to measure your SEO success is to ask everyday users for their feedback; there’s no better and more authoritative measure of determining how you’re drumming up new business than by asking new customers what drove them to your store or brand.

Also Read: How online data is transforming market research

Sites which are older and have more links leading back to them than others are widely considered “authoritative” and high-performing on the basis of Moz’s domain authority rankings, but these are by no means relied upon by others like Google and shouldn’t be viewed as the end-all of digital advertising.

It’s time to rethink how we measure SEO success. User input should be far more important than it presently is, and as long as SEO professionals continue to place undue importance on domain authority, many SEO campaigns will be producing lackluster results.

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