Knowledge of the different aspects and terms of search engine optimization (SEO) is an increasingly prevalent skill in the workplace. However, keeping the various details straight can be confusing, so this is a guide to defining some standard SEO terms.
Hire AAM Consultants for link building and SEO Services.
What is Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA)?
Moz developed Domain Authority (DA) to predict the degree to which how well a domain will do on a search engine results page. Moz also created Page Authority (PA) to evaluate how well a webpage performs in a search engine results page, but as opposed to the DA, PA looks at a single web page rather than a whole domain.
Both are ranked between 1-100, with the higher the score, the better the website is forecasted to do. Your Domain Authority can also be compared to other websites to gauge how well it will perform on a search engine results page. When deciding whether your score in PA and DA needs to improve, it’s best to compare your result with your competitors to see the average.
What is Domain Rating (DR) and URL Rating (UR)?
Domain Rating (DR) and URL Rating (UR) were developed by Ahrefs to judge the backlink profile of a particular website. DR evaluates the number and nature of the backlinks across the whole site, whereas the UR focuses on backlinks on a specific page. Both internal and external links are considered, and both use a scale that goes up to 100.
The rating for DR splits the domain rating for each website linked equally, so you don’t necessarily benefit from the number of links on the website. Instead, the individual DR for each link is more just as important. Therefore, DR is a valuable skill to use when selecting which backlinks to use in your domain.
Your UR works similarly but for a single page. It’s similar to Google’s page rank but with more explicit calculations to have more transparency, so you can make an effort to improve your score more efficiently.
What is Trust Flow (TF) and Citation Flow (CF)?
Citation Flow (CF) and Trust Flow (TF) were created by Majestic, and like DR and UR, DA and PA, CF and TF use a scale from 0 to 100.
CF works like the inverse of the DR and UR, as it measures a site’s link equity but evaluates the number of sites that link to it. The number of links that go through to your site, the higher the CF is, and the more influential your site is predicted to be. However, CF does not take into account the quality of the websites that link to your site instead of focusing on the sheer number.
In contrast, TF does evaluate how trustworthy the sites that point to yours are and is, therefore, trickier to obtain a high score. Majestic created a database of trustworthy and reliable sites to determine a TF ranking. It then uses this to measure how close a site is to the ones featured in their database to determine the score.
What is Spam Score?
Spam Score indicates how likely Google will perceive your subdomain as spam-heavy. Moz developed it and uses 27 spam signalers, or ‘spam flags’ to determine the score. Your score can predict how likely your site is to be targeted by Google, with the more flags present, the more likely it to be seen as spam. However, it’s common for a site to acquire a couple of flags, so it’s not necessarily a reason to panic.
Spam Score is where factors like your TF can come in handy, as too many spam-heavy sites that link to your site can negatively affect your spam score. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that the Spam Score only applies to subdomains.
What is Alexa rank?
Alexa Rank is a way to rank websites by popularity, judging the traffic to a particular site by estimated daily visitors and pageviews to a site over the past three months. Run by the Amazon offshoot Alexa, it ranks all sites in a list, from least to most popular. The more popular your site is, the lower your Alexa Rank will be, so you want to be as close to the number one spot as possible.
The data is gathered from internet users who have the Alexa toolbar installed and calculates the frequency of unique daily visitors and the number of times the website is viewed. It does amend the score to consider visitors whose data is not recorded, but its limited data intake could undermine its relevance.
What is the Click-Through Rate (CTR)?
Click-Through Rate (CTR) calculates how many users saw your website as a search result versus how many users then clicked through to your site. CTR is calculated by dividing the total number of clicks by the total number of impressions and then multiplied by 100. The benchmark for a good CTR depends on the industry and search term, but it is invaluable to determine whether anything needs to be changed. For example, if many people see your website but don’t click on it, adjustments need to be made.
