A Guide to Backlink Metrics: Which Should You Be Using and Why?

In the digital PR industry, there are a lot of metrics that get whispered around, and if you’re new to the industry or feeling a bit confused by all the metrics being discussed, this guide is for you. We’ll dive into what link metrics are, why we use them, and how many you should actually be paying attention to.

So, what is a link metric? A link metric helps measure how strong and valuable a backlink is. They’re created by SEO tool providers to assess factors that impact rankings. Most link metrics focus on one or more of these key areas: trust, authority, and relevance.

While Google doesn’t reveal exactly how it evaluates links, we know these three factors are important from what Google spokespeople say online. That’s why these tools were created, and SEOs use them to identify which links are worth having and show stakeholders how the links they have built could help improve SERP rankings.

This Is What Google Says on Backlinks

Google’s John Mueller has repeatedly emphasised that when it comes to backlinks, it’s the quality and relevance of the link, not the quantity, that matters most. 

During a Google Search Central SEO Hangout recorded on February 19, 2016, Mueller explained that Google doesn’t prioritise the total number of links or domains pointing to a site. 

Quality over quantity (yes, that old chestnut)

Mueller noted, “I would tend not to focus on the total number of links to your site, or the total number of domain links to your website, because we look at links in a very different way.” 

Focus on the relevance of linking websites

He further clarified that Google focuses on the relevance of individual links, explaining, “We try to understand what is relevant for a website, how much should we weigh these individual links, and the total number of links doesn’t matter at all.”

Build links on trusted and authoritative websites

Mueller also emphasised that a single high-quality link from a trusted source, such as a big news site’s homepage, could be far more valuable than millions of low-quality links, stating, “There could be one really good link from one website out there that is, for us, a really important sign that we should treat this website as something that is relevant because it has that one link.” These comments clearly demonstrate Google’s commitment to valuing high-quality, authoritative, and relevant backlinks over sheer link quantity.

The Three Key Types of Link Metrics

So, broadly speaking, link metrics can be grouped into three main categories:

• Authority metrics: These measure how well-known and influential a website is in its field. The more established the site, the more impact its links tend to have.
• Trust metrics: These look at whether a website is credible and human-run, helping determine if Google sees the site and the links it gives as trustworthy "votes of confidence." A link from a trusted source is more valuable than one from a shady site.
• Relevance metrics: These assess how closely the linking website aligns with your site in terms of topic and content. The closer the match, the better the link works to boost your profile.

But, here’s the thing: if a link scores highly on any of these metrics, it can definitely add value to your backlink profile. But, well, you don’t want to rely on just one. For example, you might secure a link from a website that’s relevant to your industry, but if it has low authority and isn’t seen as trustworthy, it won’t do much for your rankings. 

On the flip side, a high authority link that’s not really related to your niche might show that you’re trusted but not necessarily reinforce your relevance. Ideally, you want links that bring both authority and relevance to build a strong profile.

Authority Metrics

So, as mentioned above, authority metrics focus on how authoritative and well-known your website is within its industry or niche. These are often the most talked-about metrics in the digital PR industry, as they play a key role in how search engines assess the credibility and trustworthiness of your site. 

Below, we’ll summarise some of the most commonly discussed authority metrics and explain what they measure and why they matter.

• Domain Authority (DA): A score produced by Moz that is from 1 to 100, predicting a site's ability to rank.

How is DA measured? Well, it looks at your website much like a search engine would. Its primary check is the number of backlinks and referring domains from well-known sites. It also takes a look at your site’s internal linking structure, along with other technical SEO factors like site speed and onsite content quality.

• Domain Rating (DR): Similar to DA, but by the SEO tell Ahrefs, this metric measures the strength of a website’s backlink profile.

DR is measured on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100, with the latter being the strongest. Ahrefs says they calculate it in a similar way to Google’s PageRank. DR is primarily influenced by do-follow links from unique domains. The first follow link from a domain contributes to your DR, but additional links from the same domain don’t add more value.

As a website links to more domains, the amount of "DR juice" passed to your site may decrease. If the DR of a linking site increases, it can pass more DR juice to your site, potentially boosting your DR.

• Page Authority (PA): Page Authority (PA) is a Moz metric that measures how likely a specific page is to rank in search results, based on factors like backlinks and on-page SEO. Unlike Domain Authority, which looks at the whole domain, PA focuses on individual pages. The higher the PA score, the stronger the page’s ability to rank.
• URL Rating (UR): It's pretty much like Page Authority, but Ahrefs' version. It shows how likely a specific page (not the whole domain) is to rank in search results, based on the strength of its backlinks.
• Citation Flow (CF): This one's another authority metric, but it comes from Majestic. It looks at how many backlinks a page or site has. The more backlinks, the higher the Citation Flow. However, it doesn’t consider how trustworthy those links are, which is where their metric Trust Flow (TF) comes in, and I go on to discuss that further below.

Trust Metrics

Trust metrics help figure out just how trustworthy a site is. You can usually tell if a site’s human-run by the quality of its content and how the site’s structured. But instead of over analysing it, using a trust metric score is a quick way to check. 

Trust metrics also help you see which sites are more trustworthy than others. By this I mean many Brits would tend to trust content from the BBC more than smaller, less-known sites. The BBC will have a higher score because it’s seen as a reliable source.

• Trust Flow (TF): A popular trust metric is Trust Flow. This metric by Majestic SEO looks at the quality of links pointing to a site, with a focus on how close those links are to trusted sources. Majestic uses "seed sites" (for example, well known and trusted sites like NASA). The closer a site is to these seed sites through its backlinks, the higher its Trust Flow. So, if a site links to you and that site is linked to by a trusted source like NASA, your Trust Flow score gets a boost.
• Topical Trust Flow (TTF): Majestic also has a similar metric called Topical Trust Flow, which works in the same way but focuses on topics. It helps determine which sites are both trustworthy and relevant to specific niches. This metric overlaps with relevance metrics, but it is topic-specific and doesn’t cover every niche. It’s a good starting point if you have the tool, but for very specific niches, you might need to match with a broader category.

Relevance Metrics

When it comes to relevancy metrics, most tools focus on broad topics like Majestic’s Topical Trust Flow above, but there's a gap in truly measuring niche-specific relevance. That’s why we at NOVOS developed our Relevancy Tool.

What is the Relevancy Tool?

Our Relevancy Tool is designed to assess how relevant a link is to your site. It ensures that the link aligns not only in general terms but also within the specific context of your industry and target audience.

Key Areas the Tool Assesses

Our tool considers matching keyword topics

The NOVOS Relevancy Tool looks at the keywords the website we got a link from is ranking for and how closely they align with your own. This makes sure the link is truly relevant to your niche.

It also looks at both URL structure and onsite content

Our tool doesn’t just look at the surface level relevance of a link. It checks if the content you’ve earned a link on is relevant to your website as a whole, particularly your homepage and the specific page that the link’s pointing to.

The metric assesses the URL structure of the linking and linked-to page

It also takes into account the page and the section of the website you’ve got your link on. For example, if you're a gardening e-commerce store and you land a link from The Independent’s Garden section, that’s far more relevant than if you got one from their Lifestyle section.

How Does This Relevancy Metric Work in Practice?

We recently secured some valuable links for our client, Gardeners Dream, and here’s how they scored on our Relevancy Tool. This example will help you understand how even slight differences in a link can impact the score and demonstrate how our tool tracks relevance in action.

1. Ideal Home – Gardening Section
   Where to put a peace lily in a houseThis website specialises in home and interior advice, with a dedicated gardening page. Because the article was placed in their gardening section, it scored a relevancy score of 100. The site also features a significant amount of gardening content, adding to the relevance.
2. Ideal Home – Bedroom Section
   Houseplants you should never place in a bedroomThis link scored 94. Although the website itself is still highly relevant as mentioned above, this particular piece was placed in their bedroom section rather than the gardening one, slightly reducing the overall relevancy.
3. The Mirror – Gardening Section
   Gardening expert names exact plantsThis link scored 90. The content is highly relevant within the gardening niche and placed in their gardening sub category, but given that The Mirror covers a wide range of topics, gardening is just one small part of their content, so the tool factors this into the relevancy score.

Why Use the Relevancy Tool?

Our Relevancy Tool is an essential resource for measuring how relevant a website and its linking page are to your niche. With AI-powered analysis and real SEO data, it provides a straightforward, data-driven approach to coverage analysis. The tool instantly generates a 0-100 ranking, making it easy to track the relevance of your backlinks and PR coverage.

So, How Many Link Metrics Should I Look At?

According to the Buzzstream State of Digital PR Report 2025, 91.3% of digital PRs use third-party authority metrics to determine the quality of a link. That’s a huge percentage!

But when it comes to checking relevance, many PRs look at the linking page or post title first (67.1%), followed by anchor text (61.3%), the words on the page (52%), and the text around the anchor text (43.9%).

What’s interesting here is that Domain Rating (DR) from Ahrefs is the most popular link metric, with 83.8% of people using it. Moz's Page Authority (PA) comes second at 45.1%, and Ahrefs' URL Rating (UR) is third, but with a big drop at just 12.7%.

It’s clear that most people use Domain Rating (DR) to check if their links are of good quality. However, while this metric is useful, you should also consider using a relevance metric.

I think Ahrefs’ DR is great for measuring authority and trust because of how it works. But some metrics, like Citation Flow (CF), only look at the number of backlinks and don’t consider how trustworthy those links are. That’s where Majestic’s Trust Flow (TF) can help. It looks at the trustworthiness of the links, giving you more insights into the quality of the page.

Conclusion

So, what’s the takeaway here? Ideally, you want to look at authority, trust and relevance when analysing links. Sometimes, you’ll get links from authoritative sites, but if they’re on irrelevant pages, they won’t be as valuable.

In other cases, you might get relevant links but from low-authority sites. Your backlink profile should include links that are both authoritative and relevant.

In short, don’t just focus on one metric. Combining authority, relevance, and trust will help you build a solid backlink profile that boosts your SEO.

If you want to build links that are relevant, authoritative and show Google you're a real authority within your niche, get in touch. We'd love to chat about how our digital PR team can help your e-commerce site’s SEO.