4 Ways We’re Using Link Relevance to Supercharge our Digital PR Strategies

For a long time, we have logically known that if a link back to your website was from a contextually relevant website, it's likely to be of higher value to both customers and search engines, therefore helping you to rank for your own (relevant) target keywords.

However, until recently, this has been nigh-on impossible to quantify and measure.

With the release of NOVOS’ new Relevancy Tool, the relevance of links can finally be quantified to supercharge any Digital PR strategy. Here are 3 examples of how we’re using it already.

Identifying Limiting Factors Within a Backlink Profile

When reviewing a client recently, traditional methods of a backlink profile review left us scratching our heads.

This client had a clean backlink profile, with no signs of spam. They were leading their competitors in both overall links and the authority of those links, and yet they were ranking much farther behind their competitors.

It wasn’t until we added the relevancy of links into the mix that a different picture started to emerge. Using the Relevancy Tool on a number of different websites allowed us to narrow down the most relevant. We then used Ahrefs referring domain data to identify which competitors had links from these sites.

Crucially, what we found was that many of the most relevant websites were not linking to our client, despite our client having more overall links than competitors, and overall higher authority links. This confirmed that relevance was the missing link in their link profile and allowed us to tailor their strategy to overcome this.

Layering Onto a Link Intersect for Even More Powerful Target Publication Analysis

To take this a step further, we then used this same relevance data across a wider range of publications to get a specific list of websites that competitors had links on that we did not.

This gave us a specific list of relevant websites to target - taking a link intersect to the next level.

Better Understanding the Value of the Links We Build For Us & Clients

We’ve also found that relevance adds a vital extra element on reporting on the value of our work for clients.
So often links can be built which logically are great for a clients website, but using traditional PR metrics such as Domain Rating or Domain Authority, can appear to be low value. Having a specific metric to quantify how relevant a domain is to a client’s site is vital to convey its value.

Having metrics to measure both authority and relevance allows us to add more nuance in our reporting and show the real value of our work. Some common breakdowns of relevance versus authority are included below.

Building Relevance Into an Overall Metric for Link Power

Relevance is a crucial factor in determining how valuable a link is to a given website, along with authority, However, these two factors are not the only things that matter. By considering a range of other factors, including if a link is nofollow or not, if the link is affiliate or not, and what type of page the backlink is linking to, we have created an overall metric to quantify the power of a link for SEO - an internal “NOVOS link score”.

By considering mitigating and multiplying factors on the overall value of a link to a clients website, we not only build trust straight from the off, but also allows us to have a much clearer indication of if the links we are building should have their desired effect for clients - ultimately to improve rankings for key pages and drive revenue for the business.

Having this presented as a single score also makes it easy to understand and report on.

Ready to get started with our new Relevancy Tool? Find out more and sign up to find out how it can support your business growth in 2025. Plus, use code RELEVANCY for 20% off your first three months!