Link Popularity

What is Link Popularity?

Link popularity is the measure of the quantity and quality of the backlinks pointing to a website or webpage. It is used in SEO as a relative metric to compare the strengths of websites’ backlink profiles. There are different approaches to measuring link popularity. Some consider only the quantity of backlinks, while others—including us—also take the quality of these links into account.

At Ahrefs, we use two metrics to estimate the link popularity:

• Domain Rating (DR) for domains and
• URL Rating (UR) for individual pages.

Why is link popularity important?

Backlinks are one of Google’s most important (and confirmed!) ranking factors. Search engines see backlinks as votes of trust and confidence from other websites. So, the more high-quality backlinks a website gets, the more reputable and authoritative Google deems it. As a result, such “link-popular” websites and pages rank higher in search results.

That’s why most SEOs invest a lot of time and effort in link building.

How to Increase Link Popularity (the Right Way)?

The short answer is: Get more backlinks.

However, not all links are created equal. Some move the needle more, while others don’t help much or may even hurt. Let’s take a closer look at how to increase link popularity by getting the right kind of links to your site.

1. Don’t aim for multiple links from the same website

To build a robust backlink profile, earning backlinks from various authoritative sites is important. For example, ten backlinks from ten different websites are more beneficial than ten links from the same domain. It doesn’t make sense to get hundreds or thousands of links from the same website (unless it happens naturally). Google may suspect such links as “link spam” and can either ignore them or, worse, penalize your site.

That’s why we recommend increasing the number of referring domains over the number of backlinks. You can check the number of referring domains (with a detailed report) for any site in Site Explorer.

2. Focus on relevance

Your website gets more topical authority if it’s linked from sites and webpages on a relevant topic. For example, if you’re a packaging machinery manufacturer, getting one relevant link from an engineering or technical blog is better than acquiring ten links from a smartphone review website.

3. Get links from authoritative websites

Links from websites with stronger backlink profiles (or higher link popularity) are more valuable, provided they’re on a similar topic. You can use Ahrefs’ DR metric to identify authoritative websites for backlink opportunities.

Here’s how you can do that:

For example, let’s say you’re exploring guest blogging opportunities to build backlinks to your affiliate site in the “Pets” niche. Simply go to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer and search for any related keyword, say, “pet health” in the title.

Next, apply the following filters:

• DR From 50: To shortlist the sites with strong link profiles
• One page per domain: To avoid having multiple pages from the same website

You’ll get a list of authoritative websites (along with their SEO metrics) that you can reach out to for guest blogging.

But don’t rely on the DR metric alone.

The overall quality of the website, its design, user experience, and organic search traffic will also give you hints about its authority. You should not neglect getting links from quality websites only because their DR is low.

4. Get Followed Links

If you’re new to SEO, note that only followed links (links without “nofollow,” “UGC,” or “sponsored” attributes) pass Google’s PageRank to the linked page and can help with rankings.

Google does not count nofollow links as votes while ranking pages. So, try to get followed backlinks if you’re working on increasing your site’s link popularity. However, this doesn’t mean that you should avoid the opportunity to get a nofollowed link, which may bring referral traffic to your site.

FAQs

Is Link Popularity the Same as PageRank?

Although link popularity and PageRank are related concepts, they’re not exactly the same.

PageRank is an exact number used in Google’s ranking algorithms based on the quality of the referring pages and their PageRank.

Link popularity is a broader concept that includes the quantity of referring websites, their topical relevance, and more. Unlike PageRank, link popularity can be applied to the whole website.