Not All Links Are Born Equal
You already know backlinks matter. But here's the thing that separates amateurs from pros:
Understanding that a link's VALUE varies wildly depending on where it comes from.
That value? That's authority.
Authority, Decoded
Link authority is essentially how much "ranking power" a backlink passes from the linking page to yours.
It's influenced by:
Domain authority — How trustworthy and powerful is the overall domain linking to you?
Page authority — How strong is the specific page the link lives on?
Link position — A link in the main body content carries more weight than one buried in the footer.
Number of outbound links — A page linking to 5 sites passes more authority per link than a page linking to 500 sites. Think of it like splitting a pie.
How to Measure It
Third-party tools give you proxy metrics:
None of these are Google's actual metric. Google doesn't share that. But they're useful approximations.
Don't worship the number. Use it as a directional signal.
The Authority Trap
Here's where people mess up.
They chase the highest authority links possible and ignore relevance entirely. A DA 90 link from a cooking blog won't do much for your cybersecurity SaaS.
Authority PLUS relevance is the formula.
We've run 500+ campaigns and this pattern never changes. The best results come from links that are both authoritative AND topically aligned.
Building Authority Into Your Strategy
When you evaluate link prospects, score them on both authority and relevance. If a site scores high on one but low on the other, it's probably not worth the effort. We built a practical link quality scoring framework to help with exactly this.
Keep your entire SEO strategy organized with SEO Checkup. 113 tasks across 4 checklists — including link authority tracking. Free. No credit card. 30 seconds.
Authority isn't a vanity metric. It's the difference between links that move rankings and links that just take up space.