The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
It’s been a long time since Moz last published an in-house ranking factor study, and also a long time since I last published one prior to joining Moz. In my case, this is partly due to my long-standing skepticism and caution around how studies like these are typically very loudly misinterpreted or misrepresented. There’s also the complexity and difficulty of quantifying on-page factors within Google’s increasingly nuanced and sophisticated interpretation of relevance (although, yes, we’re working on it!).
Nonetheless, I think there’s value in a narrower study (or studies), for a few reasons. Firstly, it can be useful to set a comparison point that we might revisit — perhaps if we notice a change in Google’s algorithm, or if we think a given industry or set of keywords might be untypical. Secondly, we might still wish to compare narrower sets of metrics — such as link vs. domain level linking factors, follow vs. dofollow links, or branded search volume vs. Domain Authority — and this, too, requires a baseline. Lastly, there’s some merit in reaffirming what we would expect to be true.
How to interpret a correlation study
It’s a cliché to say that correlation does not imply causation, but one that few seem to remember in this context. I’ve written before[1] at length about interpreting correlations, but if you don’t want to go back and read all that, I think the main thing to check before you go any further is whether you can simultaneously accept all of the following to be true:
-
Links are a fundamental part of how Google works
-
Links are correlated with rankings
-
Building links may not