Anyone else seeing clients obsess over DA/DR and ignore actual site speed?

[peteralison]

Been doing SEO + web dev for a few years now and this keeps coming up — client comes in fixated on domain rating, meanwhile their site takes 6 seconds to load on mobile. I get it, DR is the number you can screenshot and feel good about, but I've watched sites with mediocre DR outrank "authoritative" ones just because the UX didn't fight the user.


Tbh the boring stuff wins more than people want to admit. Compressing images, ditching bloated page builders, fixing render-blocking scripts — none of it's sexy but it moves the needle faster than another round of link building half the time.


Not saying links don't matter, just that I'd rather fix a 6s load time before chasing another backlink for a client on a budget.


Curious if others are seeing the same thing or if I'm just biased from doing dev work alongside SEO.

 

[hipcat]

I've seen lots of people obsess over metrics that don't matter, including DA, while ignoring the important stuff, the same as obsessing over getting backlinks when you only need 1 or 2 important ones.

The funniest one to me is someone asking if getting a link on a niche forum will improve DA or SEO. When I ask why they seem confused and say "to rank higher, of course", so again I say why and they say "to get targeted organic visitors", to which I reply "the targeted visitors you seek are already on the forum, but you're ignoring what's right in front of you"

For example, if you sell pet supplies and post a backlink on a pet owner forum just to improve your DA for SEO purposes so that you some day might rank in Google to attract pet owners to your website, you're missing the obvious fact that the pet owner audience you want is already right there. Just be helpful and engage with them and they WILL visit your site.

 

[peteralison]

peteralison

Yeah exactly, people chase the indirect path when the direct one's sitting right there. Been guilty of it myself early on — posting just to "build authority" instead of actually being useful to whoever's reading. Forum traffic that converts usually comes from people remembering you helped them, not from a link they clicked once.

 

[Pandora92]

I see this quite often. A lot of clients get fixated on DA and DR because they're easy numbers to compare, but they don't always reflect how well a website performs. I've had cases where a site with a lower authority score generated better results simply because it loaded faster and offered a smoother user experience. Site speed affects visitors, conversions, and even search visibility, so it's not something to overlook. I usually explain that authority metrics are just one piece of the puzzle. A balanced approach that includes performance, quality content, and technical SEO tends to deliver much better long-term results.

 

[ummushabinak]

I completely agree that many clients focus too much on DA and DR because they're easy to compare, but those metrics don't always reflect a website's overall performance. In my experience, improving site speed, creating valuable content, and maintaining strong technical SEO often have a greater impact on long-term rankings. DA and DR are useful for evaluating backlink profiles, but they shouldn't be the primary goal. A website that provides a great user experience is more likely to succeed over time.