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 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:
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Links are a fundamental part of how Google works
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Links are correlated with rankings
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Building links may not always improve rankings
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Sometimes links are a symptom, rather than a cause, of SEO performance
I’m not asking you to agree with all those statements, just to be open to this kind of interplay when you consider studies like this one and how they affect your worldview.