Why am I trusting in MozRank and the other scores (from a part time SEO perspective)?

[dellcos]

I'll jump right in. I look at the "Competitive Link Analysis" and I see that it says at the top "See the Top 5 contenders for each SEO ranking factor and compare it against the competition."

I take them at their word that the 5 links they are displaying are what they think the 5 best links are. On my site they do alright, although my top 3 links are from the same domain, and I know that those links aren't really that great. But they are decent and whatever. The next two are good links.

HOWEVER, the links for my competitors are in many cases CRAP. Yet Moz shows them as being the best link my competitor's have. Or at least in this analysis. For example, The number 1 link (supposedly) for a competitor of mine is a link from their own Pinterest page. They have 50 followers. I have personally dug up links they have that are 1000X better than this link. Links so much better that someone just using common sense and no training whatsoever would know that it is a better link.

I do get valuable information from this site, but stuff like this makes me wonder if I'd be just fine without any of their link building tools and just going on my own. I do not trust their accuracy. And yes, I've read all the blogs about how they correlate to rankings...

Am I missing something? I know you can't be perfect, but this stuff seems to be very poor information in some cases. I have been a member for a year roughly.

[dellcos]

The concern I'm more interested in is whether or not this information is reliable enough for me to base any decisions off of.

I watch the link metrics because I want to see how links I am acquiring are stacking up against my competitors links. These tools don't seem to be very good at letting me compare the quality of my links to my competitors links. When Moz ranks a link from someone's OWN pinterest page, a page with hardly any followers, as a better link than one that the same competitor has from a top design blog surrounded by great content, I start to lose confidence that these tools are worth using.

I'm on board with the whole idea of content being the most important thing. The links I'm getting are just part of my overall strategy that is definitely heavily weighted towards putting out good content. I just want a reliable idea of which links are valuable and I don't think I'm getting that.

Any tools out there beside this that you might think are good measures of the value of links?

[EGOL]

Rankings that are not in alignment with linkmetrics is one of the most common discussions in Q&A.

If you believe that factors other than links are responsible - at least in part - for rankings then you have to accept the fact that rankings will not always align with linkmetrics.

Also... if you believe that google devalues links then you have another reason to know that rankings and linkmetrics will not always be in alignment.

Now to make people mad... If you are a person who is watching link metrics then your website likely has at least some links that have been devalued because you are spending a lot of time at the link factory instead of at the content factory.