Following the Cordwainer Memory Care website launch, the primary SEO focus shifted to increasing Domain Rating (DR) from 10 to above 30 within 30 days. DR is Ahrefs' measure of a site's backlink authority — a proxy for how much trust Google places in the domain. A higher DR makes it significantly easier to rank competitively for target keywords like "memory care South Shore Boston."
This strategy was defined in the [1] and is being executed by the Asymmetric team.
A low DR creates a compounding disadvantage: even well-written, keyword-optimized content struggles to rank because Google weights domain authority heavily in competitive niches. The practical consequence for Cordwainer:
DR is not a vanity metric — it is a prerequisite for the rest of the SEO program to deliver results.
"If you have a low authority, you have to have a very high content rank or score in order to get on the page. So we're just trying to make it easier to be at the top." — Mark Hope
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Domain Rating | 10 |
| Backlinks | 64 |
| Referring Domains | (low; not specified) |
| Site Health Score | 99 (up from 15) |
| Security Rating | A (up from F) |
| Indexed Pages | 100% of relevant pages |
| Tracked Keywords | 131 in Ahrefs |
Technical SEO was complete at this point, providing a clean foundation. Technical health improvements (fixing errors, improving link structure) contribute modestly to DR on their own — the primary lever is backlink acquisition.
Natural backlinks are acquired when third-party sites discover and voluntarily link to Cordwainer content. These are earned by publishing high-quality, genuinely useful articles.
How to generate them:
- Publish authoritative long-form content on topics with existing search demand.
- Expand high-traffic posts (see below) to make them more comprehensive and linkable.
- Add FAQ sections and Key Takeaways to increase the chance that AI tools (ChatGPT, Perplexity) surface Cordwainer content in responses — which itself drives referral traffic and signals relevance.
Asymmetric proactively identifies relevant third-party sites and requests links to Cordwainer content. Common approaches include:
"We're going to go out and we're going to solicit. We're going to say, we want a backlink from you." — Mark Hope
The "medications that cause sundowning" blog post was identified as the highest-traffic page on the Cordwainer site at the time of this strategy. Rather than creating new content from scratch, the recommended approach is to enhance existing high-performing content:
"Take this article and expand it. Put a Q&A at the bottom... because in AI, if somebody goes to ChatGPT and asks a question, ChatGPT will go out to the internet and say, who's answered this question already?" — Mark Hope
Important: Do not replace or restructure the existing article — it already has traffic. Enhance it in place.
Asymmetric owns the content production process to minimize burden on the Cordwainer team:
Cordwainer does not need to write articles — their role is subject-matter review and approval.
While not a direct DR driver, image optimization supports overall SEO and was discussed in the same session:
[Brand], [Service], [Location], [Context] (e.g., "Cordwainer, Memory Care, South Shore, Boston, Lobby").Action required from Cordwainer: Provide real photos to replace stock images on the site.
For context, Asymmetric's own domain has a DR of 55, supported by 17,000 backlinks from 867 referring domains. A comparable client in environmental services was taken from DR ~12 to DR 41 over the course of the engagement. The DR 10 → 30 target for Cordwainer in 30 days is aggressive but achievable given the technical foundation already in place.