You’ve heard the term “domain authority” before and you know it’s important, but you’re not exactly sure what it is—let alone how to use it to boost your business’s visibility and sales.
Never fear! By the end of this article, you’ll know what contributes to page authority, how to increase your website’s domain authority score, how they impact SEO performance, and more.
Domain authority is a measurement of how likely a website is to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). Moz first introduced the metric, but other tools have developed similar authority metrics. Moz’s domain authority score ranges from 0 to 100, with higher scores representing a greater likelihood of ranking.
A domain authority score generally considers several factors, including the number of total backlinks, the quality of those backlinks, and the number of linking root domains. The resulting score gives you an idea of how well your domain might rank in the SERPs in relation to your competitors.
Why is domain authority important?
Domain authority is one of the top-ranking factors for SERPs. In a nutshell, your website’s domain authority score will help you determine your competitiveness in your niche when it comes to ranking and increasing your organic traffic. This, in turn, will help you choose keywords strategically to increase your search traffic—and, hopefully, increase conversions, whether they’re trial signups, phone calls, or purchases.
For example, let’s pretend your website’s domain authority score is 56. If you’re competing for a specific keyword against sites with domain authorities between 39 and 47, you’ll know that a well-written blog post or web page has a good chance of ranking. But, if you’re competing against sites with domain authorities in the 80s, you’ll probably want to target a different keyword.
However, it’s important to note that while domain authority score predicts success, it doesn’t necessarily represent success. The metric is not used by Google, and boosting your domain authority won’t automatically make your website rank higher in Google search results.
Domain authority vs. page authority
Before we dig deeper into domain authority, we need to clarify: domain authority and page authority, another metric developed by Moz, are different. While domain authority ranks the strength of an entire domain, page authority focuses on a single page’s ability to rank in the SERPs.
Boost domain authority in 3 steps
Now that you know what domain authority is and why it’s important, it’s time to learn how to boost your website’s score. Follow the three-step process outlined below, and you’ll be well on your way to a higher domain authority.
1. Get the basics right
First things first, make sure your website is set up properly. That means optimizing your on-page content, making sure your site loads quickly, and building a mobile-friendly site that’s easy to surf on a phone or tablet. Here are a few tips to get you started:
Don’t neglect your internal links, as they help search engines like Google crawl and index content. Just make sure that your anchor text matches the page you’re linking to.
Test your website for mobile-friendliness. Mobile-optimized sites offer better user experiences and increase the likelihood that your content will secure backlinks.
Ensure your website loads quickly. Slow sites have high bounce rates, which is a big red flag to Google and the other search engines. There are several tools available for checking your website load speed.
2. Build high-quality backlinks
When it comes to domain authority, high-quality backlinks are king. The more you have, the higher your score will be. We’ve written an in-depth post on link building, which we definitely suggest reading. But for now, keep these things in mind:
Create great content: Authoritative websites will only link to your content if it’s remarkable. So take your time and create in-depth blogs, videos, etc. that are better than what’s already on the internet. It will be worth the effort, guaranteed.
Promote your content: Great content alone isn’t enough. Give it a boost by promoting it to your email list and social media followers. Doing so will help you get eyes on your work, which will boost your backlink opportunities.
Implement a link-building strategy: Top-notch content and a consistent promotional strategy will get the ball rolling. But you’ll also want to take a more proactive approach to link building. To do this, contact authoritative sites and ask them to link to you. Just know that there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it, which we cover in the link-building article referenced above.
Commit to guest blogging: Finally, guest blogging for reputable sites can be a great way to build backlinks. For one thing, you may be able to link to your own website in the content you write. And second, the folks who read your guest post might enjoy it, check out your website for similar content, and then link to some of your posts.
Not all links are created equal. To boost your domain authority score, you need to secure high-quality links and eliminate low-quality ones. But this begs the question: what’s a high-quality link?
A quality link is one that comes from a reputable site. For example, a link from the New York Times would be considered high-quality because the publisher is known and respected. Links from unknown, spammy websites, on the other hand, would be considered low quality.
The easiest way to eliminate low-quality links is to use a tool like SEMrush, which will help you identify backlinks that harm your domain authority score and backlink profile. Once you have the complete list, manually remove them if possible, or disavow them through Google.
Want to know more about the domain authority metric? These FAQs might have the answers you’re looking for:
How do you check domain authority?
Domain authority may seem complicated at first. Fortunately, checking the domain authority score for your own site is super easy. Just follow these four steps:
You just plugged your website URL into a domain authority tool and took a look at your domain authority score. Now you’re probably wondering, “Is that good?”
It’s a fair question. It’s also the wrong question. You should be asking, “Is that good for my site?”
As mentioned previously, domain authority scores range from low numbers to higher numbers. Every website starts with a low ranking and begins to climb as it gains backlinks and popularity. A good domain score depends on the domain authority scores of your direct competitors.
Let’s return to our previous example and pretend that you have a domain authority of 56. This is much lower than Google, which ranks in the 90s. But since your hypothetical site doesn’t compete with Google for customers, this comparison is irrelevant.
After researching the scores of your direct competitors, you realize that most of them are in the mid-forties, which means your domain authority of 56 is excellent.
To determine if your domain authority score is good or not, compare it to your competitors’ scores. If it’s higher, you’re doing well. If it’s lower, you have work to do. Simple as that.
How fast can you increase domain authority?
It could be months before your strategies for increasing domain authority start paying off. That’s because it takes time to optimize your website, get higher-quality backlinks, and build out good content on your site. Boosting your domain’s authority is a long-term strategy, not a quick solution to poor performance in the SERPs.
How do you lose domain authority?
Your domain authority ranking can drop because of several factors, like:
Getting involved in a link scheme: Your domain authority can decrease dramatically if you buy or sell links, use automated link-creating tools, or exchange links excessively.
Having lots of low-quality links: If spammy sites are linking to your domain, it could harm your score.
Having domain technical issues: Slow site speed, broken links, or other issues can also lower domain authority.
Your competitors improving their performance: Finally, your domain authority could also decrease if your competitors start performing better in the SERPs.
Are there other measures of domain authority?
For the last several years, multiple companies have devised their own domain reputation ranking tools that aim to measure the same thing but are named things like “domain reputation” or “site authority.” It’s important to note that the domain authority ranking scores of one tool likely won’t line up with those of another. Whichever metric of page health you use, be sure to keep it consistent.
Implement the right strategies to boost your website’s domain authority
Domain authority is an important marketing metric because it can help you build a strong SEO strategy that propels your company forward. Just remember that domain authority predicts success, it doesn’t guarantee it. Because of this, boosting your score should never be the end goal.
To increase domain authority for your website, follow the three steps we talk about in this article. When you do, your domain authority will rise, as well as your site’s ability to rank well in search engine results.
Another strategy for boosting your company’s exposure online is partnering with a digital marketing agency. Whether you want to optimize your website, dive further into SEO, or get started with email marketing, WebFX can help. Here at Nutshell, we’ve partnered with WebFX to make digital marketing easier for your team. Learn more about their digital marketing services!
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