You’ve heard the term “domain authority” before and 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 and website 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 will help you strategically choose keywords 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. Google does not use the metric, 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 that 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.
Domain authority vs Page authority
Domain authority
Ranks the strength of an entire domain.
Page authority
Focuses on a single page’s ability to rank in the SERPs.
Page authority can help you plan an effective digital strategy by identifying pages with the greatest potential for improvement.
Since domain authority plays a significant role in determining page authority, it’s crucial to focus on improving your site as a whole rather than any page.
Factors affecting domain authority
When learning how to increase your website domain authority, it’s important to understand how it’s calculated. This calculation is based on several factors linked to your website’s user experience and overall quality.
These are the core factors that affect your domain authority, and they include the following:
Domain age: More established websites tend to have a higher domain authority than websites published more recently, partly because older sites have had more time to build trust with search engines.
Link number and quality: It’s not just about having a significant number of links pointing to your website—To promote a higher DA, these need to be quality links from reputable websites related to your business, industry, or the topic at hand.
Content quality and relevance: Publishing original, thoughtful, informative, and relevant content that provides your audience with value is at the heart of learning how to increase your website’s domain authority.
Content structure: Organizing your website content in a way that’s clear, logical, and easy to navigate increases its likelihood of building a better domain authority score.
Website performance: Make sure all your website’s technical SEO boxes are ticked, including quick load times and mobile-friendliness, for an improved DA rating.
Social media presence: Developing a strong social media presence can result in more shared content within and across platforms, often leading to an increased domain authority.
Remember that your website’s domain authority isn’t constant—it changes over time in relation to the factors mentioned above. Continuous monitoring and optimization of these elements are essential to both improving and maintaining your domain authority.
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Now that you know what domain authority is and why it’s essential, it’s time to learn how to increase domain authority on your website. Follow the three-step process outlined below, and you’ll be well on your way to a higher domain authority score.
How to increase domain authority
What to consider
1. Get the basics right
Optimize your on-page content and don’t neglect internal links Ensure your site loads quickly Build a mobile-friendly site
2. Building high-quality backlinks
Create great content Promote your content Implement a link-building strategy Commit to guest blogging
3. Reduce low-quality backlinks
Use a tool like SEMrush to identify low-quality backlinks and remove them manually
1. Get the basics right
First things first, make sure you set up your website correctly. That means optimizing your on-page content, ensuring 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 other search engines. Several tools are available for checking your website’s load speed.
A good SEO audit can help you find where you neglect the basics to improve your domain authority.
2. Build high-quality backlinks
When it comes to domain authority, high-quality backlinks are king in increasing domain authority. 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 to increase domain authority:
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, and other content 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 there’s a right and 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. You must secure high-quality links and eliminate low-quality ones to improve your domain authority score. 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 is a high-quality link because the publisher is known and respected. Links from unknown, spammy websites 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.
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 a good score?”
It’s a fair question. It’s also the wrong question. You should be asking, “Is that a good domain authority score 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 you have a domain authority 56. This number is much lower than Google’s, which ranks in the 90s. However, this comparison is irrelevant since your hypothetical site doesn’t compete with Google for customers.
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, compare it to your competitors’ scores. If it’s higher, you’re doing well. If it’s lower, you have work to do. It’s as simple as that.
How to increase domain authority fast?
While these strategies can help boost your domain authority more quickly, patience is key. 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 or website authority?
Your domain authority ranking can drop because of several factors, such as:
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 link to your domain, it could harm your score.
Experiencing domain technical issues: Slow site speed, broken links, or other issues can also lower domain authority.
Improved competitor 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 one tool’s domain authority ranking scores likely won’t align with those of another. Be sure to keep whichever metric of page health you use consistent.
How often should I check my domain authority?
Typically, the recommended frequency for checking your domain authority is about once a month. This frequency allows you to track changes over time without getting overwhelmed by constant monitoring.
Increase your website’s domain authority with the right strategies
Domain authority is an important marketing metric because it can help you build a strong SEO strategy that propels your company forward. Therefore, it’s important to know how to improve domain authority. However, just remember that domain authority predicts success—it doesn’t guarantee it. Because of this, boosting your score should never be the end goal.
Follow the three steps discussed in this article to increase your website’s domain authority. When you do, your domain authority and your site’s ability to rank well in search engine results will improve.
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