Domain Authority (DA) is a big deal for SEO after Google officially killed Page Rank (PR).
A high domain authority value generally indicates that you have a strong website with top rank and great traffic.
From ranking keywords with ease to stimulating search bots to crawl and put the site on top, having a high domain authority site comes with lots of benefits.
You surely want to enjoy all the perks of having a high authority website, don’t you?
Sadly, you can not increase your website’s domain authority overnight. But you also don’t need to sweat and burn.
In this post you’ll learn-
- What is domain authority?
- How to measure domain authority?
- Domain authority vs page authority.
- The benefits of having a high domain authority website.
- 6 actionable tips to increasing domain authority.
What is Domain Authority?
Scaled in a total of 100, Domain Authority is a score that predicts the strength of a website on search engines.
It’s developed by Moz, and is a comparative number designed to differentiate the strength of one website over the other. Whatsoever, It’s not an absolute metric.
In general, a website with high domain authority means that it has a strong backlink profile, high traffic, and high ranking and an added benefit to rank for any desired keyword with ease.
“To determine Domain Authority, we employ machine learning against Google’s algorithm to best model how search engine results are generated.” – Moz
This model is further combined with other link metrics including:
Domain Age
MozRank
MozTrust
Plus several other metrics that account to about 40+ factors affecting DA.
Domain Authority can increase or decrease depending on different signals employed to calculate this metric. Though the chances of decreasing of domain authority are lesser, the difficult part is increasing it.
Increasing domain authority from 30 to 40 is difficult than increasing it from 1 to 10. It’s even more difficult to increase it from 90 to 100 comparatively.
There are only a few websites on the web with a domain authority of perfect 100 including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Youtube, Adobe, and Wikipedia. So, even if you have a low domain authority, there’s no reason for you to be disappointed.
How to measure domain authority?
Moz provides several ways to check your domain authority.
It has its own SEO research tool called Open Site Explorer that helps you calculate DA, PA, a few other page-link metrics and spam score.
You can also download the official Moz toolbar available for Chrome and Firefox browsers.
You also need to know that domain authority does not change every single day.
Moz generally updates its metrics once or twice a month and you can expect your site’s domain authority change once the update takes place.
Domain authority vs Page Authority
I’ve seen several bloggers scratch their head trying to learn the difference between DA and PA.
Well, page authority is another metric calculated on a scale of 100 by Moz which particularly represents the score of only one post or page you’ve published.
One particular thing to note about page authority is that it represents and measures the strength of a single page and is different for each page or subdomains.
However, when DA is in question, it’s the same for all pages, posts, and sub-domains and that is why I value it more.
In fact, most new blog posts that I publish have a page authority of 1, yet they rank well on the SERPs, all thanks to a high DA score.
The benefits of having a high domain authority website
Internet marketing all about numbers – the number of blog posts you have, the number of backlinks pointing to your site, the number of traffic and the revenue that you generate.
With strong domain authority, all of those numbers are on your side. With it comes several opportunities that you’ve always wished to have. A few of them are:
Easy to rank keywords: While ranking keywords are extremely difficult for new sites that have a relatively low DA, it’s comparatively easy for sites that have a strong domain authority. That’s partly because having a high domain authority site means your site is in good shape and Google loves to rank those higher on SERPs.
More advertisers: Several advertisers constantly seek opportunities to promote themselves on top authority blogs and websites. Having a high domain authority does its play. A high DA score represents that your site has good traffic where they can find opportunities to grow themselves.
More traffic: You can relate having huge traffic with easiness to rank keywords. Once you move higher in SERPs, organic traffic follows through and through.
More revenue: More advertisers, more traffic, increased rankings and what not? Your revenue will increase by folds if you have a high domain authority website.
6 actionable ways to increase domain authority
Now that you know the basics about what domain authority means and how it is measured, you might want to know how exactly you can increase it for good.
A high domain authority site is everyone’s dream. You get good traffic, your keywords start to rank well and you become a go-to hub for advertisers and sponsors.
Why?
Because having a high domain authority value means that you are a top site and an authority in your industry.
So, let’s take a look at some of the best practices to increase domain authority.
1. Build backlinks
If there is one thing that works best when it comes to online marketing, it’s building backlinks.
Backlinks are probably the founding blocks of a revenue generating website; be it to rank keywords on search engines, to gain more visibility or to spread your brand online.
You can either hire an SEO agency to look after your off-page SEO, to create more backlinks and to create a strong professional presence online or let your content do the speaking for itself.
The first option is relatively expensive though will save your time, but if not done right, your site might fall prey to a Google penalty which you’d not want to.
The second option is always on my top priority. Though trying and testing shows a conversion of about 10% for me, it’s what helps me the right way. It takes time, but it’s totally worth doing it yourself.
Here are a few tips that has helped me build more backlinks with content marketing:
- Create linkable assets.
- Build social media pages and link your site’s url.
- Promote your posts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Guest post.
- Find unlinked mention.
- Submit your site to blog aggregators.
Key Takeaway: Create backlinks from natural sources. Never seek PBNs or Web 2.0 backlinks.
2. Remove toxic links
You need to keep track of your backlinks every once in a while to stay safe from negative SEO.
By maintaining a clean link profile, you draw yourself ahead of the huge competition in your niche because it’s not what everyone does.
Though it is time-consuming to go through the spreadsheet of all the links pointing to your site, it is totally worth it.
You can find the links of all sites that link to you from the Google Search Console or Webmaster Tools.
You need to go through all the backlinks pointing to your site and disavow those that aren’t in your niche or are spammy.
This will gradually reduce any chance of having a low DA site while also protecting your site from Google penalties.
Key Takeaway: Keep track of your site’s backlinks and remove the spammy ones. Check regularly.
3. Interlink your posts
Off-site SEO is a strong factor but you also can’t overlook the prospects you have with on-site SEO and interlinking your post.
Internal links inside your site create a network that passes link juices easily and enables search bots to better crawl your site. This not only improves your chance to rank keywords on search engines but also boosts your domain authority.
Consider your posts and pages as the building bricks of your house and connect them together through a strong internal link. Also, use varieties of natural anchor texts to make sure you don’t get hit by a Google penalty.
4. Never forget technical SEO
Moz also considers overall SEO as an important factor that affects DA.
In order to ensure that your technical SEO is in place, pay special care to:
- Site navigation.
- Site structure.
- Breadcrumbs.
- Permalinks and url structure.
- Focus keywords.
- Tags.
- Word count, etc.
You also need to make sure that the robots.txt file and your sitemap are well-attributed.
Technical SEO ensures a better functioning website and once you put things in place, your DA will start to rise.
Key Takeaway: Make sure your technical SEO is in place. Pay special attention to site navigation, contents, and design.
5. Social media marketing
Social signals are also one of Google’s ranking factors that impact domain authority.
You need to utilize social media for your needs and find markets to promote your blogs and services on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram.
Your site will gain more visibility and traffic after you promote it on social media and this will ultimately increase your chance to gain more backlinks.
Adding your site’s url to your social media profiles will also give you a nice, easy backlink.
Key Takeaway: Never take social media platforms for granted. Start promoting from day one.
6. Wait
Increasing domain authority is not a one night game. You can’t do it. Superman can’t too.
Well, that’s partly because Moz updates its API once a month.
Even if you build thousands of backlinks, promote wildly on social media and gain strong followings, and do every other thing required to increase domain authority, you won’t see the rise quickly.
Everything takes time.
Your site needs to be crawled by Google and Moz and every other detail of your site needs to be analyzed by those sources.
Be patient and stay focused, it’s only a matter of time when you see your hard work pay off.
What other factors do you think are affecting your site’s domain authority?
