How To Improve Your Domain Authority
Improving domain authority (DA) is essential to any comprehensive SEO strategy. With a top spot on Google’s SERPs promising increased traffic, conversions, and overall business success, it’s understandable that companies are asking their marketing teams to improve their websites’ domain authority.
Understanding the many factors that can influence DA is one in the same as learning about Google’s complex ranking process. That’s why SEO strategists will include “domain authority” in their lists of specialisms. Working to raise DA is almost always accompanied by better SEO health and digital marketing efficiency.
So, how do you improve your domain authority? Better yet, how do you do it in a way that maximises your resources and supports your overall marketing objectives?
Well, we’ll be going over all you need to know. Let’s dive right in.
What Is Domain Authority?
Domain authority (DA) is a ranking factor created by Moz to help businesses determine their ranking potential on search engine results pages (SERPs). According to Moz, DA is not part of Google’s algorithm and has no influence on the SERPs.
Even though DA isn’t officially part of Google’s ranking system, there is still a positive relationship between DA and other SEO performance indicators. So, DA isn’t a metric that directly increases rankings; rather, it helps businesses gauge where they are in relation to their competitors. This, in turn, allows businesses to adjust their efforts accordingly.
While DA is a crucial component of a great SEO strategy, it’s important to take note of the following:
1. Because DA changes frequently, you shouldn’t rely on it to evaluate your SEO performance over time; instead, use it for its original purpose — comparing domains.
2. DA isn’t the only site authority metric. There are other ways to understand your site’s ranking potential. Others include Semrush’s Authority Score and Ahrefs Domain Rating. The key is to pick one and use it to consistently track your domain’s authority over time.
How is Domain Authority Calculated?
Domain authority is calculated by analysing multiple factors related to a domain’s link profile. As of 2019, Moz’s DA score reflects a machine learning algorithm’s predictions about how often Google will use a certain domain in its search results. Basically, a domain that ranks high in Google’s SERPs is expected to have a higher DA than one that doesn’t.
In a nutshell, Moz’s 40 DA factors consider the following:
- The overall quality of your link profile
- The variability of your backlinks or the number of root domains linking back to you
- The credibility of the websites linking to your website (large reputable institutions or organisations provide higher scores)
- Your site structure or how easily it can be crawled by search engines
- Site friendliness or how great of an experience your users have on your site
- Social signals (the popularity of your domain and content on social media networks)
What Is a Good Domain Authority?
Put simply; a good DA score is one that is higher than the domains you want to outrank. Because DA predicts how well a site should be able to rank within the context of its unique competitive landscape, scores can’t be classified as strictly excellent, average, or poor.
Instead, scores are relative to one’s competitors. Your competitors are those sites that are within your target SERPs. So, to determine whether you have a good DA score, compare your score to your main competitors’ scores using Moz’s free domain analysis SEO tool.
If your website has a DA of 40 and that happens to be higher than that of your competitors, even though it’s still on the lower end, your DA is relatively ‘good’.
However, if your DA is 60 and your competitors’ scores are above 80, your DA isn’t necessarily ‘poor’, but you’ll definitely need to ramp up your efforts to outrank them.
Why is Domain Authority Important?
Your DA score helps you determine your relative competitiveness. This is important because:
It helps you choose keywords strategically
DA helps you understand where you can realistically compete, allowing you to manage your time and resources effectively. If you’re competing for a specific keyword against sites with domain authorities similar to yours, you’ll know that a well-written blog post stands a good chance of ranking.
But, if you’re competing against sites with much higher domain authorities, it would be more prudent to target a different keyword.
It helps guide all your other marketing efforts
DA may not be an official ranking factor, but it encompasses all the things that are: Google’s people-first content philosophy and emphasis on credibility. As such, DA can also help guide all your other marketing strategies. Plus, the competitor focus encouraged by DA analysis helps you identify and improve the areas of your own marketing strategy that need tweaking.
How To Improve Domain Authority
Since your domain authority score is based on many factors, working on off-page SEO (link-building strategies) and on-page SEO (content optimisation) is more likely to increase your website’s DA and overall SEO health.
Here are 5 ways you can improve your website’s domain authority:
1. Audit your links
A site’s link profile is undoubtedly the most important metric for DA. The benefits of a good link profile are 1) higher DA scores and 2) more credibility and better rankings. Therefore, auditing your links is the best place to start.
Firstly, ensure that links to your website are valid and that they aren’t spammy or the result of black-hat SEO tactics. If you have lots of spammy links with spam scores higher than 30%, this will affect your DA.
To keep your link profile in great condition, these links should be removed or disavowed. It’s good to ensure that any domains you’re linking to aren’t spammy, either. When in doubt, use the “no follow” link attribute.
2. Analyse your competitors
The key advantages of competitor analysis are 1) identifying areas of improvement and 2) gathering valuable insights to guide your marketing efforts. So, identify your key competitors and analyse their link profiles. What kind of backlinks do they have, and can you get similar ones?
3. Prioritise link building
Link building refers to the practice of securing quality backlinks to increase visibility and authority in organic search results. Link building can be challenging, as you sometimes cannot control which websites link back to you.
However, it’s important not to resort to black hat strategies, such as buying backlinks or engaging in other spammy link tactics. These can get you penalised and undo months of hard work. Below are some of the most common link-building strategies used to improve DA:
Guest blogging
Providing blog content, research, or any kind of Thought Leadership content to relevant high-DA websites in your industry can get you relevant backlinks and raise your DA. So, search for high-authority publishers in your field who are on the lookout for content and expertise.
Natural link building
When you focus on creating high-quality content that ranks and demonstrates thought leadership, you’re more likely to earn backlinks from bloggers and other businesses. This process is known as natural link building and is one of the best ways to improve your link profile. To increase your chances of earning backlinks, create research content or content that is original, relevant, and keyword targeted.
Remember, the goal is to stand out from your competitors by providing better-quality information. You can increase your backlinking potential by sharing your content with your subscribers and social media followers. Reaching out to other sites and asking them to read and link to your content is another great way to earn more backlinks.
Digital Public Relations
Investing in PR allows you to earn backlinks in well-known publications. Since these publications tend to have very high DA scores, having them link back to you can boost your DA scores. Services such as HARO can help you find high-quality linking opportunities.
These platforms work by connecting you with journalists and publishers who are looking to feature experts in their articles. Although placement isn’t always guaranteed, you can increase your chances of getting a backlink by providing quick, valuable insights.
Broken link building
Broken backlinks to your site are good link-building opportunities, as they can usually be fixed by reaching out to those domains and asking them to add the links to your website again.
Alternatively, they can also be fixed on your end by ensuring the original sources are made live again.
Other websites’ broken links can be great opportunities too. Conduct a broken link audit of websites with a high DA and see if you can provide them with better content to link back to. With this approach, everyone wins: the broken link is fixed, and you receive a relevant, high-quality backlink without having to write a whole blog post.
Focus on quality backlinks
To improve your DA score, focus on securing quality links and eliminating bad ones. Moz’s updated DA score looks at whether links come from actual sites with real traffic. So, not every link is worth pursuing. In fact, spammy, low-quality links are likely to be discounted by domain authority metrics and Google.
It’s worth noting that ‘bad’ doesn’t mean low authority; low-authority links can still add value to your link profile.
Business listings
If you’re a small, local business, listing your domain across digital business directories, such as Google Business Profile and Yelp, can do wonders for visibility and customer acquisition. As most of these local listings allow you to include a link to your website, they can also help increase your traffic and DA scores.
4. On-page optimisation
On-page SEO involves optimising your website and content. The more user-friendly and relevant your website is, the greater the chances your content earns backlinks. Here’s how to optimise your content for a better DA score:
Follow Google’s people-first quality guidelines: Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) when creating content.
- Incorporate the right keywords into your content naturally
- Use internal links to help search engines crawl and index your content more efficiently
- Format and structure your content appropriately
- Update your content regularly
When it comes to optimising your website, focus on performance and user-friendliness. Make sure that the technical SEO aspects of your website are running smoothly, as these can affect your domain authority and rankings. Slow sites tend to have higher bounce rates
(which is unfavourable for your rankings); to prevent this, ensure that your website loads quickly.
With mobile searches dominating all searches, mobile friendliness has never been more important. Google’s mobile-first index makes this clear. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, this will affect your Google rankings and DA scores. Make use of Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to analyse your website and follow the recommendations on how to make it more mobile-friendly.
5. Leverage social media
As high-ranking pages tend to have many likes, shares, or tweets, there is a strong correlation between high-ranking pages and social signals. Increasing your followers and having an active social media presence ensures that your content gets traction — and more backlinking opportunities.
How Long Does It Take to Increase Domain Authority?
You could see an increase in your DA score in a few months; however, you should be willing to play the long game. Raising your DA involves improving your site’s SEO health and focusing on the quality of your link profile — all of which take time.
Additionally, DA works on a logarithmic scale, so it’s much easier to raise your DA score from 20 to 30 than it is to raise it from 70 to 80. This means you’ll need to work harder (and longer) to achieve a higher DA score.
Final thoughts
Domain authority can be difficult to influence directly, so a multidisciplinary approach tends to yield better results. Granted, that makes raising your DA score a lot more challenging, but ultimately your efforts will pay off. Instead of aiming for a perfect score, it’s far more beneficial to consider your relative score and how it fits into your overall marketing strategy.
After all, a business that prioritises growth and customer satisfaction is more likely to succeed in the long run.