If you know a thing or two about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you must have heard about Domain Authority (DA).
In fact, SEO specialists recommend that you should track your Domain Authority if you’re trying to improve your website’s ranking in search engines.
That begs the question: what is a good domain? When do you know that you’ve achieved a good domain score? Well, the thing is, there’s no conclusive answer to this question. However, there are certain things you can do to improve your domain authority score and, by extension, your search engine ranking score.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the best practice when it comes to improving your domain authority. Speaking of increasing your domain score, contact us to speak to one of our experts about our SEO services and how we can help improve your overall search engine ranking.
Let’s get cracking.
So, What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority refers to the scale that measures the possibility of your website ranking well in Google’s SERP. DA was created by Moz and is widely used by businesses worldwide to guide their online strategies.
While companies and renowned brands consider domain Authority a crucial metric, Google doesn’t use it as one of its ranking factors. Still, any business looking to gain a competitive edge should monitor its DA.
How Does Moz Calculate Good Domain Authority?
For starters, Moz’s algorithm calculates DA at a scale of 1 to 100, where 1 is the worst and 100 is the best. The higher your DA, the more challenging it is to improve the score. Put differently; it is easier to improve a DA of 20 or 30 than 70 or 80.
Moz uses over 40 metrics to calculate DA. Below are some of the most important:
Link Root Domains: Refers to the number of unique backlinks pointing to your website.
MozRank: Refers to the strength of your site’s external links
MozTrust: Refers to the metrics used to determine the quality of your website’s external links.
Quality Content: Content is one of the essential metrics your website’s search rankings are based on. It doesn’t come as a surprise, therefore, that Moz uses the quality of content on your website to calculate domain authority,
Social Signals: Google uses social signals as one of the key factors in identifying brilliant content. For instance, it makes sense to believe that a piece of content with many shares, likes, and comments is high-quality content. Moz uses the same procedure to calculate Domain Authority Scores.
Search Engine Friendliness: The way you’ve structured your website directly affects usability and makes it difficult for search engines to crawl and index the site properly, hurting your rankings in search results. It also impacts your Authority Score.
What Supports DA as an Authority Metric?
SEO professionals have, over the years, conducted in-depth research on what determines which site ranks where in SERPs.
When it comes to SEO matters, one thing is clear — several other factors directly impact authority score. Most notably in the number of incoming links to a site and their quality — quality in this context means the sites’ authority score where the links are coming from.
While there are other factors that Moz doesn’t disclose, it is evident that sites with a high Moz Domain Authority rank high in search engines.
So, What is a Good Authority Score?
As stated, the DA score starts from 1 to 100. You can check your website’s DA using Moz’s Keyword Explorer tool.
Here’s how Moz rates different domain scores:
40 to 50 — average
50 to 60 — good
60 and above — excellent
While these scores can help you determine how good your authority score is, it is important to mention that what is considered a “good domain authority” may vary depending on the context.
For instance, if you’re operating a small business and implementing on-page and off-page SEO, your authority score would be considered good if it’s about 40. The scenario is different for large company websites.
If you’re investing tons of money in your SEO strategy, you must expect a higher DA score. A domain score of 60 and below would be considered bad if you have the investment power, putting in a lot of work in your SEO campaign.
Is Domain Authority Important for SEO?
Yes. You should monitor your DA regularly to determine if your SEO efforts are paying off.
The thing is, until your authority score reaches 100, there’s always room for improvement.
Besides, your website’s SEO rankings will decline if you don’t keep working on your authority score. Below is a rundown of other reasons tracking your site DA is crucial.
It Allows you to Improve Your Ranking Health
Of course, you want your site to feature on Google’s first page. However, appearing on the first page requires a solid, well-thought-out SEO strategy that includes creating linkable content and getting backlinks from websites with a good authority score.
The higher your website’s score, the higher the probability of achieving a good position in terms of rankings. It is essential to remember one thing, though — your competitor is also working on their authority score.
So, a good domain score alone isn’t enough to give you the results you’re hoping for.
It would be best to continue implementing other SEO tactics like using the right target keywords and improving your backlink profile.
DA is a Good Metric to Measure SEO
SEO is in constant motion. With Google updating its algorithms regularly, you must improve your website continuously to maintain your ranking strength.
Put differently, a good domain authority enables your website to rank and achieve good results in SERPs. So, optimizing your website will draw organic traffic to your website and give your brand relevance.
The bottom line is that monitoring your site’s authority score allows you to measure whether your SEO work delivers results.
It Allows you to Analyze Competitors
Monitoring your DA lets you take a sneak peek at what your competitors are doing.
You can keep tabs on your competition the same way you use an SEO tool to analyze your website.
All you need to do is enter your competitor’s link into the search bar on Moz’s page.
This analysis enables you to understand how much marketing effort you need to put in to outperform your competitors.
How to Improve Your Domain Authority
Since we’ve already established that domain authority is important for SEO, the next question becomes, how can you improve your site’s authority score?
Here are five tips to boost your DA
Implement SEO Best Practices
The first step to improving your authority score is to follow the best SEO practices.
Applying best SEO practices will help improve your keywords ranking and boost your domain score.
Also, be sure to optimize your on-page content to increase search traffic. On-page SEO includes optimizing elements like:
Your keywords
Meta descriptions
Image alt tags
Title tags
SEO matters to your authority score, so you’ll want to get your SEO strategies right.
Create Linkable Content
Linkable content is crucial to boosting your website’s overall domain authority, so you’ll want to invest your time and resources other people will want to link to.
Below are some tips to help you click linkable content:
Choose the right keywords. You can use a keyword research tool to help you discover keywords worth pursuing.
Create high-quality content. Focus on quality over content to provide a great user experience.
Publish regularly.
Did you know that Growth Generators offers customized content-creation services? We can do keyword research, create linkable content and even upload it on your website.
Get Rid of Bad Link Profiles
Some websites can link to your profile and hurt your Domain Score.
So, you’ll want to keep checking your link profile to get rid of spammy links.
How do you check the type of links pointing to your website? By using a domain or backlink checker like Ahrefs.
Once you’ve identified bad links, you’ll want to contact the owners of those websites and ask them to remove the toxic links to your website. You’ll need to comb the links on your site as well. Get rid of bad or broken links.
Removing bad or broken links will help boost your domain ranking. Did you know that Growth Generators offers linkbuilding services? We can get links from authoritative domains, saving you the inconvenience of dealing with many bad backlinks.
Improve Internal Linking
Sure, there’s nothing wrong with focusing on earning external links to boost your authority score. However, internal links are also part of the process.
Internal linking allows visitors to stay on your website a little bit longer, which can help enhance your SEO efforts. On top of that, internal links make it easier for search engines to index your website’s page.
Ensure That Your Site is Mobile Friendly
Because users spend 70% of their internet time on smartphones, it makes perfect sense to build a mobile-friendly site. When your site is super responsive, your target audience will find you easily, view and share your content, improving your overall domain ranking in the process.
Below are some tips to make your website mobile-friendly:
Improve page load time
Add mobile elements like hamburger menus to your website
Use a responsive design
Growth Generators – Helping Improve Your Domain Authority
Growth Generators is a fully-fledged digital marketing agency that offers SEO services to help boost your authority score.
Get in touch with one of our digital marketing experts to learn how we can help you improve your Domain Authority score.
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