Your website’s ready and you’re ready to network with relevant people in your niche to boost your brand’s awareness – but it feels like something is missing.
Now it’s the perfect time to learn how to increase domain authority to reach a wider target audience base.
You hear everyone talking about it, yet you don’t seem to understand what it means or how you can do it properly.
Wait a bit – is this kind of question even worth focusing on right now?
Short answer – absolutely yes!
Domain authority (or DA for short) is a search ranking score created by the Moz company (one of the biggest specialists when it comes to SEO). This search engine predicts how likely your website is to rank well on Google.
Domain authority scores range from 1 to 100, and it means that the higher the score you get, the higher the chances you’ll rank on the first Google page.
So, if you’re wondering what is a good domain authority, the answer is anything that goes above 50.
A few examples of high authority domains are:
- Youtube (100)
- Google (100)
- Apple (100)
- LinkedIn (99)
So what is the domain authority of my site? You might wonder next.
Just rest assured that all you need to do is to check the MozBar. It’s an SEO toolbar that has integration with Chrome, so it’s easy to install and use.
Just install the extension and you can find out in just a few seconds!
When calculating your DA values, some factors can contribute greatly to improving your score such as:
- Your website’s responsiveness
- High SEO parameters
- The quality and number of backlinks and referring domains
- Guest posts on influential blogs and websites
However, keep in mind that these are just a few examples!
In a few minutes, we’ll touch base on this subject with a complete list of key elements. Plus, our experts included actionable tips on how to improve your DA elements to have a high domain authority score.
This no fuss guide will help you understand the differences between DA scores across SEO tools, importance of these scores, and how you can improve them for a higher chance of ranking on the most popular search engines today!
The Differences Between DA Scores Across SEO Tools
How is domain authority calculated? Because there are many DA checker tools on the market, some of them have a slightly different approach when they calculate your site’s domain authority.
One of the most important differences you should learn about is the variation between linking root domains authority and domain rating.
To make this explanation easier to understand, we’ll discuss Moz and Ahrefs site authority tools.
Moz Page Authority Explained
To calculate your website domain authority by evaluating multiple factors, including linking root domains and the number of total links, Moz includes:
- Total number of links
- The quality of your backlinks
- The quality of the websites you’re linking to
After MozBar compares all these values, your website will be assigned a specific value that will be your domain authority score.
However, don’t forget that the values can fluctuate over time.
For example, let’s say that you have a high-quality backlink from a good, medium-sized business. You can’t tell what will happen to that website over time. If they grow their audience and produce high quality content, their authority domain will increase as well. Thus, it will automatically improve your scores too.
On the other hand, if that business sells their website to someone that will turn it into something spammy or shady, it will affect your website’s domain authority values as well.
Ahrefs Domain Rating
Ahrefs has developed another domain authority metric that shows you the strength of a certain website called Domain Rating. This metric checks the quality of your website’s backlink profile so it can calculate the rating of your domain. The good news is that these values are similar to Moz’s – the scale goes from 0 to 100 and the higher the score you get, the better for your website.
To calculate your unique rating, Ahrefs thoroughly checks the quality of your website’s backlink profile.
However, Ahrefs considers other 3 important elements when they measure a website DA:
- The quality of the linking domains on your website
- The number of the unique domains that have a minimum of 1 do-follow link to your website
- The number of the unique domains those websites link to
Hence, you’ll have to build high-quality backlinks and referring domains with websites that don’t link to spammy or low-quality websites or inbound links linking back to you. You attract real links only!
The Importance of DA Scores To Your Website
One thing that’s important to remember is that domain authority and domain rating are not Google ranking factors. These values won’t affect the search engine results page.
Then why is it important to learn how you can increase domain authority?
Google has many ranking factors – that’s true, but no one knows exactly how it works.
However, these domain rank checker SEO tools can suggest DA values and make predictions on how competitive your website will be. Based on these factors, you can improve your SEO and marketing strategies.
With these DA tools, you can improve your SEO techniques and backlinking strategies so your websites will rank higher on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
The good news is that MozBar (or Ahrefs) is not the only domain authority checker you can use.
Editor’s Note: Keep in mind that every tool is called “Domain Authority” in a different way. The best example would be Moz (where they call it Domain Authority) and Ahrefs (they call it Domain Rating).
So, when you want to check what your domain authority is, rest assured that they’re roughly the same thing even though the naming system might vary.
Now that we’ve established that, here are 3 free tools you can choose to check DA:
1. SiteChecker Pro
On their website, Sitechecker Pro has Moz rank integration. You can use their tool to run website speed tests, check the quality of your backlinks, and improve your SEO scores.
2. SEMScoop
SEMScoop offers you a detailed keyword research overview. In the Top Search Results section, they’ll provide compelling insights about whether a website can rank for certain keywords or not.
What’s more, they’ll show you the domain age and the domain authority of the websites that use the same keywords as you.
3. Website SEO Checker
If you want to have a complete overview of how well your website is performing SEO-wise, Website SEO Checker can help you with it.
What’s more, you can copy-paste your website’s URL in their tool so you can check both your domain authority score and the external links to your website.
Is It Important To Learn How To Check Domain Authority?
Although the majority of these tools use the same principles as Moz, it’s still worth it to give them a try and see what suits your SEO strategy best!
In consequence, improving your website domain authority scores is essential for having better online visibility.
On one hand, you’ll have more chances to connect with high authority businesses relevant to your niche because they’ll want to link back to your website.
9 Effective Steps On How To Increase Domain Authority Score
Now that we’ve seen how important it is to have a high DA rating, it’s time to see how you can increase your domain authority.
Our specialists from One Search Pro came up with 9 actionable steps for increasing domain authority! Check them out!
1. Choose A Good Domain Name
A good domain name is either your business name or a name that’s relevant to your business.
Here are a few tips on choosing a fine domain name:
- Make it catchy.
- Don’t use numbers or hyphens.
- Come up with a short name rather than a long, hard-to-remember one.
- Make it easy to pronounce and spell.
- .com is the largest and oldest domain so make sure you choose it over other domains like .org, .eu, .net, .co.
Also, verify that your domain name doesn’t resemble a spammy or shady website.
Your domain name is among the first things your potential customers will pay attention to when they reach your website, so make a good impression right from the start.
Apart from your domain name, your website elements also contribute a great deal to building a strong website and improving UX experience.
From a basic website design, description, CTA, and all the way to SEO – they all are tiny but crucial elements that mean business!
2. On-page SEO Optimization
Google’s search engine needs a lot of information so they can crawl and rank your website accordingly.
To make sure they rank your website correctly, you need to offer as much information as possible, so make sure you optimize your web page and its elements!
Titles And Descriptions
Make sure that you create relevant meta titles and descriptions for every page on your website.
Include relevant keywords so your visitors and search engines will know exactly what the website or your blog posts are about.
Craft Proper And Relevant Headings
Headings make your content more scannable because they guide the reader through the main point of the article. Use H2, H3, bulleted list, or any other helpful organizational system.
Use Accurate URL Structure/ Permalinks
Search engines crawl your website quicker if you use adequate permalinks or URL structures. Besides, your website visitors use URLs structures to navigate quicker on your website, so come up with an intuitive internal link structure that is easy to follow.
Optimize All Media Elements
Whenever you post a video or an image, optimize those elements too by adding alt and title attributes.
Adding a description to an image will enhance the user experience. For example, those visitors who don’t have the ability to see the media will still know what the photos are about because of the descriptions.
Include Main Keywords’ Variations
Using the same main keyword over and over again might make your content sound robotic and unnatural. The more keywords you use, the higher your chances to reach a wider audience.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is when you use the same keywords over and over again in an attempt to rank higher in SERPs. It looks unprofessional, spammy, and it gives an unnatural flow to your content.
This is a black hat SEO technique that should be avoided because Google and other search engines will think you abuse their algorithms to rank high and they will penalize you.
Further Reading: Guide to Google Penalty
Create Content That’s Relevant For Your Business And Your Domain Authority
No matter how tempting it seems to touch base on other subjects, always keep your content relevant to your niche, domain name, and business.
Otherwise, you might lose credibility and people won’t visit your website anymore.
Create A Linkable Content
When you mention a thing different from your original topic, create internal links that redirect your readers to that subject.
It’s useful for your visitor to have all the information one click away. Plus, it makes your website easier to navigate through so make sure you use anchor text in your content.
Use Google Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are excerpts that Google takes automatically from your website and shows in SERPs.
Readers find these snippets very informative, and if that small paragraph answers their Google query, they’ll visit your website for more information.
3. Work On Your Off-Page SEO
Some of the most important elements in off-page SEO that you can improve are:
- Commenting
- Content marketing
- Building your backlink profile
- Making sure that you have no bad links
You can improve your SEO efforts in this area by building quality backlinks, participating in podcasts relevant to your industry, and using social media platforms.
What’s more, you can build up a strong backlinking profile by rejecting all the spammy links and investing in efficient cold outreach marketing strategies.
This way, you can link to genuine, high-quality links that can boost your SEO efforts off-page.
Methods You Can Use To Attract More High-Quality Links
- Niche Edit and Paid Links: Not only is this an excellent strategy to get passive income, but it’s also an efficient strategy to improve your reputation by teaming up with other websites of bigger scale.
- HARO Link Building: This is a great link building strategy if you want to improve your PR campaigns and come up with original pitch ideas that journalists can use to promote your brand.
- Guest Posting on High Authority Sites: Other sites with higher authority have access to a wider audience, so try and reach out to them with relevant and useful pitches for guest post pitches.
- Getting Links from Growing Websites: Helping other brands means helping yourself in the long run. You can promote your services and products and you’ll have access to a wider audience.
- Keep the Momentum Going: Don’t stop after just 1 week or 1 month with your outreach campaigns. Keep building high-quality links by constantly getting in touch with brands relevant to your niche.
4. Optimize Your Technical SEO Elements As Well
Technical SEO is all about those tedious, hard-to-remember metrics that you’d wish you wouldn’t have to handle.
It is related to website and server optimization and it’s crucial because you do it solely for search engines crawlers. One example of this is none other than the broken link building technique.
So what can you do to improve your technical SEO? Here’s a few tips!
Register With Google Search Console
Google Search Console gives you constant reports about your performances. Based on them, you can optimize any error that might appear on your website.
Create and Submit an XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap is a file that has all your website’s important pages. By submitting this sitemap, Google can crawl your website easily and efficiently.
In this file, you should include elements like website pages, non-canonical pages, share via email URLs, or reply to comment URLs.
Fix Crawling Issues
These issues appear when search engines can’t crawl your website pages properly. Just a few examples of issues you might experience are 404 Not Found errors, duplicate pages, using HTTP instead of HTTPS, or robots.txt failure.
Check The Robots.txt File
Even though Google announced that GoogleBot will no longer obey a robots.txt directive, you might still want to check this file’s setting and make sure it’s working properly. To help you out with it, Google made a quick guide on how you can test your robots.txt file.
Use HTTPS Instead Of HTTP
The difference between HTTP and HTTPS is the little S that’s very important. Using HTTPS boosts your brand’s credibility because it secures your data-in-transit, and protects your site from data breaches or phishing.
Add Structured Data Schema
Structure data refers to any description that you upload for your products, services, events. These descriptions make the information easier to crawl by search engine crawlers.
Properly Defined Breadcrumb Menu
Having a breadcrumb menu will let you know where your visitors spend the most time on your website. The more you improve your website and make it attractive, the longer your visitors will stay on it.
Use Hreflang For Multilanguage
Visitors want to know what’s on your website even if they don’t understand the main language.
Make your content accessible for as many visitors as possible and you’ll have readers from all over the world!
If done properly, technical SEO can improve your organic ranking and boost your brand’s online visibility.
However, if you think this is too much to handle, you can always rely on a team of SEO experts. They’ll know what to do, and you’ll achieve great results without too much hassle.
5. Enlist Your Brand On Google My Business
Google My Business app helps customers find your business on the map and leave useful reviews for other potential customers. This way, your business is transparent and trustworthy.
Also, having your business listed on Google My Business is good for local SEO. Here’s just a quick list of the most important benefits of local SEO:
- Reducing ad costs
- Increasing sales
- Improving online visibility among you competing domains
- Bringing more relevant web traffic
If you want to improve your local SEO, you can:
- Optimize your website for voice search
- Mention your location on the About Us page
- Create content that mentions local events or brand
- Insert local keywords to pop up in the local’s social stories and Google queries
6. Make Sure Your Website Has Mobile SEO & It’s Mobile Friendly
Having a mobile-friendly website is very important because it can help you with:
- Faster download speed
- Better user experience
- Lower bounce rates
If you want to check if your website is properly optimized for SEO, you can test your website with different tools such as:
- Google Search Console
- MobiReady
- BrowserStack
- Pingdom
7. Improve Your Web Page Speed
If people visit your websites and it takes forever to load, they will leave it immediately. If this happens too often, the bounce rates might increase and Google will penalize your website.
How can you improve your page speed? Here are a few popular methods:
- Use Google Developers
- Optimize images
- Improve server’s response time
- Use few redirects
8. Increase Your Social Signals
Boosting your social media presence can have a positive impact on your business:
- Makes your website more authoritative
- It helps you engage with your customers
- You build stronger relationships with your audience
- Social media content is easier to share than blog posts
- You can build strong partnerships with relevant influencers in your niche
By creating social signals to your business, you make your brand more visible on the internet. People interested in your services and products can find and contact you easier.
Plus, on social media, you can participate in different social causes so your audience can see that you contribute to society. Thus, your brand will gain more credibility, popularity, and trust.
As we’ve previously established that content is king, informative and entertaining content are more effective in validating more positive interaction when compared to spammy, unskippable advertising.
You may be interested in: Soft Sell Advertising Examples to Help Build A Lifestyle Brand
Some of our very own attested tips for turning up the volume on social signals are:
- Listening & Monitoring: Keep track of what your audience is saying about your brand and respond using actual actions!
- Posting regularly: You don’t want to leave your audience wondering why your brand went missing. Post daily to keep your brand at the top of social media news feeds.
- Using images and videos: Visually appealing content like videos and images go a long way in increasing your interaction rates.
- Covering all bases: Produce content and publish them all across the top social media sites – let your brand be known across the world!
9. Have Patience And Let The Magic Do Its Trick
One of the most important factors is patience. You can’t improve your SEO domain authority overnight. Sometimes, Google’s algorithms might decrease your domain authority ranking but don’t worry – it’s normal to fluctuate from time to time!
Make sure you perform regular audit and SEO checks if you want to boost domain authority steadily!
Checklist on How To Increase Domain Rating For Your Website
Now that you know all there is to the technical aspects of increasing your site’s domain rating, let’s move on to something more fun, shall we?
To make sure that you’ve actually absorbed what you read so far, why not put your newfound knowledge to the test by implementing these tactics?
Here’s a checklist for you to do so – for every tip executed, give yourself a ‘check’ in the empty boxes provided! Easy, right?
Frequently Asked Questions on Website Domain Authority
1. What is Domain Authority?
Domain authority is a tool created by Moz that predicts how high your website might rank on Google. The higher the score, the higher chances are for authoritative sites to rank well in Google search results.
2. Is Domain Authority A Ranking Factor?
No, Google doesn’t consider domain authority a ranking component. However, it’s a good method to see how good your on-site SEO is and how well you can network with other relevant businesses in your niche.
3. What Is A Good Domain Rating Score?
A good domain authority score or rating is somewhere between 50-60, and anything that’s above 60 is considered an excellent DA value.
However, keep an eye on your competitors and always aim to have a better domain authority score than them. For example, if their score is 70, try to improve your website’s DA to 80.
4. How Can I Raise My DA?
A simple answer to “how to increase my domain authority” – is to try to connect as much as possible with other influential people in your business.
Cold outreach strategies are a great way to find blogs to pitch for guest posting. Building link-worthy and high-quality DA backlinks to your website will raise your brand authority.
5. How Often Should I Check My DA?
Moz updates its domain authority metrics monthly, and the good news is that website owners can check your DA scores for free using the MOZ Domain Authority Checker.
Editor’s Note: The best decision is to check your DA on a weekly (or bi-weekly) basis. This way, you’ll have an idea on how to formulate a personalized marketing solution based on your niche popularity and the backlinks you’ve already created.
But what’s next? How can you bring your ideas to life and convert them into actions? This is when you can consider consulting a professional SEO expert in the industry to help you out!
Why not check One Search Pro out? With more than 10 years of experience in the digital marketing field, our top-notch SEO services can help make a difference!
6. Domain Authority Vs Page Authority
When we’re talking about page authority, it means that we’re strictly referring to the strength of that specific page (About Us page, a certain blog post, the home page, and so on). However, domain authority includes all the pages and subdomains available on your website.
7. Why Is Domain Authority Important?
Domain authority speaks volumes about your potential as a business. Many potential buyers will pay attention to your score because it’s living proof of how trustworthy your business is.
Besides, other high authority websites will be more willing to backlink to your website if you have high DA sites score.
Conclusion
To sum it up, increasing your domain authority is a good technique that can help you rank higher in SERPs.
However, keep in mind that DA is not a ranking factor!
We know it sounds a bit counter-intuitive, but just because you work on improving your DA score doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll rank on the first page of Google.
Then why does everybody talk about it?
As Moz put it, their tool just tries to predict if your website will rank well, as nobody truly knows how Google’s algorithms work.
But think about it this way!
When you’re learning about how to get domain authority, you’ll inevitably improve your SEO domain authority score and you’ll network with other people with legitimate sites in the industry to get quality backlinks.
When other big businesses talk about your brand, it means that they recognize your potential. Thus, they’ll expose your brand to a wider audience, and people will be more inclined to trust your business.
In the end, this is what boosts your website’s traffic and increases your sales – what we’d like to call an SEO success!
So, even if domain authority is not a ranking criterion, working towards a high score means that you’re on the right track and your business will be more visible on the internet!
