What is Domain Authority? And 5 Easy Ways to Improve it

In some ways, this is one of the most overlooked SEO ranking factors. On the one hand, this is because it is often misunderstood. It also requires a lot of hard work to improve We’ll cover several different angles around this term and even help improve your site’s domain authority. IN A RUSH?! Click for our < 90-second snapshot:

What is Domain Authority?

Contrary to what you may be thinking, Google did not develop domain authority. Instead, this is a term and ranking factor that was developed by Moz. Moz is one of the leading companies when it comes to helping with search engine rankings for people. It is a great product to use for research, but it can be pricey at times. However, Domain Authority is a term that was coined by Moz, and it is definitely one that you are going to want to know what it includes.

• This is a score that Moz has put together to help you figure out how your website may rank in the search engine results.
• You will find that the score will be composed of several different factors, and each of those will make a difference in how well the website will rank. So you will want to learn about how domain authority is calculated and what factors will be seen in the ranking and score.

But why should you care? The short answer is that domain authority is a huge part of how rankings are calculated. That is, factors which determine your DA, such as your backlink profile, contribute as much as a fifth of your SERP positions:

How Is Domain Authority Calculated?

While Moz has not come out with the complete formula for a good reason, it is well known that several factors are going to be used in figuring out the score. The first factor you will want to know about is the number of links coming from a root domain. This is going to mean that you will be getting the credit for only a single link at a time from each domain. So this means you will want to try building up a diverse link profile to get more credit to your website. The second factor that you will find will be the factors that will come from the links you have coming into your site overall. These links will make a difference for your website and will include multiple links from a single website. These are the two main factors that are coming into the domain authority and how it will rank for your website.

How to Check your Domain Authority

This is something that you will want to figure out. When looking at this, you will want to make sure you look at several different websites, as they will generally use the formula to figure out your ranking. This will help you in knowing how much authority your website carries. For instance, you can check your domain and page authorities using this free tool from Moz.

This will allow you to know more about the changes you need to make and also give you a better idea of how your website will look in the eyes of the search engines. There is one thing you should understand here. That is the difference between the terms page authority and domain authority.  Some people tend to use these terms interchangeably, but they are not interchangeable and will make a difference in how you view your website or pages.

What is The Difference Between Domain Authority and Page Authority

This is a factor that you need to understand as well. That is because some companies will teach you these are the same exact terms.  However, they are different and will make a difference in how you view your site and pages. Since this is the case, we will also cover some of the differences between these two terms.  With that being the case, it is time to cover these two terms so you can learn more about them. Domain authority is one of the terms you will find to talk about the root domain. This means if your website is mysite.com, you will get a domain authority that will be based on the factors noted above for the domain authority for the root domain. Page authority is similar to domain authority but applies to individual pages on your site.

How to Improve Your Website’s Domain Authority

While improving the DA of a website is no easy task, it can be done. To improve your website’s domain authority, the best thing you can do is maintain a good link profile.  Therefore, you need to eliminate the spam backlinks leading to your website and work on gaining backlinks with authority for your website.

How to Get Rid of Bad Links

In general, getting rid of the bad links leading to your website is easy. You can request that the website remove all links leading to your website. If this fails, you can simply disavow the links. Use Google’s Disavow Tool to get rid of spam backlinks.

How to Gain Good Backlinks

Chances are, you will find that gaining good backlinks for your website is considerably more difficult. Your first option is to pay for the services of an excellent SEO agency. A good SEO agency will have relationships with writers and websites and will be able to provide you with legitimate and high-quality backlinks. While this is a good option, it can also be pricey. Your second option is to create a website with valuable content that attracts links by merit. This tactic is referred to as content marketing. You can then conduct a backlinking campaign yourself without paying an agency to do it for you. Done well, content marketing is often the best solution for gaining domain authority. The number of domains linking to your site also directly impacts your Google rankings:

Here are some steps that will help you master the art of content marketing so that you can improve your domain authority and attract more organic traffic from search engines.

1. Be Sure You Have Technical SEO in Place

Before you start trying to boost the DA of your website, you should focus on the technical aspects of search engine optimisation first. Good SEO will serve as the foundation for your attempts to improve the DA of your website. You may not want to make changes to your website, but you need certain features to optimise your search engine. The basis of your efforts to improve DA should be technical SEO. To improve overall SEO for your website, some other details you need to focus on include meta tags, site structure, header tags, breadcrumbs, navigability, word count, meta tags, keywords, header tags, keywords, and alt tags. You will find that content marketing and SEO go hand in hand and rely on each other. Once your SEO tactics are up to snuff, you can focus on creating good content.

2. Publish Valuable Content

Content marketing has a significant impact on the domain authority of a website. Therefore, you want to start content marketing in order to attract backlinks leading to your site from websites with authority. If you want to start content marketing, you need to have lots of linkable content on your website. Therefore, you should strive to publish articles, blog posts, and guides on your website every day. The longer the content is, the better for your content marketing efforts. Articles and blog posts that are 2,400 words or longer tend to rank more highly in search engines. While publishing content every day will definitely take a lot of work; you will find that it will pay off significantly. However, be certain that you focus on quality and not just quantity. It is better to publish a quality post every few days than to publish bad content every day. Your content needs to have value, power, and authority. If you don’t have the time or ability to produce excellent content regularly, you should hire a writer to regularly produce content for your website.

3. Focus on Internal Linking

While it’s important to form high-quality backlinks to your website, you also want to focus on creating high-quality internal backlinks. Not only will internal linking make your website easier to navigate, but it will also help improve the website’s domain authority. Internal linking is a great way to create a network within your website that is beneficial for both your users and the robots that index and crawl your website for search engines. If your website lacks internal links, it will be viewed as weak and disconnected. However, a website with strong internal links will be viewed as unbreakable and interconnected. You will find it easier to achieve strong internal linking if you have more content. This is because you will have more content to link to other pieces of content. Also, you may get more views for your content as your readers will be more likely to move on to the next blog post instead of leaving your website.

4. Be on the Lookout for Toxic Backlinks

Undoubtedly, search engine optimisation is not all fun and games. In fact, SEO can be a lot of repetitive work and analysing data. While SEO is not easy, the results of SEO make the hard work worthwhile. Therefore, you need to constantly audit your site for toxic backlinks. Once you’ve identified spam backlinks, you need to work on getting rid of them immediately. If you regularly clean your website’s link profile, you will enjoy a major competitive advantage. The last thing you want to do is wait until you experience an algorithm penalty or a manual penalty for starting monitoring and cleaning up your link profile. You should check your link profile at least once or twice a month so that you never have to experience a penalty. Also, keep in mind that having the best backlinks in the world will not negate the bad impact of having many spam backlinks leading to your website. If you fail to remove the bad backlinks, you can count on the DA of your website remaining low.

5. Patience Is a Virtue

Patience is a virtue, and this is certainly true when it comes to improving your domain authority. As long as you follow the tips and steps discussed above, the DA of your website will rise over time. One factor that determines your DA is the age of the domain. Unfortunately, this factor isn’t discussed frequently when it comes to achieving a higher DA. The older a domain is, the higher the website’s domain authority will be. A historic domain is far more likely to have a high DA than a brand-new domain. You can use the Domain Age Tool created by Webconfs.com. However, you should keep in mind that domain age does not guarantee domain authority. If the domain is not maintained, does not have fresh content, and has a bad link profile, it will lose domain authority. As long as you are persistent when it comes to content marketing, you can expect the DA of your website to rise over time. Be patient and know that wins when it comes to search engine optimisation don’t occur in a day. They can take months or years to occur.

Conclusion: Getting A High Domain Authority Takes Time

You will find plenty of information and guides on the Internet about how to build domain authority for a website. While you should definitely follow this advice, you should also keep the bigger picture in mind. You won’t be able to tweak a few things and suddenly improve the DA of your website drastically. You need to improve the ranking, traffic, and organic search results of your website before you will see results when it comes to domain authority. Some related articles that will help you understand more about the Google Algorithm and domain authority: Google’s Caffeine Update Google EAT Update Google’s Your Money or Your Life Update Google’s Bert Update Google’s Medic Update Google Rankbrain Update Google Hummingbird Update Content marketing is the best way to go when it comes to improving the domain authority of your website.