Domain Authority, abbreviated as DA, is a metric that shows your website’s authority.
A higher domain authority indicates a high ranking on the Search Engine Results Pages and attaining increased organic followers.
The DA measurement has numbers between 0 and 100 with 100 as the highest.
The concept of giving ranks to domains grounded upon their authority arose from PageRank, and it is utilised till now to rank websites and web pages.
A website’s DA is a number ranging between 0 and 100 that is used to determine the ranking of a site on the SERPS. It isn’t like the algorithm utilised by Google to decide your website’s rankings.
Developers of the domain authority system were trying to imitate the algorithm used by Google to rank sites by considering all known aspects that are likely to affect your ranking.
They then give your domains a score that can only be utilised for comparison reasons alone.
In short, DA relies on the information that the developers have concerning your website.
Sometimes this data is not as correct as the data Google has on your site.
Its common to have a small domain DA but have a high rank on Google’s results pages.
- Domain Authority doesn’t consider the penalties induced by Google. Domains that get penalised by Google drops their rankings. So, a domain can still have a high domain authority even when it’s under penalty.
- Domain Authority measures only 40 aspects while Google’s algorithm for ranking considers over 200 factors.
- Changing your domain authority is not a simple task. You cannot implement it on your site and expect to have a high DA right away.
- Domain authority is founded on a differential scale. It means that it is simpler to increase your DA from 15 to 25 than from 75 to 85.
- DA varies regularly. So, it is not a measurement to utilise when evaluating the performance of your SEO as time goes but instead a site metric to utilise for purposes of comparing domains.
Domain authority gets determined by taking into consideration various signals, including:
- The general performance of your SEO
- The reputation of your domain and content on social media platforms. They are commonly known as social signals.
- The superiority of content on your website
- The number of backlinks to your site
- The relevance and quality of backlinks
To know the score of your DA, visit Moz Open Site Explorer and key in the domain then observe the results. The results show your Domain Authority and Page Authority scores.
PA and DA are similar. The only difference is that Page Authority utilises elements that are particular to a specific page instead of Domain-based metrics. The assigned score is an estimate that shows the potency of a webpage and how strong it is on the SERPs.
A site with a high PA will always have a high DA.
7 Useful Steps on How You Can Increase the Value of Your DA
Now that you understand what DA is and the methods you can use to calculate it let’s have a look at what you need to do to enhance your DA.
Keep in mind that any strategy you use to improve your domain authority can also enhance your ranking and general SEO performance.
You can follow the steps below to enhance your Domain Authority:
Step #1: Improve the Off-Page SEO of Your Site
The link profile of your website is a generally crucial metric when determining your DA. Sites with a robust link profile will always have a more excellent Domain Authority score than sites with a weak link outline.
What does the term great link profile mean?
A site with a robust link profile:
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- Has backlinks out of high-authority sites
- Has incoming links from websites in the same field of business as you
- Does not contain poor-quality links
- Contains links from various exceptional domains.
How can you enhance your link outline?
The practice of refining the link profile is referred to as Off-Page SEO. It is connected with the strategies you can utilise to develop quality connections that will boost your rankings in the long run.
You can use these tips to strengthen your link outline and increase your DA.
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- Do away with bad links. The step involves using analytic tools like SEMrush and Moz Explorer to indicate bad links. Then, you can add the “nofollow” tag or get rid of the link to devalue it. If that doesn’t work, you are capable of removing the link out of your profile using the Google Disavow Tool.
- Develop good backlinks from more related sites. Link building is a tricky and challenging aspect of SEO. A lot of things can be said about link building. It is a massive topic that is hard for beginners to comprehend and implement.
If you’re new to SEO, we suggest that you first learn the stepwise strategies of building quality links.
To provide you with a general idea of the process; there are two primary methods of developing good links.
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Post quality content that will invite links from various related websites.
It is referred to as organic link building. The idea behind this strategy is that another related business owner comes across your content, reads your blog posts, love it, and connect to it on their posts.
For it to be operational, it is crucial to develop quality and relevant content that is worth linking. Simply put material that is intuitive, relevant, and simple to read is what attracts other webmasters to link your articles in their content.
Practically, this process is precious. However, you must be enduring since it takes time to attract sufficient readership to make some of your audience link your posts to their posts.
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The second method of creating good links is by reaching out to other business owners in your field of business and familiarising them with the fact that you are present.
By executing this, you raise the likelihood of linking your site to their content.
Step #2: Improve Your On-Page SEO
The second step in increasing your DA is to focus on the on-page SEO of your site.
Its deals entail optimising your web pages and the content on them. The most important aspects to consider if you want to enhance the on-page SEO are:
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- Enhanced titles and meta descriptions
- Appropriate utilisation of headings in your content. Separate different ideas on your articles using the suitable headings and subheadings
- Use of quality URLs and permanent links that are SEO enhanced
- The utilisation of optimised videos, images and other visual content
- Including your keywords logically – no stuffing your content with keywords
- Incorporating internal links in the material. It is a robust SEO strategy since it shows google the page to display when users search for specific
- Formatting content in a manner that increases your chances to rank high on Google’s snippets
Mentioning that quality content is among the most significant ranking consideration for both on and off-page strategies of SEO is good. As Google states in its SEO guides, you should provide fresh content that satisfies the needs of your audience. Your site is your storefront. And the same way you cannot leave your store unattended for a prolonged period. Ensure that you keep your website fresh by adding blogs, and announcing special offers, sales, and new products. Remember to create content based on the needs of your audience.
Step #3: Put Focus on The Technical SEO
It is associated with insignificant SEO chores. After doing technical SEO correctly the first time, you don’t think about it again.
However, if you do not have the right technical SEO for your website, it can hurt your rankings and Domain Authority.
The Technical SEO aspects you require to consider are:
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- Enlist your site with Bing Webmaster and Google Search Console tools.
- Develop and enhance your XML sitemap then submit it to Google.
- Monitor your settings for robots.txt and utilise Fetch as Google to make sure that Google the search engines can easily crawl your site.
- Consider using HTTPS rather than HTTP domains because Google penalises a website that is not secure (HTTPS is a secure HTTP).
- Add structured schema (data) to assist search engines to figure out what your content entails.
- Ensure that your breadcrumb menu is suitably outlined on each of your pages.
- Make good utilisation of hreflang link attribute if you have a site that has different languages.
Step #4: Ensure That Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly
Creating a website that is mobile-friendly is not optional anymore. It is compulsory.
Below are some reasons why:
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- Internet users on mobile platforms in Singapore exceed users on desktop platforms.
- Most users initiate their search using mobile devices and then carry on using the desktop.
- Google uses mobile-friendliness as a metric to rank your website on its results pages.
- Google utilises mobile-first indexing and websites that aren’t friendly to mobile don’t get considered.
- A site that is not responsive and mobile-friendly impacts the DA score negatively
If you are not sure whether your site is mobile-friendly or not, the best thing to do is to visit Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check the domain. Google provides you with an excellent report with suggestions on how you can achieve a mobile-friendly site.
Step #5: Enhance the Load Time of Your Website
Page speed is among the most distinguished metrics of Google’s ranking algorithm. Sites that have a fast loading speed have an extra benefit over sites with a slow loading speed. Improving the loading speed of your website not only improves your domain authority and ranking, but also enhances your website’s user experience. This depicts more signups, leads, and purchases.
Research shows that 40% of internet users do not wait for a website to load for more than 3 seconds. It is not a simple task to bring down the problem of slow site speeds. There are various technical aspects included. If you aren’t an expert in web designing, this step can be challenging.
However, if you can’t hire an expert to improve your loading speed, you can try the following approaches:
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- Utilise a Content Delivery Network (CDN) if your website contains many images and large CSS files.
- Use a streaming platform like YouTube to post your videos.
- Reduce the file size of your pictures.
- Include a plugin for managing your website’s cache
- Reach out your hosting service provider and request them to provide you with information on the performance of your server. If crucial, advance to a stronger server.
Step #6: Boost Your Social Media Signals
Although Google has officially declared that they don’t use social media signals as part of their ranking algorithm, a close connection among pages that have a high rank on social signals and Google exists.
The most popular pages on Google mostly have various social media signals like Tweets, shares, and likes.
If need to improving your DA, use the tips below:
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- Try to focus on your business Facebook page and seek to add your followers.
- Ensure you have a lively presence on social media to increase reactions on the information you post.
- Add your social media buttons to clear the way for users to distribute your content.
- Track how people react to your posts when people share them via social media.
Step #7: Be Enduring
As indicated at the beginning of the article, improving your DA isn’t something that you can achieve overnight.
Domain Authority Crawlers take time to crawl your website and evaluate it after you have included the steps outlined above. So, you have to be enduring.
Already, we have discussed what a website domain authority is and how to boost it to get ahead of the competition.
Here is an overview of the frequently asked questions on website domain authority.
We believe this information will give you additional information about website domain authority and its impact on your online business.
Domain authority is a metric used by search engines developed by Moz.
The primary role of this metric is to gauge and show website reliability and success compared to other similar websites. It ranges from 1 to 100, with #1 being the lowest and #100 being the highest.
SEO experts use DA to foresee or estimate how well a website will rank on search engine results pages.
Consequently, a high domain authority means that the website is likely to rank better than websites with low domain authority.
That said, you should note that domain authority is not an official ranking factor and does not have an impact on your site position on SERPs. Arguably, domain authority will not impact your on-site SEO, but you can use it to evaluate the growth and performance of your site compared to other websites.
It will enable you to make informed decisions when creating SEO and digital marketing campaigns.
Like SEO, domain authority is calculated using more than 40 different factors, such as;
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- Social signals
- Content quality
- Backlink profile
- Root domains
- SEO performance
Based on experience working on different websites, websites with a healthy backlink profile and many links pointing to them have higher domain authority.
The opposite is also true, and we recommend reaching out to multiple websites that are considered an authority in your niche for inbound links.
Google and other search engine algorithms also rely on machine learning to determine which rank a website should be assigned in SERPS.
The algorithm also predicts Google’s chances of displaying a website in SERPs.
That is, if website A is more likely to be displayed on the search engine results page than website B, there is a high likelihood that website A has a higher domain authority than website B.
Like site ranking, domain authority can also drop due to a penalty for violating the SEO recommended practices.
Popular websites with millions of users, such as Facebook, have a high domain authority due to many links that point to them. Such sites leave limited space on the scale for other domains with few robust link profiles.
In addition, it’s easier to increase your website domain from, let’s say, 20 to 30 than to increase the score once the site gets highly ranked in various SERPs for different target keywords.
This is one of the most controversial questions we get from clients, and the debate on which score is considered good or bad has been raging for a year now.
As earlier mentioned, domain authority is measured on a scale of 1 to 100.
After months of research and consulting other SEO experts, below is a list to help you decide if your site’s domain authority is good or bad.
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- Below 30 is poor
- 30 to 40 score is below average
- A score of between 40 and 30 is average
- A score of 50 to 60 is good
- A score of above 60 is excellent
Though there is not yet a defined and globally accepted formula for calculating website domain authority, the above will help you decide whether you should work on your site SEO.
You can also use it to determine the feasibility of your hired SEO agency.
On the same point, a domain authority score of 40 is very good for a new small business.
It’s also a sign that the SEO strategies are working.
However, as the business grows and website pages increases, you will need to adjust your domain authority target accordingly. Ideally, it would be best if you aimed to hit 60 and above.
Domain authority is a metric that Moz developed. Therefore, we recommend using Moz’s custom domain SEO analysis tool to measure your website domain authority.
Apart from DA, this tool will also give you valuable insights into other website elements, such as top-ranking keywords and top pages.
You don’t need any special skills to do the analysis.
All you have to do is copy-paste your website URL to the search bar and click Analyse domain. However, the report’s details may be challenging to comprehend for most people who are not fully conversant with SEO.
Seek professional help from a reputable SEO agency that has been around for over a decade and has a commendable reputation.
Yes, increasing your website domain authority today is possible without spending a fortune. Here are the steps on how to increase website DA.
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- Create high-quality backlinks from many authority sites
- Write and publish powerful content that’s relevant to your audience
- Get rid of toxic links
- Improve social engagement across all platforms
- Optimise your site’s internal links
- Enhance your website user experience
- Work on your off-page SEO strategies
- Put more emphasis on technical SEO
- Ensure your website is 100% mobile-friendly
- Improve your site load time
- Don’t give up
Most of the above steps can be done in-house, but you are better off outsourcing them to a reputable SEO agency.
The agency has a team of professional SEO gurus with years of expertise and the ability to implement site audit recommendations fast.
Outsourcing will also free up your schedule for other equally important business obligations.
Domain authority is a term often loosely used by SEO experts and business owners to describe the performance of their website SEO strategies.
Even though this metric was developed and introduced into the SEO world by Moz, it’s a real and legitimate metric calculated based on a wide array of site ranking signals.
No. Domain authority is a metric that Moz calculates for free. However, it’s an invaluable metric that can help point your SEO strategies in the right direction.
There are many factors that Google uses to determine a website’s definitive ranking on search engine results pages.
Unfortunately, the domain authority score does not directly influence your website’s SEO ranking.
However, it can influence the performance of your SEO campaigns and help you make the right decisions.
After analysing thousands of websites, we can confidently state that a higher website domain authority score often correlates with higher search engine rankings.
Consequently, a high ranking means your website will be more visible on SERPs for the target keywords.
You will also notice a sharp increase in organic traffic and conversion rate (if the site is professionally developed) once the site is ranked at the top for the various high-value keywords.
Domain authority is not a ranking factor, and Moz has repeatedly stated that the metric does not have on SERPs.
Thus, the display of Google ads in SERPs for different target keywords is not influenced by domain authority.
Yes, even though domain authority does not influence your site SEO, it’s an important metric that shows how your website ranks on Google, the leading search engine.
As mentioned earlier, the report generated by Moz will give you a clearer perspective of your website by highlighting the top pages you should focus on and keywords that you should work on to outrank your competitors.
Concisely, domain authority will give you a better understanding of how search engines perceive your website. You can also use it to know how your website fairs compared to the competition.
Domain authority is essential for SEO experts and the firm you hire to work on your website.
However, Google doesn’t use or consider domain authority when ranking websites.
Therefore, it’s not a metric that we can say will improve your website ranking.
Domain authority is a metric by Moz used to gauge sites’ credibility and how search engines perceive your website.
In a nutshell, this metric indicates how successful a website is on SERPs for various target keywords.
Simply put, consider it a metric that shows an overview of your website’s likely performance on search engines.
Page authority (PA) is a relative metric used to gauge a website page’s predictive ranking strength.
On the other hand, a domain authority measures the strength of a domain or subdomain.
Despite the glaring difference, they are calculated using the same software and methodology.
In the context of on-site SEO, you should regularly monitor the page authority to know which pages you should pay more attention to.
Here is a list of the factors that influence page authority.
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- Create fresh content
- Work on earning external links from authority links
- Use images
- Build links to the high-value website pages
- Distribute link juice from website pages with high PA to those with low PA
- Ensure every page has valuable content that resonates with your audience’s expectations and needs
- Work on your website domain authority
- Nurture a habit of removing toxic and broken links from pages
Domain authority is not a static metric. Your site DA can fluctuate due to factors such as changes in your backlink profile and new search engine algorithm updates.
Note that it’s normal for DA to decrease even though every SEO expert’s goal is to increase it continuously.
Change occurs when Google changes its algorithm or Moz changes its site indexing methodology.
Site domain authority is updated every 3-4 weeks.
If your website is new, don’t beat yourself too much to win a high score during the first several months after ranking. Instead, channel your energies into on-site SEO, off-site SEO, and technical SEO.
Don’ try to wing everything yourself. SEO is complicated and is often considered impossible to master.
You are better off having an SEO agency on your side working behind the scenes to ensure that every section of your website complies with all Google’s recommended SEO practices.
As mentioned earlier, the highest domain authority is 100, and the lowest is 1. Some of the websites with the highest domain authority are;
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- Apple.com – 100
- Youtube.com – 100
- Google.com – 100
- Microsoft.com – 99
- Blogger.com – 99
These websites have been around for over half a decade, are considered an authority in their respective niches, and have thousands of inbound links from authority websites in different niches.
They all enjoy top-ranking and massive organic traffic that makes it impossible for their competitors to knock them off the top positions.
Page Authority is essential for SEO, just like domain authority, as it represents a website page ranking capability in search engine results pages (SERPs).
The higher the page authority score, the more credible and powerful the page is considered by Google.
Also, pages with a high PA stand a better chance of ranking higher than those with low PA. The Moz team advises that the PA score is a comparative SEO metric, not an absolute score.
It would be best if you did not consider it solely in conjunction or relation with other known ranking signals such as backlink profiles and social signals.
That’s it about domain authority, but this list of questions is far from comprehensive. Don’t hesitate to contact the MediaOne Marketing team for more information about it and other ranking factors used by search engines.
Over the years, we have provided world-class SEO services to businesses in different industries. Call us on +65 6789 9852 to book a free SEO consultation session.
결론
Do not be very passionate about your DA score. It is only a numeral that indicates the strength of your domain when compared with other websites.
A low Domain Authority score doesn’t imply that your site will not have a good rank on Google.
Also, a high Domain Authority score does not warrant that you will generate more traffic or get a higher rank.
Always think of long-term success, which entails developing a site that will get a quality ranking on the search engines over time.
