There are several hundred factors Google takes into consideration in order to determine how a website ranks on its search engine. One particular factor that has gained high importance with time is the “domain authority” of a website.
Developed by Moz, Domain Authority is a logarithmic score or metric on a 100-point scale that forecasts how well your website will rank on search engines. You should use Domain Authority to compare sites or track the strength and potency of your site over time. This metric is effectively calculated by bringing other domain authority factors or metrics into play such as the number of total links, linking root domains MozTrust, MozRank etc. to calculate a unified score.
It should be noted that it’s easier to grow your score from 20 to 30 as opposed to growing it from 70 to 80. What’s interesting to know is that Google itself and the wildly popular social media site Facebook boast a “DA score” of 100. However, this is not to say that sites with a DA in the 50-90 range are inferior. A Domain Authority score of 40-50 is regarded as average, while a 50-60 score is good and anything over 60 is considered outstanding.
This DA score value is actually a comparative one and your site’s score may fluctuate, especially if it isn’t updated regularly. For this reason, it is generally best to rely on Domain Authority as a competitive metric against other sites rather than a historic measure of your SEO efforts.
By the way, did you know 24% of Google’s ranking algorithm is based on factors represented by the domain authority score?
Why is Domain Name Authority Important Today?
The higher your Domain Authority, the better chances there are of your website ranking high on search engines and receiving more traffic. This metric is also an accurate way of measuring SEO efforts and the “strength” of your website versus your competitors’ sites.
To put it mildly, Domain Authority is very important for a number of reasons; it lets you judge the overall performance of your site, being the most important one. It also allows you to run a comparison to see where you currently stand by comparing your DA score with your competitor’s.
When you have successfully identified the domain authority of other sites, you can determine which sites are worth linking your content to. Some of these sites are high authorities in your respective industry and it would be wise to establish a long-term relationship with them in order to boost your own authority over the web. What’s more, you’ll be enjoying higher traffic flooding your web pages.
Domain Authority versus Page Authority: What’s the Difference?
Before attempting to understand domain name authority any further, it is important to differentiate it from page authority.
While page authority (PA) can be seen as a similar metric, it measures the ranking strength or prowess of a single web page, as opposed to measuring the strength of an entire domain/sub-domain.
It is advisable to use PA and DA as comparative metrics while researching search results and going through the process of determining what sites or pages have stronger or more important link profiles than others.
Even though certain metrics like MozRank can give answers to raw link popularity and link counts can display the raw numbers of pages or sites linking, authority numbers are high-level metrics that are best determined by asking: “How strong are this page’s links when helping them rank high in Google queries?”
Common Attributes of Domain Authority
Moz utilizes a number of factors to influence your domain authority score, over 40 to be precise, but here are the most prominent ones:
Linking Root Domains
This refers to the number of unique backlinks your website has secured. For example, if your site has gotten 2 external links from two separate websites, you’ve had two linking root domains.
Earn a few links from different websites to boost your ranking score more effectively rather than attempting to earn several links from one website only.
MozRank
As mentioned earlier, this metric judges the strength of your site’s external links. It considers the number of links pointing to your site as well as the quality of those links. Remember, quality always trumps quantity – one good external link is far better than having two or four low-quality ones. For this purpose MozRank rates websites on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the highest. The average rating of a website is usually 3 on this scale.
MozTrust
Like the above, MozTrust is another metric which can determine the quality of external links. What it does is it measures how closely your site is connected to trusted sites (.edu or .gov sites). Consider this: if a .gov or .edu site links to a site that eventually links back to you, it’s regarded as a sign of trust. This boosts your MozTrust rating, which again, is on a scale of 0-10.
Quality Content
No surprise here – the quality of your site’s content is what determines its domain authority, as content is among the chief factors on which your site’s search engine ranking is based on. Therefore, domain authority closely correlates with your SEO efforts.
Social Signals
One of the main factors Google uses in identifying high quality content is social signals. For instance, content that is liked, shared and commented on several hundred times has to be of high quality. Moz makes use of the same social signals when it comes to determining domain name authority.
Search Engine Friendliness
This has to do with the user-friendliness, site structure and SEO of your website. Poor structure is something that does not make your site easily navigable, and therefore, affects usability. In addition, search engines find it difficult to efficiently crawl and index your site. This can really hurt your rankings which is a pivotal factor when it comes to your domain authority ranking.
Achieving Success with a High DA Score: Case Study
Famed digital marketer and influencer Neil Patel grew traffic at the TechCrunch website by 30% by increasing his domain authority score in 6 months. Here are the 4 steps he took to success:
Proper Site Indexing
Appropriate XML sitemap files were created to instruct search engines to index the TechCrunch website properly.
Pagination guidelines were implanted to assist search engines in determining how to best handle single as well as a series of pages, which can be reach by several URLs. This boosted site indexing and reduced internal duplicate content times.
Internal PageRank was improved through the flow of authority between inbound links; the TechCrunch team utilized the full network to drive links back to the site.
“Related post’ links were added to every page of content on the site. This improved site indexing and increased visitor engagement by providing readers more articles of interest.
Optimize On-page Code
On-page code optimizations were made; title tags on all internal pages saw optimization to provide highly valuable and keyword-rich information to search engine spiders/crawlers as well as website visitors.
Added <h1> tags and headline tags to internal pages to make target keywords stand out better.
Optimized image ALT tags while file name attributions were added to internal content pictures throughout the content.
Completely relevant content sources were added wherever possible, which maximized SEO’s potential for link blending.
Leverage Network Assets
Page Authority was increased; optimization efforts utilized TechCrunch’s international websites, thereby boosting the amount of PA (page authority) flowing back to the main website.
Inbound links were created which pointed to certain properties in the network such as TechCrunch Europe, Crunchgear, TechCrunch Enterprise etc.
Maximum Social Media Marketing
The website’s social media share buttons were reorganized; the TechCrunch team was able to control specific sites on which users shared their content. This allowed them to get more traffic from the networks they really wanted.
The team was also able to build relationships with the highest ranking social media contributors like Reddit which resulted in ‘power users’ contributing to TechCrunch content. This effectively boosted the content’s “social proof”. These power users’ audience members were cultivated to drive higher traffic to the site.
Efforts were coordinated with top social networks to influence them to upvote TechCrunch’s content. Articles were better seeded on these social media sites, which lead to much higher inbound traffic and maximum exposure.
Follow these guidelines religiously to boost your domain authority score and see your traffic as well as online authority growing right before you very eyes.
Successfully Making the Most of the Domain Authority Metric
Here’s how you can increase your domain authority score in 9 easy steps:
1. Pick a Great Domain Name
You need to go with a domain name that’s 100% relevant to your website. In fact, use a keyword in your domain name that revolves around the kind of product or service you provide. Choose a domain name that’s fairly easy to remember. In case you have one already, see to it that it isn’t about to expire and is renewed for a minimum of 3-5 years.
2. Optimize On-page Content
SEO matters to both your domain authority as well as Google’s search engine ranking. As such, you need to make sure all on-page code is optimized – this includes image alt tags, title tags and of course, the main content. Also, you should have variations of your main keywords. Keep your permalinks concise and relevant, and don’t forget to create a sidebar for new posts.
3. Come up with ‘Linkable’ Content
Both MozTrust and MozRank regard earning high-quality links from multiple domains as very important; create high-quality content that’s highly shareable and published regularly. The more high quality your content boasts, the higher the chances of other authoritative sites linking to it. So in a nutshell, your content needs to be brand and audience-specific, creative, informative and crafted really well.
4. Improve Internal Linking Map
Don’t fall into the trap of being overly concerned about earning external links as internal links are just as important; they help direct visitors around your site when they are trying to find something specific. This improves their user experience and also makes it easier for search engines to index your entire website. So, let’s say your user is lost in checking out older blogs and wishes to navigate their way to your homepage, they should be able to do so through one of your internal links.
5. Remove All Bad Links
Every now and then, you need to have a thorough look at your link profile to see if there are any bad backlinks. This lets you remove links coming from bad sources which will definitely hurt your DA score. In addition, check the links posted throughout your website that are leading to bad or broken sites, as these will have the same negative impact on your domain name authority.
6. Make Your Site Mobile-friendly
It’s no secret so as to how many people prefer accessing the web through their mobile devices, and if yours isn’t mobile-optimized, you’ll get left behind in the dust. Google prefers to rank mobile-optimized sites highly, so you’re losing a lot of potential visitors at the end of the day, when they realize your site doesn’t display properly on their mobile device. You can use the Mobile-friendly Test by Google Developers page to analyze if your site is mobile-friendly.
7. Strive to be an Authority in Your Niche
You need to create great content and engage with your business and social media followers whenever there’s an opportunity to do so. When you manage to bolster your reputation as an authoritative voice in your niche, you’ll strengthen your brand identity which means denser traffic flooding into your web pages and earning more external links from high-quality, credible sources. You can also increase your authority by making guest blog posts on other websites in your niche.
8. Actively Promote Content through Social Media
Social media signals are a major ranking factor when it comes to boosting your DA score. To get those signals, you need to be promoting content very actively on social media. You can’t afford to just have it sit on your website – it has to be on social channels no matter what. Leave links to your content on social media accounts and find ways to encourage people to like, share and comment on that content. Also, have social share buttons on your web pages.
9. Increase Loading Speed of Web Pages
You certainly don’t want a nasty effect on your bounce rate – poor page loading speed does just that. Users generally have little patience when they’re staring at their screens waiting for your web pages to load. And as such, they will leave without a second thought. Check out the PageSpeed tool by Google Developers to see where you stand in terms of web page loading speed. This tool analyzes the speed of your website and identifies ways of making it faster for a better user experience.
The Future of SEO Metrics: Domain Authority
Domain authority is actually difficult to influence directly, which isn’t the case with other SEO metrics. Reason being that it’s an aggregate of metrics such as link profile, MozTrust, MozRank and more; each of these have an impact on the DA score. This is intentional as the metric calculates on average how competitive your site is on Google.
The best way to influence domain authority is to give your overall SEO a boost, particularly your link profile which can directly influence MozTrust and MozRank, by acquiring more links from other well-linked-to sources. A digital marketing pioneer like AOK Marketing can help you accomplish just that.
Domain authority continues to be a very important metric as businesses compete to attract larger audiences. If you don’t jump on this bandwagon now, you might get left behind for good.
AOK Marketing – Serving Online Businesses for Nearly Two Decades
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Invest your trust in us by calling 1.888.255.2577 for a FREE consultation. You won’t be disappointed.
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