Want to improve your website’s search engine ranking and visibility? One crucial factor to consider is your site’s domain authority.
The authority and credibility of your website determine this metric. Google and other search engines use it to rank your content on SERP.
Improving your domain authority leads to more traffic to your site. So, let’s dive in and explore how to increase your domain authority.
What is DA Domain Authority
About SEO, domain authority (DA) is a crucial metric to understand. Developed by Moz, domain authority predicts a website’s search engine ranking potential.
Keep in mind domain authority is different from the authority of a single web page. Domain authority evaluates the credibility and trustworthiness of a website and its subdomains. But, page authority focuses on the ranking potential of individual pages.
Established websites like Google, Apple, and Microsoft have a high DA, ranging from 95 to 100. So, new websites tend to have a lower DA, usually between 10 and 20.
You also need to understand that it is easier to increase the DA of a site from 20 to 30 than from 70 to 80. So the general classification of ratings is something like this:
- Up to 30 – low.
- From 30 to 40 – below average.
- 40 to 50 is average.
- 50 to 60 is good.
- From 60 to 70 – very good;
- Above 80 is excellent.
Besides the domain authority, there are two other forms:
- Link Authority = The authority lies with a link, not an entire website.
- Page Authority = The authority lies with a single subpage of a domain.
How DA Score Affects SEO
DA is a Moz metric, not a direct ranking factor for Google.
DA is correlated with website quality, link profile, and search engine rankings. Also, research by Ahrefs has found that websites with a higher DA tend to receive more organic traffic.
While DA can be a useful metric, it should not be used as the sole indicator of a website’s performance. Instead, use (DA) with other metrics to completely understand website performance. For example, Page Authority.
Also, remember that (DA) doesn’t consider any penalties or sanctions a website may have. Thus, it is not a definitive result but a prediction of a website’s search engine performance.
DA is better for evaluating competitors than for evaluating a website’s performance. But, it can show a website’s development level and help identify the most effective ones.
How The DA of a Site is Calculated
When calculating Domain Authority (DA), Moz considers over 40 different signals. These include the number and quality of inbound links, the website’s age, and content.
The algorithm is automated, meaning the DA score can fluctuate as the input data changes. For example, if a website loses active links, its DA score will decrease.
DA score is a 100-point scale. A higher score indicates a more credible and authoritative website. It’s easier to improve the DA score for a new website with a low score than for a high-score established website.
Boosting the DA score for an established website requires more time and effort.
What Factors Affect DA
Link profile quality. If a site ranks well in the SERPs, it often shows that enough trusted authority sites are linking to it. This indicator is evaluated using MozRank and MozTrust by the tool.
Page authority. The size of the Domain Authority of the entire project is affected by each page.
Social reactions. The more reactions to content, the more likely it is to rank, and the domain authority score will be higher.
Content quality. The main thing here is taking into account the user’s intent.
The general condition of the site. Compliance of the resource with niche features, usability, and user-friendliness.
Domain Authority VS Page Authority
The domain authority is separate from the page authority in SEO. While the former only assesses a single web page, DA evaluates the whole domain or subdomain.
Besides, the essential factors for the DA are:
- The age of the domain
- The trust placed by Google
- The popularity of the site
Google favors old, established websites with higher rankings as they are considered trustworthy. But, new websites need more effort for rankings, as they need to establish credibility.
Google often puts new domains in a “sandbox” and may not have high rankings.
Popularity, determined by backlinks, is a crucial factor in website search engine ranking. Backlinks determine website credibility and popularity and affect search engine visibility.
Links to a website’s pages affect popularity and rankings in quantity and quality.
How To Check Domain Authority?
Now that you know how to increase domain authority, let’s look at a few tools to check your site’s DA.
- Moz Link Explorer
- Ahrefs
- SEMrush
5 Effective Ways To Increase DA
SEOs spend a lot of time on increasing DA. The downside of this approach is that they only focus on domain authority, which you should wait to do. It is vital to optimizing the site internally and externally comprehensively. Resource position will improve over time; site visibility will increase.
Quality Link Building
The rule “more links – better for the site” no longer works and does not bring results. Today, it is not the quantity that matters but the quality. Therefore, focus on getting links from trustworthy and authoritative domains to raise Domain Authority.
Cleaning Low-Quality Backlinks To The Site
Toxic links decrease promotion success and reduce the chances of high SERP rankings. Avoid guest posting on such sites and track them to prevent them from appearing.
Viral Marketing
I want to share unique content. This leads to increased links, thus improving the site’s ranking and raising its Moz DA. Launching such a stream is not easy, but if you manage to interest readers, the links will quickly grow.
On-Page & Off-Page SEO
DA is unrelated to an individual page rank, but the rank score forms the final figure. So, optimizing each page and linking them to each other is essential.
Preparing Quality Content
Interesting, relevant content will bring natural links to the site. High-authority websites often link to valuable resources that benefit the user.
Like, downloadable content or informative collections.
Domain authority (DA) from Moz is one of the vast lists of SEO metrics. In addition, Moz has a large link database and can analyze it, providing accurate SEO insights.
But focusing just on increasing DA needs to be corrected. You need to work on the site fully.
Off-Page Factors That Can Affect The Authority Of A Website:
- Lots of domain links compared to the environment.
- Links didn’t all come about at once but rather organically over time.
- The links point explicitly to various subpages from high-quality, trustworthy websites.
- Many mentions in forums, question and answer portals, or social media.
- Outgoing links refer to high-quality websites and offer the user meaningful, further information.
- If a well-known author writes for a website, this can also increase domain authority.
- Good social signals
Authority is usually a naturally grown website that has been able to “make a name” for itself over time. Thus, the older a domain is, the higher the chance it will become an authority. But, this also covers instances where a young site can quickly gain authority.
Why Does Domain Authority Drop?
Any way to increase domain authority is not guaranteed to be 100% effective. What’s more, Domain Authority can decline over time, even if the site has stayed the same.
Therefore, there is no point in chasing points. Instead, the best use of the metric is to check donors before placing links, but only at a specific time.
Domain authority can decrease because:
- Links disappear from the profile;
- updated algorithm for calculating DA;
- The site is slowly developing;
- reduced visibility in organic search;
- A lot of spammy backlinks appeared;
- There is a sharp outflow of links after the “explosion”;
- Some donors lost their ratings.
We have compiled answers to asked questions about Domain Authority. Review them to fill any gaps in understanding metrics and feature calculation.
