Any entrepreneur will know that search engines can be your best friend, if you know how to play nice with them.
If you want your website to be relevant to your target audience, then having a high Domain Authority (DA) is key.
In this blog post, we’ll cover the nuts and bolts of exactly what domain authority is (and isn’t), and how you can increase the domain authority for your business.
So without further ado, let’s find out what domain authority is, why it’s important, and dive into some of the best ways for entrepreneurs to increase domain authority on their websites.
What is Domain Authority?
Domain authority is a score given to your website to indicate the relevance of your site with respect to your industry or specific topic.
In essence, if your website has a high score, it means that your website is relevant to your niche, and will compete well with other websites competing for the same audience. A high domain authority will certainly increase your chances of attracting more organic followers.
However there is a popular misconception around domain authority. Domain authority is a metric developed by the third-party SEO website Moz. Many believe that an increasing domain authority will affect your search engine rankings.
It won’t, and Moz are very explicit about this point themselves: “Domain Authority is not a Google ranking factor and has no effect on the SERPs.” After all, it wouldn’t make sense for Google to use a metric developed by a third-party.
It is better understood as an indicator of quality, however it is not a driver or quality. It is a way to assess your website next to your competitors. If your competitors have a domain authority of 30, and yours is 45, you’re doing well. If your competitors have a domain authority of 80 whilst yours sits on 45, then you’re much less likely to attract organic traffic.
You may hear the phrases “domain authority” and “page authority” bandied around in the same breath. Yet they aren’t the same thing; domain authority refers to your entire domain’s strength, whereas “page authority” looks at the strength of your individual pages.
How is Domain Authority Determined?
Domain authority is calculated by a range of different factors, including the linking root domains, and total number of links. This score is then used by search engines to use when comparing websites over time.
Ultimately, domain authority will come from a machine learning algorithm’s predictions about how often Google is using a certain domain in its search results. For example, if domain A has a higher score than domain B, then that domain
Many entrepreneurs often wonder why their Domain score fluctuates, even when no changes have been made to the site. The answer to this is quite simple. Domain authority is based on machine learning calculations; that means that when data points get added or removed from the calculation, your domain authority will be boosted or decreased.
Here are some of the most common factors that increase domain authority:
- The number of websites linking to your webpage, and their quality.
- The number of websites your page links to, and the quality of those sights.
- The number of unique links you have to or from your webpage.
- The quality of the websites you’re linked to. If you link to a government website, a university webpage or large organisation.
- Websites with a high DA will have a website that is easy for Google to crawl your page, and how easy it is for users to crawl your page.
How to Increase Domain Authority
1. Get Quality Backlinks
A study by Ahrefs showed that 55% of websites don’t get any organic traffic just because they don’t have any backlinks. That’s why high quality backlinks are more important than ever.
One way to start getting decent backlinks is to check your top referral sources, and find sites that might be similar for backlink opportunities.
2. Audit your Site and Remove Poor Links
Having quality backlinks is essential. However, having low quality backlinks can actually do more harm than good. In fact, links from spammy websites can lead to penalties from Google.
There are a variety of SEO analysis tools out there to monitor the quality of the links arriving at your site.
However if you can’t remove your links, you use the Google Search Console to disavow those links, and prevent Google from taking those links into account.
