Want to know, what is Domain Authority and how to use it? It is really important for your website to be visible in the top most pages of the search results.
Search engines like Google can get millions of users to your website, if you can get your website near the top position for the relevant keyword phrases.
This way you can secure a continuous stream of new traffic to your website every single day.
One of the most fundamental elements of SEO strategy is Domain Authority also know as DA, which many bloggers ignore.
In today’s article, we will be discussing a few things which are as follows,
- How Domain Authority is calculated.
- Why Domain Authority matters so much.
- Strategies that you need for improving it.
Table of Contents
What Is Domain Authority And How To Use It
Let’s start with a very basic & fundamental question of what Domain Authority is and how it works.
When someone refers to “Domain Authority” of a website, it simply means, cumulative score of trustworthiness for a given website.
Domain Authority is a metric developed by Moz to predict how likely it is for a website to get display prominently in Search Engine Results Pages also know as SERP.
The first definition refers to a widely assumed general set of criteria for how Google and other search engines order results in search results pages.
Moz took that idea and gave it an official name “Domain Authority”.
Search Engines primarily look for two things
- Relevance of the the content.
- Trustworthiness of the content.
Google is extremely protective of its algorithm and doesn’t reveal much about how its rankings are calculated, other than general advice about publishing quality content.
However, certain SEO experts like Moz have come up with their own estimates for domain authority, which have been shown to highly correlate with actual observed search rankings.
Domain Authority is calculated from 0 to 100, with 0 being the least trustworthy & 100 being the most trustworthy.
Let us first understand how Google Search thinks.
Google Search takes into consideration a mixture of 3 main things. Those are as follows,
- Quality of the content.
- History of the domain.
- Inbound links from other websites.
Domain Authority applies across your entire domain, so every page of your website has the same DA as the other pages.
Pages also have their own ranking authority known as Page Authority.
You might have a very high Domain Authority (DA) but a very low Page Authority (PA) or vice versa.
Why Domain Authority Is Different From Usual SEO Tactics
The first SEO tactic that most bloggers learn is, how to get relevant keywords.
The basic idea is to include important & relevant keywords within the paragraphs of your article in order to increase their likelihood of ranking for queries with similar wordings.
Bloggers who follow this tactic only & ignore other relevant SEO tactics are often baffled to know that, their search rankings are not improving as they had expected.
This might happen due to several different reasons. A few are given below,
The Authority Factor
Remember what we discussed in the beginning?
Search engines need to see both relevance & authority to consider your website for ranking high in Search Engine Result Pages a.k.a SERPs.
Improving your Domain Authority (DA) is critical for improving the overall authority of your website for SERPs.
Without Domain Authority, even the best keyword research strategies are not enough because search engines won’t know whether the content of your website is trustworthy or not.
Website Wide Authority
As we discussed earlier that the Domain Authority applies to the entire website, including all your subdomains, pages & posts.
This makes any investment in your Domain Authority extremely valuable for overall SEO of your website.
Growth And Sustainability
Domain Authority depends on many factors & so it’s really difficult to increase the DA of your website overnight.
Having said that, once you start increasing it then it’s relatively easy to preserve that momentum.
Over time, your domain authority will get higher and higher, boosting your site’s visibility in search results.
This way you can continue reaping the benefits of your Domain Authority for years to come, after establishing it permanently.
Why Should You Measure Domain Authority?
There are many tools available online where you can measure the Domain Autority of your website.
With the help of these tools, you can know where you are on a scale of 0 to 100.
Now the question is, Why should you measure it & why is it so useful?
It is useful because, it’s a good indicator to check if your overall SEO strategy is working or not.
Your domain authority can increase due to quality content & inbound links from other websites, so if you see your DA going up, you can rest assured that you are doing things right.
Additionally, it’s a useful measure for competitive analysis.
Your competitor may have a higher Domain Authority than you. You can apply some of their tactics by knowing their Domain Authority.
How Is Domain authority Increased?
Now let’s discuss, how to increase the domain authority.
Inbound links From Other Websites
This is probably the biggest factor that can do wonders for your website.
Google’s search engine algorithm relies on a system known as PageRank, which basically calculates a website’s trustworthiness based on the quantity & quality of links pointing towards it.
Having said that, the quality of links pointing towards your domain matter more than the quantity.
Links from websites with higher DA pass more authority than links from websites with lower DA.
Also, the domain diversity matters.
Domain diversity means that it’s better to have links from many different sources than it is to have all links from just one source.
Hence, link building is one of the best strategies to increase the Domain Authority of your website.
Your Website Structure
Websites that have a proper structure for search engines to crawl are going to be considered for a higher domain authority than those websites which don’t have a proper structure.
You can help Google in crawling your website by internally linking your pages & posts.
The more internal links that point to a particular page or a post on your website, the more it will be easier for Google to find it.
The Content Quality
Google is really smart & it has inbuilt algorithms that are able to calculate content quality.
Using these algorithms, Google can rank website higher if they have quality content in terms of language, grammar etc.
Not just the quality but the content length also matters in ranking higher.
Domain history
This is one of the main factors in determining the Domain Authority.
You might have noticed that older domains carry more authority than newer ones. However, this may not be true in every single case but can be perceived true overall.
That doesn’t mean that you should get discouraged, if you’re starting a new website from scratch.
You can buy an old domain which already has a decent DA, rather than getting a new one. This can help you in the race.
Domain Authority Checker
There are many tools available in the market which can help you to check the Domain Authority of your website.
Some of the best are given below,
Moz’s Link Explorer
Moz defined the term “Domain Authority”.
You can use its link explorer tool to calculate the DA of your website get a detailed analysis of all the links pointing towards it.
You can use the tool for free, but you will have to pay for full access.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is also similar to Moz where you will find a set of SEO tools that give you a detailed analysis of your website.
All you have to do is fill in the URL of your website & check. You can find out the DA, PA, backlinks, SEO & more.
SEMrush
SEMrush is a paid search analytics tool, but you can make 10 free queries when you create an account.
You can have a 1 month free trail.
With it, you’ll get access to measure DA, PA & SEO related data such as search rankings and organic traffic.
How To increase domain authority?
There are certain ways by which you can increase the Domain Authority of your website.
Produce High Quality content
The first & foremost thing that you should do is produce high quality content for your blog on a regular basis.
High quality content not only increases the DA of your website, but it also serves as a reference point for many other websites which can connect to your domain by providing links towards it.
High quality content includes no spelling and grammatical mistakes, a decent vocabulary, natural speech patterns & links to other valuable sources.
It’s also important to publish new content regularly since Google favors newly published content. Aim to produce at least one or two high quality post per week, if not more.
Also, update your old content regularly.
Links From Other Domains
This is the best way to increase your Domain Authority
Having said that, this can be both time consuming & tricky.
Tricky because Google looks out for website those have applied fraudulent measures for getting more inbound link & penalized them.
For example, you can distribute your content on social media, complete with original research and statistics that other content producers will link to.
Conclusion
Earning Domain Authority is not a piece of cake. If you are about to start a blog, you should also start thinking of improving your Domain Authority from the beginning itself.
It takes time, energy & patience, but it’s absolutely worth it.
Spend some time focusing on improving your Domain Authority & in turn get your website on the 1st page of Search Engine Result Pages.