Since more traffic can lead to more conversions and more revenue, having a strong Domain Authority is important to SEO.
What is Domain Authority? Do you know your website’s Domain Authority? Domain Authority is a metric developed by Moz.com to evaluate how well a website will rank according to Google. Higher Domain Authority is correlated to higher traffic to your website and higher visibility. Since more traffic can lead to more conversions and more revenue, having a strong Domain Authority is important to SEO.
You can see your website’s DA — as well as the authority for any website on the web — by downloading Moz’s free SEO Toolbar. But how is it calculated?
How Is Domain Authority Determined?
There are a variety of factors that go into your website’s Domain Authority. Remember, DA is intended to be a reflection of how well your website ranks. Thus, many of the same factors apply to both. These include:
• Links from authoritative and credible websites to your own website
• Keyword-rich content that is unique and updated regularly
• Signals that suggest your website is relevant and credible
One of the biggest factors in DA is your link profile. This is the number of links that go from other websites to your own website. Links are like referrals. They indicate that your website is relevant to a topic, is credible and is worth visiting. Therefore, Google and DA both use links heavily (although they are by no means the only factor).
Tips to Improve Your Domain Authority
Improving your DA directly is difficult, but it can be done. In general, what you want to do is incorporate as many attractive factors into your website as you can, which includes having a better link profile.
Clean up Your Old Links
If your website is old, you may have a lot of bad links lingering around. These are links that come from content farms, article submission websites, or other websites that have been disavowed by Google over the years. Even if your website isn’t old, you may still have links that contribute nothing to your SEO profile and only harm your DA score.
Increase The Number of Good Links from Outside Sources
Likewise, you may have a few good links — links from websites with high DA scores that are reputable and relevant to your core subject area. These links typically come from permanent links on web pages, blog posts, articles and directories, as well as social media profiles (in some cases).
The goal is to increase the number of good links while eliminating the number of bad links.
Any time you can have someone reference your website and your organization, you can win a good link. Creating unique content that is widely shared and viewed as authoritative is one way you can gain good links.
Public relations — having your expertise shared on other websites, blogs, news sites, etc. — is another.
Create an Internal Link Strategy
Don’t just focus on links outside of your website, though: Focus on internal links (links that connect one page of your website to another), too. Directing a person from the services page to the contact page is an example of a good internal link. The more internal links you have, the better the search engine will be able to crawl your site.
Lay a Firm Foundation with SEO
Naturally, you want your on-page, technical SEO to be solid. Things like keywords, descriptions, meta titles, and everything else involved really matter. You need all of the technical details to be in place before your DA can rise. Without it, your Domain Authority will remain low.
Social Involvement
Likes and shares of your website show Google that people trust your content. It is important to note that the shares must take place from the website and not on the social media channel itself. For example, If I share your blog post directly from your web site, that will help with your Domain Authority. Later, if someone sees that content on my social page and decides to share it from my page to their wall, it wouldn’t help you with Domain Authority. It would help you spread the word, but wouldn’t directly help with DA.
Be Patient
Finally, age is a factor. DA incorporates the age of the domain into the score, so it is natural for a new website to have a low ranking even if your company has been around for decades. That will increase by itself as it gets older, but this part can’t be rushed.
The Importance of Boosting Your Domain Authority and SEO
If you depend on your website for traffic and business results, having a high Domain Authority is key. You need to show Google and other search engines that your website is credible, authoritative, relevant and unique.
Focus on generating new content that people will want to share, spreading the word about your brand, building good links, getting rid of bad links, getting social shares, laying a firm foundation with SEO. That is the recipe for increased DA and increased visibility on the web.