What Is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority (DA) is used by some brands and companies to evaluate and analyze the results of their digital strategy.

Ok, what does this mean? Does one really need to strive for improvement? Is a high Domain Authority going to help rank higher on Google?

The short answer is no. Although Domain Authority can be an excellent metric for determining the status of websites relative to other competitors, it is not a ranking factor in Google. Let me explain why it’s nevertheless an important performance indicator for your webpage.

What is Domain Authority?

First, we need to clearly define Domain Authority. Domain Authority (DA), a metric that Moz first created, predicts the likelihood of a domain appearing in the SERPs compared with its competitors.

Like said before, it is important to emphasize that Google doesn’t use Domain Authority. It is not a ranking factor that will increase your rank in search engine results pages (SERPs). It is a useful indicator to help you evaluate the performance of your website relative to other websites.

Nowadays, this metric is not only used by Moz. Different SEO tools such as SEMrush have developed their own metric – which is an algorithm that uses data from backlinks, referring domains, or search traffic, among others, to decide the authority score. However, all algorithms give you an idea how your site’s health is doing relative to other sites.

What is a good score?

Moz’s Domain Authority search engine ranking scores range from 1 to 100. Higher numbers indicate better SERP results. This metric is based on both the quality and quantity of links a webpage has received.

A page with backlinks from pages of high authority, such as Wikipedia, Google, or governmental pages, will have a greater chance of getting a higher score.

It will depend on the industry and the nature of the website to determine if it is more likely (and more valuable) to have backlinks.

For example, local business websites, however, will prefer to be linked to by local newspapers or industry magazines. These backlinks are more valuable for the target audience and can even be obtained from lower domain authorities.

Each business is therefore different in how they determine good Domain Authority. It is important to analyze the top competitors and draw conclusions that are tailored for your website based on their rankings.

How do I check my rating?

On Moz, you can check your website’s Domain Authority for free through Link Explorer. Simply enter the root URL of your domain (such as ikangai.com), and your website’s score is displayed automatically.

Other features include the number and type of unique external links domains (linking domains), unique pages linking back to a page (inbound links) and the total number keywords this website ranks within the top 50 Google positions (ranking keywords).

Domain Authority vs. Page Authority

Domain Authority measures the likelihood that an whole domain will rank in the SERPs. Page Authority, however, focuses on the probability that each page of the website will rank.

This allows you to assess the performance of each page, such as blog posts and product pages. You can then analyze which pages might need to be tweaked to achieve a higher score.

The Page Authority indicator will help you to prioritize and determine the next steps in your digital strategy. It is based on pages that have the greatest potential for improvement.

How to increase Domain Authority

Let’s now put this into practice. How can you increase Domain Authority and rank higher than your competition?

Google points out that it’s not about the number of links to your website or the number of domains linked to your site. It’s about the quality of those links. The links that are relevant to what your website is all about, according to Google.

Here are some tips for building Domain Authority:

Quality, before quantity. Prioritize the relevant backlinks before those that aren’t important.
Make quality content. This makes it easier to obtain natural backlinks.
Update your older content. You can go through pages that have unindexed content, or low page authority scores and add information to the user’s interest.
Compare yourself with your competitors. You can increase the visibility of your website by analyzing what you do and others do.
Learn where your competitors get their backlinks from. Are there similar ones that you can get?
Share your web content. You can also use other channels, such as social media and newsletters to present your ideas in a unique and original way.

Building your Domain Authority takes time. You won’t see immediate results. These practices can help increase website visibility in SERPs, with the goal of driving more traffic to your site.

Source: hubspot

Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash