Small business owners want to find out how their site is faring against their competitors online. One way they can gauge their success is by using a metric called Domain Authority. In this article, you’ll learn how Domain Authority can predict how your company’s site will rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).
What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority (DA) is a metric developed by Moz to predict how well a website will rank in different search engines. The company made DA scores available to help site owners assess how search engines view their web pages with as much accuracy as possible.
Moz uses a 0 – 100 scale for Domain Authority. Higher scores indicate that sites will likely rank in the top positions of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).
Source: https://moz-static.s3.amazonaws.com/products/landing-pages/announcements/Authority_Scoring_Guide.pdf
The company calculates Domain Authority using several factors, such as aggregate link quality. These include combining the linking root domains and the number of total links, into a single DA score. Businesses can also use the score when comparing their site against their competitors, and tracking their ranking strength during a certain period. Google does not use Domain Authority in its search engine signals or metrics, nor does it affect SERPS. It’s only a predictive measure of ranking ability. In March 2019, Moz released its Domain Authority Version 2.0.
Small businesses that use Domain Authority generally want to improve their score; however, they can abuse when they take it out of context.
How is Domain Authority Scored by Moz?
Businesses should only use Domain Authority as a relative metric that uses a logarithmic scale. It means that it’s easier for DA scores to improve from a lower score, but takes much longer time to raise it the higher the scale rises. For example, it’s easier for people to raise their scores from 10 to 20, and harder to raise it from a 70 to 80.
Google’s ranking algorithm takes into account hundreds of factors, while Domain Authority only takes into account 40.
Improving your DA score isn’t an immediate process. It generally takes a long period for domain authority to change. Brand-new sites always start with a DA score of one.
What is Good Domain Authority?
When sites contain numerous high-quality links, they usually float to the top end of search engines. Their aggregate links also increase their Domain Authority. Small business websites that only have less inbound links may have scored lower on the DA scale.
Source: https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority
Although Domain Authority is a predictor of a site’s potential ability to rank in search engines, it’s not the only goal that site owners should seek when updating their site. Moz says DA is best used as a comparative tool, rather than a concrete measurement of success.
Do you want to find out how do you compare against your competitors? You can check your DA score using the following Moz tools:
Domain Authority metrics are generally incorporated into most SEO and online marketing campaigns on the web.
How to Improve Your Domain Authority
There are several practical steps you can take to improve the Domain Authority of your site.
Step One: Improve Your Off-Page SEO
One way to boost your Domain Authority score is to improve your Off-Page SEO. Your first step is to build a strong link profile. These sites share several features.
- They have incoming links from high authority websites that boost their credibility.
- Related websites link to their webpage.
- Several unique domains link to their site.
- The site doesn’t contain low-quality links on their page.
You can improve your Off-Page SEO using several techniques.
- Eliminate links from lower-quality sites – The first step to improve your Off-Page SEO is to adjust your DA score is to eliminate links from poor quality referrers. Moz’s Link Explorer and SEMrush are two tools that can help you to identify these links. Next, contact their web owners and ask them to remove a site from your page. Additionally, you can add the “nofollow tag” to devalue the link. Google’s Disavow’s tool can also help you erase these links from your profile.
Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en
- Develop natural link building on your site – Next, build and strengthen your profile by offering informative content that will encourage people to visit from other sites. This theory, called natural link building, states if people enjoy your articles, they’ll link to them from their page. Companies can provide worthy content for this process to work. Your material must be easy-to-read, informative material. It is a beneficial process that can help you to increase your blog visitors.
- Notify other websites – Another way to increase DA score is to tell other webmasters about your site. This process can notify other website owners that you exist and increase your online exposure and readership.
Step Two: Optimize On-Page SEO
Tackling your On-Page SEO is the next step to improve your On-Page SEO. It is a practice that polishes content for users. It also provides clear signals to search engines that describes your site’s materials. During this process, site owners should optimize their title tags, internal links, content, and URL.
Your content’s quality is the most critical ranking factor that determines On-Page SEO. Here are additional steps you can take to improve it:
- Use proper H1 and H2 headings within your content.
- Always use optimized descriptions and titles.
- Ensure your internal links are quality ones.
- Insert keywords naturally within your site’s content.
- Properly structure your URL and links.
- Format content so it ranks well in Google’s featured snippets.
Step Three: Improve Your Technical SEO
Technical SEO is another fantastic way business owners can boost their DA scores. It’s “technical” because it involves the infrastructure of a website, rather than the content. During this process, developers optimize the backend of the website.
Source: https://www.99signals.com/technical-seo-tips/
They structure the code well and make several adjustments to help search engines better index their site. It can also increase organic rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Here are a few tips that website owners can take to optimize their SEO:
1. Register your site using Google’s Search Console or Bing’s Webmaster tools.
2. Create and submit an optimized XML sitemap.
Source: https://www.99signals.com/technical-seo-tips/
3. Double-check your Robots.txt settings and use Fetch as Google to ensure search engine spiders effectively crawl your site.
4. Migrate all web pages to a secure https platform.
5. Add structured schema data to your site so search engines can understand your content.
6. Create and include well-planned breadcrumb menus on your page.
7. If your website uses multiple languages, use an optimized hreflang tag in your site.
Step Four: Optimize Your Site for Mobile Users
Sixty percent of users conduct the majority of their web searches using mobile devices. Google indexes the mobile version of sites since 60 percent of all users conduct their searches through their cellphones or tablets.
Source: https://www.99signals.com/technical-seo-tips/
SBusinesses can make their sites more mobile-friendly to improve their Domain Authority score. They should consider adding Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to optimize their sites for smartphones. They can also visit Google’s website and run a test to check if their domains are mobile-friendly. It generates a report with tips about how to improve sites.
Step Five: Improve Your Page Speed
Source: https://gtmetrix.com/
Google uses page speed in its ranking algorithm. When businesses increase their sites’ performance, it enhances their users’ experience. It also boosts their rankings, sales, signups, and leads. Some things companies can do to change this metric includes the following:
- Remove all unnecessary plugins.
- Upgrade content management systems to their most current version.
- Ask your web host provider to produce reports on a server’s performance.
- Upgrade your site’s web server, if necessary.
- Use a cache plugin for sites.
- Optimize images, so they load quickly.
- Use a streaming service for media files.
- Install a content delivery network for huge CSS files and pictures.
Step Six: Increase Your Social Signals
Companies can improve their social media accounts to increase their DA scores. For instance, they can work on their Facebook Business Page to increase their follower count. Additionally, companies should continually update their social accounts to increase their presence.
Source: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/04/23/social-media-buttons
- Additionally, social media buttons should be available, so users can share content.
- Check the formatting of your content to make sure it looks good when someone shares it.
- After making these improvements, it generally takes time and patients to increase your Domain Authority score.
Are you seeking ways to improve your Domain Authority Score? Dialed In Web can help. We are a premier agency located in Dallas and Dallas that can help you get the quality clients you’ve always wanted by driving targeted online traffic to your site. For more information, contact us today.
