Domain Authority (DA) is a score assigned to websites by Google which shows how trustworthy they are. They're important because they help determine where your site ranks in Google searches. Higher scores mean a better rank.
If you want to improve your site’s ranking in Google, read on for more about DA.
What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority is an important aspect when deciding whether a site performs well in search results. A DA is an indication of the quality of a particular web page. It is calculated by analysing millions of pages across the internet.
One of the most significant indicators of a site’s overall quality is the quantity of incoming links from other sites. A high DA means that it's easier for people to find what they're looking for.
The main idea behind DAs is pretty simple; the higher their DA scores, the better the chances that they will be listed highly in Google. Originally developed by Moz engineers to measure the importance of a given website within a specific niche, the DA score has now become an industry standard.
Domain authority is important because it tells you where your site ranks
Google doesn't look at just one thing when deciding whether your site is relevant for a particular keyword. Instead, it looks at everything from the quality of your site to its popularity.
DA scores provide insights into the quality of websites that use your keywords. A high DA score indicates that the website has been deemed highly relevant by Google.
Domain authority plays an important part in how well your website ranks, but Google also takes into account other factors such as link popularity, social signals, and engagement. If you want to increase your website's domain authority, you should concentrate on building valuable backlinks, engaging users, optimising social media pages, and creating content people really like reading.
The main key factor affecting your rankings is how useful your site is to people who visit it. A high DA does NOT ensure that your site will rank highly. In fact, a low DA can mean that no one ever visits your site at all! But a high DA indicates that visitors to your site are likely to find the info they’re looking for quickly.
As a result, sites with higher DA scores tend to be better than others. Sites with lower DA scores often don't have enough content to attract visitors.
Domain Authority vs Page Authority
DA is a measure of a website’s quality. It takes into account both the quality of the website’s contents and its reputation among websites. On the other side, Page Authority (PA) values indicate the relative importance of elements within a page.
Both DA and PA take into account the overall performance for an entire website, but they differ in their focus. DA focuses on how well the whole website is performing, whereas PA focuses on how well individual pages are performing.
Let's say you've written an amazing blog post on how to earn extra income online. It has low scores on both its keyword difficulties and page quality (because the words "earn" and "extra" might be found on many different sites), but it has a really high page quality score (because it's one of the best posts online).
Both content and URL are important factors when trying to determine where your website ranks.
Domain Authority ranges and ranking?
A domain's authority has a lot to do with its position in the search results. However, having a low number doesn't mean that it won't be worth paying for. To figure out which pages are more important, measure their page authority. A page with lots of high PA links will be ranked higher than one with few low PA links.
Backlinking depends on the page you're trying to link to. If you're trying to get a small local company to be linked to a large international magazine, for instance, then you might want to focus on targeting pages from that magazine.
Moz's Domain Authority (DA) score ranges from 1 to 100; a high DA score means that your site has a greater likelihood of appearing at the top of search results for relevant searches.
According to Moz, an average domain authority is 50. But some websites carry greater domain authority than others. For example,.gov domains tend to have greater domain authority than.com domains.
How can I determine if my domain authority is high?
You can use Moz's free Link Explorer to get an estimate of how authoritative a site is. It also includes some extra useful statistics, such as the number of linking domains, page depth (how deep into the site structure), and ranking keywords.
There are several things you can do to improve your domain authority
Now we're going to cover a few things related to how to get better results from Google.
Pick a good domain name
If you're just beginning out, it's vital to pick an excellent domain address. It's much simpler to create a brand about your site if you've got a catchy address. Nevertheless, what exactly is a great address? Here are some ideas:
- Make sure it's memorable.
- Don't use hyphens (–) in your titles.
- Don't use numbers.
- Avoid using words like "websites", "domains", "online", etc.
- Use specific words instead of general ones, such as "company" or "organisation."
Optimise your content for search engines
Optimising your on-page copy is one of the most crucial things you can do to improve your site’s search engine ranking. There are several different types of on-site copy, but they usually fall into one of four main areas:
- Headings
- Body text
- Images
- Links
Headings
These are what we call h1, h2, h3, etc., based on the size of the font used. They describe the subject matter of the piece of text they're included in, and provide a quick overview of where it falls within the larger article.
Body Text
This section is where your main message should go. You may also include links to related pages, images or videos. Most importantly, make sure that your body text includes keywords relevant to your topic.
Images
Images are great for adding visual interest to your website. However, they don't rank as well as text when it comes to search results. So, while it's important to add them to your page, they shouldn't take up too much space.
Get high quality backlinks from authority sites
Back links are important for building domain authority. However, they're not the only reason why a site gets ranked well.
According to research conducted by Ahrefs, 55.24% of websites don't receive any organic traffic because they don't have enough back links. This means that there is a large number of websites that could benefit from having more back links.
So how do you acquire high-quality back links? Well, you can begin by searching through your top referring domains. These referring domains usually provide great value to your readers, so it only makes sense to contact these domains for link building opportunity. Additionally, you can also look at similar websites for possible link building opportunity.
You can go one step further and look at sites that are already sharing your content and figure out what type of content they're sharing too. For instance, if you run a blog about dogs, you could look at other blogs about dogs and figure out what kinds of posts they share. Then, you could reach out to those sites and offer them an exclusive link to your site in exchange for a reciprocal link back to theirs.
Be an authority within your niche
This section is about creating trust within your niche audience, so you can begin to grow your business. To do this, you'll need to learn how to create great content that resonates with your customers. Then you'll need to figure out how to get others to share your content so you can gain exposure. Finally, you'll need to find ways to convert traffic into leads and sales.
You can begin by researching the best practices and trends in your niche. Then, read blog posts and forum discussions about those topics. Finally, join social media groups and communities dedicated to your industry. These activities will help you understand how others think about your topic.
Once you're familiarised with the trends and issues within your specific industry, start writing articles about them. Use these articles to attract readers' interest and build an audience. After you've built up enough followers, you can then promote your own products and services.
Make content that people want to share
The section to boost your website’s authority is to produce quality content. Content should not only be informative, but also interesting and engaging. When producing content, think about what type of people would be interested in reading it. Are they looking for information? Or do they need to be entertained?
Sharing your content helps you get links from high-authority sites, which makes your site look more trustworthy. These sites include universities, government agencies, and other reputable organisations. So, by building trust, you're increasing your chances of getting backlinks from these sites.
As soon as you start building up a solid foundation of high-quality back links, you'll see your DA start to increase. You'll begin ranking better for relevant keywords.
Check for bad links on your site by auditing them
Bad backlinking can negatively impact your site's DA, but there are ways to address the issue.
To start off, you need to ensure that you have enough quality backlinking from websites that are related to your niche.
If you find yourself having too many bad links, you can disavow them. You can either disavow one link at a time, multiple links at once, or all of your domains.
If you want to ignore certain types of links, you can do so by using the Ignore Links feature in Google Search Console.
Make sure you optimise the user experience and site structure
Google is constantly evolving its algorithm to ensure that users get what they’re after. One such change is to go mobile first – meaning that it will start by checking out how your site performs on smartphones before moving onto desktops. This may sound like less traffic, but actually, it could mean more, as people are increasingly turning to their mobiles instead of their PCs.
There are many different things you can do to optimise your website structure and user interface. For example, you could ensure that your homepage is easy to navigate and that your site is properly organised. You could also improve the user experience by adding a sitemap and structuring your site properly.
Improve Your Internal Links
If you're trying to improve your site's usability, look at your internal link structures first, instead of just adding external links to the pages. This will allow you to create trust with your audience and boost conversion rates.
Links from internal sources are also helpful because they help drive traffic back to your website. For example, if you have a blog post about a topic, including an internal link to another relevant post would be helpful for readers who want to learn more about that topic.
When you link to another part of your site, you're telling the search engines that they should crawl and index that page too. So, if you link to another page on your site, you get a vote of confidence from Google and Bing, so they'll be more likely to crawl and index that page.
Enhance your social signals
Social signals are important for several reasons. They not only give your site an increased level of trustworthiness, but they also improve your page ranking in search results.
While technically Google does say that Social Signals aren't part of the ranking algorithm, they do acknowledge that there is a correlation between them and rankings. And if you're wondering how much weight social shares actually carry, then you can check out Moz's research that shows that the most shareable pages on the internet also rank higher. So, if you want to increase your chances of getting high SEO rankings, then make sure you're sharing lots of stuff online!
What next?
It's important for sites to become authoritative. To improve your website's search engine ranking, you must focus on making it an authoritative source over time.
If you have any queries or if you need us to assist you in any way, please contact us.
