Domain Authority is a very common term used in the present day specially by the webmasters and those involved with search engine optimization. It is basically a comparative metric.
What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority is the way to know how well your website will rank on a search engine or any other search pages. This has been developed by Moz. This Page Authority is based on the data that is derived from Mozscape. The domain authority is calculated combining many other link metrics which includes link counts, MozRank, MozTrust and more.
Moz is a tool which monitors, measures and evaluates the onsite and offsite working of a website and how well it is optimized for the search engine. It is the industry leading tool for doing so and managing the social media accounts. The MozRank given by the site is the link popularity which further tells how popular a site is on the Internet in comparison to other similar web pages. This attribution is done in accordance to the number and quality of other pages that link to the particular site.
How is Domain Authority scored?
The domain authority is always scored on a 100-point algorithm scale. A domain with higher authority means that it will rank higher in the search engine results.
Why is it important to increase the Domain Authority of your webpage?
It is extremely crucial to increase the domain authority of your web page to rank higher in the search engines. This increases the possibility of your website ranking higher on Google and Bing. However, domain authority is not something which can be purchased or added on to your website. It requires a great strategy, planned working and good quality content to improve the Domain Authority of your page.
- Over 40 signals are considered while deciding the domain authority
- Domains with higher DA rank higher in the search engines thereby bringing in more traffic
- It enables you to have more respect amongst your friends and peers which ultimately opens way for new business partnerships.
- Helps you attract more online and offline referrals
What are the ways to improve the Domain Authority?
Increasing the domain authority is not an overnight thing. It requires a strategic approach towards the optimization of your website. When the domain authority of your page is somewhere around 0 to 15, it is simpler to take it as higher as 30 DA. But to target for a higher DA i.e above 50 is quite a tougher job and requires patience. Here are following ways which helps you improve the Domain Authority.
1. Publish Quality Content on the website
As we all know that content is the king. It is very important to publish quality content in order to have high DA. If unique and original content is published on the website, it beomes quite easier for the website to get a higher DA. A good content – how it is presented, how much valuable information it holds, all are important considerations while doing the content for the website. While doing the content there are few things that needs to be kept in mind:
- The content should be somewhere around 800 words and not less than that. A longer content is considered to have more valuable information about the subject for the visitor.
- The content needs to be unique and not copied from another web page. One should never copy the content from another web page and paste it on the personal webpage, website etc.
- Do not use repetitive words while writing an article. This is to say that one should use more of synonyms while doing an article.
- One should stick to the topic of discussion and not talk about irrelevant things while doing an article.
2. On Page Search Engine Optimization
On page SEO as it is called is very crucial to improve the Domain Authority. On page SEO is the process of optimizing individual pages to overall increase the visibility and relevance of the website in the search engine. This includes a number of factors like – title tag, keywords used, placement of the keywords etc. A few checks for On page SEO are:
- The title tag should begin with your main keyword
- There should be no stuffing of the keyword in the title tag or anywhere on the page. Use variations for your keywords
- Headline tags are very important while doing the On Page SEO (H1, H2, H3 tags)
- Choose your targeted keywords very wisely. Also it is very important that your main keyword for target is placed at least once in the first paragraph.
- When you write the title for your blog post, it should be self explanatory and attractive which makes it easier for the customers to understand what your blog post is all about. This helps to attract the visitors very easily
- Image optimization is yet very important for the On-Page optimization. This helps in boosting your SEO status commendably
3. Internal Linking is very important
This is one important mantra for increasing the DNA of your page. This means linking the various pages of your website and hence making your webpage more informative. For example, linking your current post with few of your older post is very vital to improve the current post more informative and relevant with what is posted earlier. Internal Linking is very crucial in helping to filter your content across the search engine easily and increase its rank in the search engine. It makes the work easier for both the visitor and the search engines to crawl through your website.
4. Generate Quality External Links
This indeed is really tough. You have a perfect website with high content. But most of the bloggers and webmasters end up developing low quality backlinks for their post and blog. There are few websites which offer quick backlinks. These websites and external links do not actually add any worth to your blog and webpage. Hence it must be avoided. They infact reduce the ranking of your webpage in various search engines. To generate good links, you must share your content online on the various social networking sites like twitter, facebook etc. If the content has the potential it is most likely to be shared by the public and it will take minutes for your content to go viral. Also allow guest posting on your blog and webpage is by far one of the most effective way to generate referral traffic and increase the popularity of your brand. Post your blogs and share them only on high authority website. Also avoid link stuffing in any form because this will automatically affect the ranking of your site.
5. Do away with bad links
Do not entertain any sort of spammy and bad links on your webpage. This is ultimately harm your site ranking on Google. Keep your backlinks updated with few quality links rather than a dozen of spammy and low quality links. Bad links have an adverse affect on the domain authority.
6. Let your domain grow old
Patience is the key to success. You ultimately have to allow your domain age to grow. This will surely help you to increase the DA score and the ranking of your webpage on various search engines. Also keep posting good quality content and wait for miracle to happen. Domain Age is one of the most important factor in deciding the DA score.
7. Publish Articles more frequently
If you are doing your homework well, you will surely have repeat visitors. This is to say if you are publishing quality content, you certainly have visitor who will return back to your site in search of quality content, to see what you have posted recently. So this should be kept In mind and new material should be published frequently. Domain Authority certainly increases with frequent postings. It helps in:
- Generating traffic
- Develop your writing skills
- Each time the visitor has something new to read
- Generates more trust amongst the visitors
- Certainly helps in increasing the conversion rate
8. Make your site fast
Google states that it gives a lot of importance to the loading speed of the site since it adds on to the user experience. A user usually gets bugged if he has to wait a long for the content of your website to download. However, Matt Cutts states in a number of videos that ‘site speed’ is of very minor importance. Yet from the point of view of an user, it usually makes us jump from one site to another if it takes a particular site lot of time to download.
9. Maintain and easy to navigate and clean site structure
This is of course very important. It is crucial to give a good experience to the user while they navigate on to your website. Maintain a very clean site structure so that its easy for the visitors to navigate to different pages on your website. Low bounce and pogo-sticking rates are two indicators of pleasant user experience on your site. Low bounce rate means the visitor on your site usually does not leave your site midway without interacting with different pages on your website and visiting the internal links. Low pogo sticking rate means that less number of visitors leaving your site and going back to the organic search result to fetch another website which can provide them the information that they are looking for because your website was unable to provide the relevant content. Developing an easy to navigate site structure is very important.
10. Google Authorship is important to be implemented on your site
Giving authorship to your content is yet another way to increase the domain authority score. When you use a valid rel=”author” attribution on your webpage, your page has a better chance of fairing well in the search engines as compared to other webpages. It is extremely important to associate your content with a relevant author.
11. Keep a section on the sidebar which reads as “NEW POSTS”
Constant updations is the key to have a higher domain authority score, even Google loves it. If there is a widget on one side of the page which reads as ‘RECENT POSTS’ it makes it easier for the visitors and Google bot to crawl through your website and know about the updated content and material on your website. If the content on the site is updated frequently, the crawling speed of the website can increase dynamically.
Apart from these majors, there are few more techniques which can really help you to increase the viability and value of your page and help it score a higher DA:
- Promoting your content well and reaching out to the industry leaders
- Leveraging your email subscribers list
- Using paid social media promotion
- Promoting your content on a daily basis
- Emailing the top blogs and websites in your field and areas of interest
- Analyzing the link profiles and target linkers of your competitors to know where and how are they building their link profiles.
- Using professional designs even on social media pages to increase your credibility
- Make an effort to gain high profile followers
- Making your brand popular through brand awareness and advertising your brand on the social media
- Developing relationships with the influencers
12. Engage in some Offline Methodologies
If you are wanting to increase your Domain Authority Score indulging in some offline strategies is also important. There are a number of things you can do offline to actually push your Domain Authority score.
- Be a part of a number of speaking engagements where you can actually talk about your product, brand etc
- Sponsor events with your company’s name/brand
- Engage in some kind of charity event to promote your brand
- You can also run a contest and then promote it which involves lot of engagement from the people
Its your turn now to Create and communicate your story with passion. Hope you had a happy reading time. If there is something else you think is important and can promote a higher DA score, please feel free to write your comment below.
