What Is the Domain Authority | How Can You Increase it?

Would you like to rank your website in the number 1 spot on Google? In that case, you must have heard of the term domain authority. It’s important to know that domain authority is one of the 200 ranking factors on Google for SEO (search engine optimization). We’ll explain what it is, how it affects your website’s ranking, and how you can increase it in this article.

Introduction to Domain Authority

To predict how well your website will rank on search engines, you can use domain authority (DA). It was created by Moz and assigned a score of 1 to 100. Thus, a website with a high DA score has a greater chance of ranking high on search engine results pages (SERPs).). DA definitions allow you to see your site’s relevance to your industry or a specific topic. In addition, you can see how strong or authoritative your domain is. There’s a slight difference between DA and page authority. DA measures the ranking strength of your entire domain (and subdomains). And page authority measures the ranking strength of individual pages.

Good Domain Authority Score

Many factors determine DA. For example, websites like Google, Apple, and Microsoft typically have a high DA (95-100). On the other hand, a new website will have a low DA (between 10 and 20). It’s easier for you to increase your site’s DA if it’s between 20 and 30 than between 70 and 80. In order to categorize what constitutes a good DA, consider these ranges:

Below 30: Poor

30 to 40: Below average

40 to 50: Average

50 to 60: Good

60 to 70: Very good

Above 80: Excellent

It would be best if you also kept in mind that DA helps you predict your website’s performance in search results. Thus, it’s better to use it to compare your website with other websites in SERPs and then work on increasing your DA.

How Is Domain Authority Calculated?

Domain authority is calculated differently by different tools. Moz uses over 40 different factors to calculate it. But the most important factor is:

1. MozRank – This measures how many websites link to a website. It also examines the quality of the websites linking to yours.

2. Link Profile – the number of internal and external links on the page, so if you link to high authority websites and get linked back by other reputable sites, then you will get a good score.

3. Root Domains – Besides looking at your link profile, Moz also considers the number of unique backlinks. If you have 100 links from one website, Moz counts this as one root domain. Therefore, you should get backlinks from a variety of sources.

4. MozTrust – Moz makes sure that websites linking to yours are trustworthy. For instance, if a university webpage, a governmental website, or an organization site links to you, you’ll receive a high MozTrust score.

5. Site Structure and User Friendliness – To get a high DA, you need to make sure your site structure is easy for search engines like Google to crawl. And you also need to provide your visitors with a great user experience.

What Is the Best Way to Increase Domain Authority?

If you want to increase your website’s DA, you should remember that it’s a long-term strategy. Here’s how to do it:

1. Link to Authority Sites to Acquire High-quality Backlinks

Getting backlinks to strengthen your link profile is easy if you know that backlinks play a huge role in determining DA. Not only that, but backlinks are one of the two most important ranking factors. To start, you can look at your top referral sources for backlink opportunities, then find similar sites for backlink opportunities.

2. Ensure Your Content is Link-worthy by Creating Killer Content

Another way to increase your DA is to create great, link-worthy content. Why is great content important? People will start sharing your posts with others if they find them useful. This will increase your chances of getting backlinks from high-authority websites, like educational institutions and government agencies. With links from a variety of sites, you’ll also boost your root domain. By doing so, you’ll be able to make various content types, including articles, lengthy guides, videos, infographics, podcasts, and slides. For more information, you can use the following article:

The Best Ways to Optimize Content for SEO

3. Audit Your Site and Remove Bad Links

Inbound links are crucial to your website’s ranking and DA, but having bad links can hurt it more than help. Your website’s DA can decrease if you get spammy links. And in some cases, it may even lead to a Google penalty. To prevent this, your site must be audited for toxic links and removed as soon as possible. If you cannot remove these links, you can use Google Search Console to disavow or ignore those links. You can use different SEO tools to identify harmful links by going through your entire link profile. As a result, Google’s crawler won’t consider any unnatural or spammy backlinks when indexing.

4. Enhance the User Experience and Website Structure

It is important to remember that your site’s structure and user-friendliness play an important role in domain authority. With a proper structure, search engines can easily crawl and index your web pages. Creating a WordPress sitemap to assist search engines with crawling through your site is possible. A sitemap contains all of your important pages and makes it easier for search engines to find your site. To improve your site’s user experience, you should first optimize it for mobile devices. Since Google is now mobile-first, your website’s performance on a mobile device will be considered.

Therefore, it is crucial that your site loads quickly and functions properly on mobile devices. By getting SSL certificates and moving your site to HTTPS, you ensure that your site is secure. You can also use WordPress security plugins like Sucuri, which has many features like a firewall. You can learn more about website structure:

How to Utilize Website Structure for SEO?

5. Improve Your Internal Links

Your site’s user experience can also be improved by focusing on its internal link structure. You can keep your visitors engaged by linking to other website informative pages and reducing bounce rates. In addition, internal links assist search engine bots in crawling your website, which makes indexing your pages easier. Having a good internal link structure has another benefit: it passes link juice from one page to another.

Link juice is a term used in SEO to refer to the value of a page that is passed along to other pages. It gives the search engine a vote of confidence, as it shows that a page is trustworthy. All of this increases the domain authority of a web page. You can get more information from the following articles:

How to Improve SEO Rankings?

On-Page SEO: A Comprehensive Guide to On-Site Techniques

Conclusion

Your domain authority cannot be controlled. All you can do is align the pieces, so your DA increases steadily. It will take time to increase your DA, so set up a long-term strategy and use the tips we’ve explained to improve it.