Domain Authority indicates the authority of your website to the other site and determines where you can compete. Higher your DA, greater the chances of ranking on SERPs, and more organic traffic.
DA also plays an important role to measure the SEO as well as the strength of your website to your competitor's website.
What is Domain Authority?
Moz created the DA metric, so, referring to their definition:
"A search engine ranking score that predicts how likely a website is to rank on SERPs. A domain authority score ranges from 0 to 100, with higher score corresponding to greater ability to rank."
DA is not the same as ranking by Google, which can actually influence your rankings on SERPs. Moz is trying to stimulate the Google algorithm that can possibly affect your ranking.
In short, DA scores are provided by Moz depending upon the data it has- it may not be accurate as Google.
How is DA Calculated?
Moz calculates your websites DA by taking into account the following number of signals-
- Incoming links pointing towards your website
- Quality and relevancy of incoming links
- Websites content quality
- The popularity of domain on social media platforms
- Websites SEO performance
Steps to Improve Your Websites Domain Authority
Now, you know what DA is and the factors involved in calculating DA. So, here are some practical steps to improve your DA score.
#1 Get the Basics Right
Make sure your website is set up properly. That means optimizing your on-page as well as off-page SEO, making sure the website loads quickly, and it's a mobile-friendly site. Here are some tips to get started with:
- Don't neglect internal links that help Google Crawler and index content.
- Test your website for mobile friendliness. Mobile optimized sites are easier to surf for mobile and tablet users and also increases user experience.
- Ensure the loading time of your website is quick. Slow sites have more bounce rates, which can decrease your ranking on SERPs.
#2 High-Quality Backlinks
Quality backlinks are king when it comes to the domain authority of a website. The more quality backlinks, the more the score of sites DA. Here are few things to keep in mind:
- Quality Content- Create in-depth and valuable blogs, videos, etc. that get engaged with your audience and other websites link to your content.
- Content Promotion- Only quality content alone isn't enough- promoting your content on social media platforms and email lists. It will help to boost your backlink chances.
- Link Building Strategy- Quality content and consistent promotional strategy are ball rolling strategies. Along with that, approaching authoritative sites and asking them to link back is a great way to build a backlink.
- Guest Blogging- Guest blogging for authoritative websites is a great way to build backlinks. You can able to link your own website to the blog you write. And the other thing, audience reading the blog may check out your website for more content.
#3 Low-Quality Backlinks
Not all websites or links are equal. To boost your DA score- it's important to secure high-quality backlinks and drop low-quality backlinks. What's a high-quality backlink?
A high-quality backlink comes from an authoritative or reputed website. For example, a link from Moz or Search Engine Land would be a high-quality backlink. On the other side, the link from a spammy or unknown website is a low-quality backlink.
The easiest way to eliminate the low-quality backlinks is by using various tools such as SEMrush. Once you have a complete list, eliminate it manually, or disavow them through Google.
Conclusion
DA is an important metric to rank your website on SERPs that bring more traffic to your website. To increase DA, follow the above steps we discussed in this blog.