What is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority (DA) is a website metric developed by the well-trusted Moz. DA is one of the most important factors known to SEOs. The higher your Domain Authority, the higher the chance that you are going to enjoy strong traffic and higher rank.

Before we go about increasing DA, here are some things you should know:

Domain Authority

1. Domain authority is calculated using quite a few website factors. These are mainly link profile factors e.g how many backlinks are pointing to your website and how authoritative those linking sites are (Note: it’s more beneficial having a few high quality links than many low quality links – low quality links could be an indication to Google of black-hat SEO).
2. If your goal is to achieve a DA of 100, let’s take a step back and re-assess where we realistically can expect to get your DA! It is very difficult to gain a 100 Domain Authority. Highly reputable sites like Facebook have it, so don’t get demoralised if you never reach 100.
3. You will have tough time impacting your DA directly or quickly. You can’t just change it, it has to be worked on and earned.

That leaves us with the almighty question, “So, how do you improve your Domain Authority?“

How to improve your Domain Authority

First, find out what your Domain Authority is over here.

The best place to start would be to improve your link profile. Improving your link profile is definitely the most crucial issue and the one that will make the biggest difference in our attempts to increase DA. A good start to improving your link profile will be these two things: Get rid of bad links and start gaining good, high quality and authoritative links. If you need some assistance with this, please do get in touch.

I will quickly run through getting rid of bad links. First, you need to find all of the links that point towards your site, there are various tools you can use, namely Google Search Console. I’d recommend Search Console because you can request the removal of these links, and if that fails, you can disavow them.

Now for the very, very, veeerry difficult part, which is; gaining good links! Basically, you have two routes you can take. Scenic Route: Engage with the services of an SEO that has relationships with websites and writers who can develop high-quality backlinks. This is the best option if you are strapped for time and don’t mind outlaying some cash to get high quality work done.

Route 2 (backwards up Everest): is to create a website with such high value, engaging information that gets linked to and shared and talked about etc by virtue of its shear awesomeness. Social signals are a big trust factor (sharing content, getting engagement and traffic from social platforms). That is the beast we call, content marketing! Ahhhhh the joy and the horror!

In all honesty, content marketing is the best solution to gaining DA. The future of SEO is content marketing, providing an awesome, intuitive user experience for those engaging with your site. Now, if you aren’t well versed in content marketing, rather get some advice. Chat to me. I want to express that the most important factor in improving your DA is by doing content marketing well and that means engaging with your creative side!

Let’s take a closer look at the 5 things you can do to improve your DA:

Step #1: Ensure that your technical SEO is waxed

Attending to all the technical aspects of SEO is absolutely important as a foundation, this will better help search engines understanding what your site is about. It may not be sexy or desirable to optimise your robots.txt or create a sitemap, implementing Schema etc, but without technical SEO in place, you won’t have effective SEO. First things first.

As Moz explains, to improve your DA, you need to improve your overall SEO, and that includes all the details that SEOs know and love — site structure, navigability, breadcrumbs, URL structure, meta tags, header tags, word count, keywords, alt tags, etc. SEO and content marketing require one another. It’s symbiosis.

Step #2: Create linkable content

Your content has a more direct influence on your DA. To be successful in content marketing, you have to have an abundance of linkable content (content people want to link to and refer to). On this topic, infographics are fantastic because they invite a user to engage as they are visually appealing.

Step #3: Develop strong internal links (internal link profile)

Building of high quality internal backlinks can help pass page authority to other areas of your website. Internal linking is so important, not only to pass link juice around your website but also to provide an intuitive user experience.

Internal linking creates a network within your site that search engines that crawl and index your site and the user engaging with your website.

The best part about having an abundance of content is that you’ll have even more content to link to. The more you link internally, the the more dense and powerful your website’s network will be.

Step #4:  Regularly remove bad, harmful backlinks

You’ve got to remove your bad backlinks. I personally check once a month where I scan my link profile to discover the penalty risk backlinks to correct them.

If your link profile is full of bad backlinks, you’re not going to experience the success you want from content marketing and your Domain Authority will remain low.

Step #5: Patience is key

One of the factors that doesn’t get a lot of notice in discussions of higher DA but is actually a VERY IMPORTANT factor is domain age.

The older the domain, the higher its authority. This is because it indicates trust. That it’s not just a pop-up site looking to grab and dash.

That being said, Domain age doesn’t directly convert into high domain authority. If the domain doesn’t follow the steps above and is badly taken care of, it will definitely lose its DA.

You will see your DA rise if you do content marketing and technical SEO right. But it takes time. SEO is a marathon not a sprint. That being said, if you’re looking for faster results, consider a PPC marketing approach or let’s discuss where you’re at to determine the best POA for your needs.