Have you ever wondered how I can increase my domain authority?, Domain Authority: A set of metrics by which you can measure the value of your website. This question answers why so many people talk about how to increase domain authority.
Are you worried about the weak domain authority of your website or blog? And you wonder how you can improve it quickly. You aren’t alone. Some bloggers and website owners pay attention to their website domain authority because of its huge effect on content marketing.
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| Increase Domain Authority |
Not only content marketing but whatever the business model the website is intended to represent and the target market. This isn’t applied to business website alone but personal blog as well. In as much as you want great awareness to your online brand, there is a need to work on increasing the domain authority.
- What is domain authority?
- Domain authority and SEO
- Domain authority checker tools
- How to improve domain authority.
What is domain authority? And how is it calculated?
Domain authority is an important SEO metrics. It measures the competitive power with which a domain name pulls its competitors down in the search engine result. The metric is developed by Moz and its calculation is entirely determined by the Moz based on various ranking factors.
Domain authority is on the range of 100 ( logarithmic scale of 100 points). While zero (no rank) being the least ranked figure, 100 represents the domains on the top edge of domain authority. The competition gets tougher as the domain authority rises. This is apparent as the most established website are on top of the rank. As an example, it is easier to move domain authority from 10 to 20 than it is to increase the rank from 50 to 60
The metric was calculated in such a way as to give insight to the possible ranking position of the domain name( How to Choose a Domain Name) . All other things being equal. That is why its calculation takes into consideration many ranking factors that search engine algorithms use to rank website in SERPs. For instance, Google, as a search engine utilises hundreds of ranking factors in its algorithms to determine website position in the SERPs. Most of these factors are also considered in calculating domain authority.
Domain authority definition and calculation
Many online SEO guru do argue that website ranks in SERPs isn’t fully dependent on domain authority as seen on SERPs. Yes they are right because Moz’s engine that calculates domain authority doesn’t look into all Google ranking factors. This is ultimate business secret that has never been made known to the public.
In as much as the calculation of domain authority employs machine learning against Google algorithm to model how search engine results are generated in the best manner, the metric could be used to evaluate how a website ranks on Google search page. Below are some of the ranking factors embedded in domain authority.
- Domain link profile: Link quantity and quality play vital role in your website domain authority. How many links from authority and credible website does the website receive as a whole. This also includes internal links across the domain.
- On-topic Content: This also matters in terms of quality and quantity. The number of content pages of a website translate to the domain size. How close are your contents are to the website niche topic. The content in each page of your website are correlated to establish relevancy and thus the overall domain authority. How much of such pages does your website claim?
- Engagement signals: How popular is the website domain name across the web? The social engagement, mention of the domain name and basic important metrics such as bounce rate, average time on site and daily pageview.
- Age: The older the page, the higher the domain authority is.
Why is domain authority important?
- Trusted metric: Domain authority, due to the way it is calculated, gives more reliable indication of how well a website is performing. Unlike other website metrics such as Pagerank, Alexa traffic rank, domain authority (DA) is very difficult to be manipulated or tricked. It is an aggregation of on-site and off-site metrics (MozTrust, Mozrank and link profile). That is why having a good DA makes your site look more credible and considered as an authority in your field.
- Better SERPs rank: The fact that domain authority is an embodiment of the major factors that Google use to determine website rank on the engine makes it a major metric for high rank on SERPs. All the effort to increase domain authority translates to high rank in search engine and increased free organic traffic to the website.
- Better Site engagement: Users generally trust website with high domain authority. They are more engaged in such website, willing to drop their feedback in form of comments and following the call to action. This accounts for high conversion rate recorded by authority websites.
- Advertiser magnet: Domain authority is one of the metrics that advertisers use to judge the credibility and the conversion potential of a website. It is believed that high domain authority website gives high return on their investments.
- Competition Analysis: Domain authority gives a clear insight on how website perform relative to other websites. It can therefore be used to a great degree of accuracy in making competition analysis.
- Increase website revenue: Free traffic benefit associated with high domain authority from the search, more advertising revenue and an improved affiliate income, all are possible outcome of increased domain authority.
How to improve domain authority
Coming to the main issue, How can you improve your website domain authority? Domain authority is one of the SEO metrics that is very difficult to game. The key strategy to improve any website DA in accordance to the accredited initiator is to improve the website overall SEO. This is the opinion of experts about increasing the authority of the domain.
1. Leverage content marketing/linkbaiting
In an attempt to increase domain authority of your website, the first point of call is your link profile. Link profile is the most important factor in estimating website DA. And this goes directly to your site external links. External links, also known as backlinks are incoming links to your website domain from other domain.
Make it a habit to produce quality contents that attract links to your website. Ideally, the more the quality backlinks pointing to your website the better the domain authority and the rank in SERPs provided all other factors remain constant.
Content marketing involves using your content to market your website and the business it present to the online communities. Ordinary content can’t do this to any reasonable extents. You have only one option to produce linkable contents. The ones the readers couldn’t resist linking to.
- Make the content detailed. Experience has shown that long, detailed contents that address the topic in the fullest attract links and improve users engagement.
- Make sure the contents add value to readers
- Content that solves readers’ problems rule the game fight.
It is important that you are consistent in producing such contents. Individual page authority affect domain authority as well as ranking on Google SERPs. Thinned content page has negative effect on quality content page. That is why you mustn’t dilute your good work with poor content pages.
Quantity also plays vita role. The numbers of content page your website gets affect the website overall DA. That is why most of the website on the top edge of domain authority are characterised of contents. The contents pages that keep updated frequently. This factor accounts for high authority acquired by some domains. They have huge numbers of pages with quality contents that accord them health, natural backlinks.
2. Optimize the On-page and on-site SEO
According to Moz, there is a need to improve website overall SEO to get a better domain authority. You should pay attention to technical issues concerning on-page and on-site SEO to improve your website domain authority. These include but not limited to the site URL structure, site architecture, header tags, meta tags, image alt tags, keywords usage and placement as well as the word count of your page contents.
Without proper and efficient use of these elements, your SEO effort might not yield desired result. I have explained most of these technical Search Engine Optimization tips and tricks in my earlier post. You might also check the SEO promotion techniques that are critical to your website.
3. Bridge the gap between your website and social network site
Social media is really important when it comes to building domain authority. It comes only next to building natural backlinks through valuable contents. It is a great channel to increase your page and domain authority. This is particularly important for new starters on new domain. It is an avenue to get quick traction for your business website in terms of:
- Traffic building
- Creating brand awareness
- Trust and relationship building
- Repeat leads and invariably
- increasing domain authority.
The use of social networks like Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter gives you the opportunity to chat with like-minded influencers who might share and tweet your content across the network. These sharing, re-share, tweeting and re-tweet have significant effect on your website page authority as well as the overall domain authority.
- Get more twitter tweets
- Acquire more Facebook share and likes for your contents
- Claim Google plus votes etc.
The idea is to find people who will likely get attracted to your content within these networks. This shall make your contents sharing goes viral. The ideal way to leverage this opportunity is to deeply connect with authorities. Share their contents, promote them where necessary. The live is always a matter of “give and take”. The best to use this is joining Facebook and LinkedIn group relating to your niche, Google plus community and creating twitter lists.
4. Domain authority and domain age, The correlation
Domain age plays a vital role in enhancing domain authority of a website. How much effect the age has however remains unknown. This correlation between domain age and domain authority has been established through various experimentation and analysis. Sean made this analysis in his post explaining how domain age matters in DA and the website SEO as a whole.
This isn’t surprising as DA was established to embed many important factors (about 40) out of hundreds factors used by Google to rank weppages and website in SERPs. Google understands information providers as professionals and business undertakers. I am convinced experience plays vital roles in the quality of service provided outside the web world. So the online activities can’t be left out.
The assumption is that old age domain owners must have acquired skill and traction to gain expertise, experience over the years that could contribute to their potential to provide quality information which is the primary ingredient for the search engine business and online marketing. That is the reason why
Patience is required to build domain authority of your website. You might get bored because of that low DA. The metric is not easy to manipulate like some other website metrics. You build it only gradually and consistently with quality content, promotion and healthy link profile.
You might consider going for expired domain name or premium domain name purchased in the premium domain name marketplace. You however, need to exercise caution before you purchase or build your website on expired domain names.
You won’t like to build your virtual estate on a failed or counterfeited domain name. Always investigate the domain name and see if it hasn’t been penalised by search engine. I believe you won’t like to share the penalty on the offence committed by another folk.
If I should cap it all, domain authority in greatly improved by ensuring healthy link profile, practising basic SEO, establishing social presence and publishing valuable contents that are great in terms of quality and quantity.
What experience do you have with your website domain authority? How do you build it and what factor will you attach to the increase in you domain authority? Glad to hear the tips and trick you use to build your website/blog authority.
5. Ensure internal/deep linking to increase DA
Strategic internal linking influences DA of a website. By the way, there is a need to define what internal links are. What is internal link? Internal links are links that link one page of a website (domain) to another page within the same domain. Unlike external link, the link source domain is the same as the linked domain. You have to integrate internal linking to your website architecture in order to get high SEO value and DA. Internal linking.
- Improve the website usability: by providing ease of navigation. An instance to give readers the option to go further getting more information within the website on the subject matter.
- Vote by authority: Just as it is important to get link juice from authority well-established website to your domain, links from your own website existing pages that have established authority in the sight of search engine are important. Internal linking help each of your page to get votes from one another. They pass authority to low rank pages. This is particularly useful for new post to get traction in SERPs. The process of rank distribution is just like “authority/rank seedling”. Page authority keeps multiplied and results to geometric increase in the overall website domain authority. In as much as you have great content in each of your page, passing page authority to another wouldn’t affect the linking page.
- Establish the architecture and hierarchy of the contents: within the site. Internal linking ensures that the contents across the pages are well-integrated to claim the theme on which the website is described. This is where correct usage of anchor text comes in. Anchor text establish the relationship between each page of your website.
- Helps the website crawlability: This is the ability of search engine to craw the entire pages on your website. One thing to ensure better crawlability is the proper use of internal linking.
All benefits of proper internal linking, the usability, passing authority, and contents and pages integration lead to an increased domain authority for the website.
best strategies to improve your DA through internal linking.
Build more content : pages
This gives you the opportunity to more linkable contents and the ability to have more pagerank/ page authority to pass across the whole website. If you can create a lot of contents on your website coupled with good functional promotion strategies, little effort you need for off-site SEO.
Watch your anchor text:
This is used to describe the subject matter of the content to which the link is pointing to. The same points to the reason why preference should be given to text links within your page contents. While doing this, it is important to avoid overuse of an anchor text. Use variation of word combination. Synonyms and phrases pointing to the same meaning could be mixed together in your choice of anchor texts. For instance I can link to this post with various combination of words that has domain authority.
- To strategically increase you domain authority.
- manage you SEO to improve DA of your website.
Many possible word combination could point to the theme of this page. This will make the linking appeared natural to search engine and avoid penalty amidst algorithm updates.
Clean up Links on your webpages:
Google discredits a webpage and thus the entire website for excess linking on a single page. There is a limit to the numbers of links appropriate for on-page SEO and the maximum search engine crawler could pass for proper indexing. I believe this metric/factor was also taken into consideration when calculating domain authority. Ensure your content-link ratio is optimal for SEO to have better DA.
You might want to ask me how many links on a page are best for SEO. This is difficult to answer because Google instruction to webmaster regarding links goes thus:
“Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number” And what is reasonable number? Nobody knows precisely.
And Google Matt Cutts response on this
“It seemed about right to recommend 100 links or so. If a page started to have more than that many links,*** there was a chance that the page would be so long that Google would truncate the page and wouldn’t index the entire page. ”
Deep Linking:
By “deep linking” we mean linking to your website pages that might not be accessible from your home page or every page of your site. The main navigation menu of a website links to common page of your website. Pages like homepage, “contact us” category links, and the like already exist on the main menu. These pages are called “Top-level pages”. You don’t necessarily need contextual links to these pages from other pages of your website. Instead link to posts and pages that might not be discovered through your page templates.
Link relevant pages:
Make sure the contents on pages you link to internally is relevant to the linking pages. Relevancy of such is vital for increasing DA. Don’t link for the mere linking sake. Link only when there is close connection between the pages and the users are likely to benefits from following the links.
Don’t misuse the power. The power that you have control to link to anywhere within your page. Put your web pages in place of pages on other website. Ask yourself, shall I link to these contents supposing they exist within other website domains.
But
Always use do-follow link for your internal links:
This is the only way to cast your vote of authority. Google discount links with no-follow attribute. And you don’t want that for your webpages because you have to distribute the page authority to get better result.
Domain authority checker tools
To increase your website/blog domain authority, there is need for you to keep monitoring the metric so that you could analyse and assess the effort you make along the line. Below are some domain authority check tools you can employ to do this.
Moz browser toolbar: Mozbar, One of the tool bars I never miss on my Google chrome browser.
Robingupta: Used for checking bulk domain authority, Alexa rank and Pagerank in a single click.
Smallseotools : A very fast and powerful domain authority checker tool. You can use this tool to check up to 10 domains with a mouse click. Other related metrics such as page authority, linking root domains, total links are provided simultaneously.
websiteseochecker: Bulk check tool for domain authority, Page authority, Pagerank and domain IP.