Domain Authority: What It Is and How to Increase It

Domain authority is a technical score that signals the likelihood of your site ranking well in the search engines. If you have a low score or no score at all, this is a metric you’ll want to pay some attention to because it could have a significant impact on your ability to reach potential customers. 

Your business website’s domain is the online address you own, such as “www.mybusiness.com.” Every online domain is assigned an authority score by Moz, ranging from 0 to 100. Here’s what that score represents, why it’s important, and some steps you can take to increase it. 

What Does a Domain Authority Score Represent?

Domain Authority (DA) is a metric developed by the software company Moz to predict how well a website will rank in the search results. A high DA score indicates that the domain has a greater potential to rank and vice versa. 

Domain authority, which represents the strength of your entire domain, isn’t the same as page authority, which only looks at a single website page. In general, a good DA score will depend on factors like your competition and industry. However, scores over 60 are generally considered excellent, particularly in competitive industries. 

Why Should You Care About Your Domain Authority Score?

It’s a common misconception that Google considers your DA score as a ranking factor. It doesn’t. So, why should you care? Your business’s DA score is important because the algorithm used to calculate the score is based on a variety of factors that will predict how well your website will rank in the search engines. 

The most important factors used to calculate your DA score include:

• Link Profile — Your DA score considers both internal and external links. If you are building a strong link profile by linking to high-authority websites and getting links from reputable sites, this helps your link profile. 
• Spam Score — Moz has figured out how to determine how spammy a website is by comparing the site with others in its industry. 
• Root Domains — Your DA score will take a look at the number of unique domains that provide backlinks to your site. For example, if you receive 50 reputable links, but they are only from two main websites, this would be considered two root domains. 

Instead of aiming for a certain DA authority number, take a close look at your competitors. When you can beat those numbers, you can improve online visibility and start to increase your conversions. 

How You Can Increase Your Domain Authority Score

While Google doesn’t use your DA score to rank your website, having a high DA score is going to help you compete with other websites in the same space. This is a long-term strategy where you’ll need to focus on incremental improvements to get the results you need. Here are the best ways to increase your domain authority:

1. Start With Your Analytics

You can’t fix what you don’t understand. Your first step should be a thorough site audit using analytics that reveal various metrics like your page views, conversion rates, and top pages. Your insights should also give you a link profile for your website and a DA score so you have a benchmark to use as you work on making improvements. 

2. Get Quality Backlinks for Your Website

One thing that can undoubtedly impact your search engine rankings is backlinks. An excellent way to get more high-quality backlinks for your website is to create content that others will want to link to and share. Link-worthy content can include things like informative blog posts, infographics, case studies, and videos. 

You can also get quality backlinks to your website by listing it in relevant directories. Make sure the directories you choose are reputable and trustworthy. Most will be industry-specific, such as legal directories for law firms, but some general directories can work as well, such as your local chamber of commerce. 

3. Optimize Content to Increase Organic Traffic

Another way to improve your DA score and boost your website’s organic traffic is to optimize your content using SEO best practices. This starts with keyword research to uncover the high-value search terms your audience is using to find your products or services. 

Once you have a list of keywords and phrases, create and optimize your content so it meets the searcher’s intent. In other words, are the people entering those terms in the search engine looking for information, to make a purchase, or for something else? Your content should include headers, copy, and calls-to-action (CTAs) that match the searcher’s intent. 

4. Look for and Remove Low-Quality Links

Just as you want to create high-quality links for your website, you also want to be on the lookout for low-quality links so you can get rid of them. If you don’t, they could negatively impact your DA score. If you find a link that is spammy and you don’t want it pointing to your website, you can head over to the Google Search Console’s disavow tool and enter it there. 

5. Develop a Positive Internal Linking Strategy

Finally, internal links help your readers and the search engines discover related and new content on your own website. They can also pass some authority on to other pages on your site, making them a useful tool. As you create new content, add internal links to other pages on your site. You can also generate pillar pages, which are high-level general blog posts with more specific topical posts linked to your main page. 

Get Help Increasing Your Business’s Domain Authority Today

Google considers many factors in organically ranking websites. While domain authority isn’t necessarily a ranking factor, having a high score signals the potential for high search engine rankings. Therefore, it is something your business should focus on if it hasn’t done so yet. Unfortunately, boosting a domain’s authority can be challenging. For assistance, reach out to Too Darn Loud Marketing directly. 

Our knowledgeable digital marketing specialists understand what it takes to get results in this increasingly complex digital landscape. We will sit down with you, learn about your business and industry, and recommend a set of digital marketing strategies designed to achieve your goals. Give us a call at (800) 649-1764 or contact us online to schedule a free consultation and website evaluation.