The age of technology opened up the doors to many possibilities, including advertisement and branding. Your options are no longer limited to expensive traditional marketing. Online marketing exists now, and it allows you to reach more people than ever.
Modern marketing strategies involve several methods to ensure that your brand reaches its highest potential when it comes to online presence. One of these options is an effective SEO strategy.
Another factor that can help your brand is your domain authority. Understanding your domain authority enables you to make informed decisions on how to improve your marketing plans.
If you are new to these things, SEO and domain authority can either sound like gibberish or something intimidating. However, that is why we are here!
Let us dive into the meaning and importance of domain authority.
Understanding Domain Authority
Backlinking refers to links to your website from another reputable or trustworthy website. You can obtain quality backlinks through high-quality content and efficient SEO efforts.
Now, Domain Authority is the number of relevant backlinks that your site has obtained. Your score depends on the relevancy of those backlinks, which means you cannot just throw your links around for the sake of having them. You need to take some time to do some research and plan so your efforts do not end up doing more harm than good to your brand.
How to Check Your Domain Authority
Now that we have established that your domain authority is something that you want for your business, how do you check if you need to improve your DA?
If you are looking for a metric to help you determine where you rank on the search engine results pages or SERPs, then Moz has just the thing. Moz created the DA metric to help businesses understand their SERP ranking. On top of that, Moz also has an analysis tool that you can use to help you evaluate your marketing and SEO strategies.
The Moz SEO Analysis tool will help you estimate the possible ranking of your page through several channels. The analysis will include linking root domains and the number of total links into a single DA score.
You can use this score to compare your website with other businesses in your industry. You can also use it to track the ranking strength of your website over time.
Other Domain Authority Checker
Aside from Moz, there are other tools that you can use out there. You just need to take your pick.
You can even compare data with your results from Moz to find which DA checker is best for you.
Here are other DA checker tools that you can choose from:
This tool includes a basic domain authority checker. SEO Review Tools looks at your authority based on your backlink quality and quantity. It also checks the quality of your content.
SEO Review Tools can also analyze your website age and social media score– refers to how active your brand is on social media platforms and how much engagement your content receives.
On top of all that, SEO Review Tools also measures Page Authority, which has a similar metric as the Domain Authority except that it focuses on a specific page instead of the entirety of the website.
Domain authority is connected to search engine optimization (SEO), so it makes sense that you can use one of the most trusted SEO management tools in the industry to check for your DA.
Ahrefs helps digital marketers, bloggers, and SEO experts in handling competitive analysis, keyword research, backlink analysis, content research, rank analysis, and website monitoring.
Domain authority is also connected to a website’s organic health. The better a site performs organically, the higher the chances of improving its domain authority.
Once your business website starts gaining attention through social media, backlinks, and SEO– both your page authority and domain authority will significantly improve as well.
Ahrefs can help marketing and SEO experts keep track of backlinks, anchor texts, referring domains, top landing pages, and competing domains. And by keeping track of these elements, you can determine what you need to do to boost your site performance.
SiteChecker is another great SEO tool that you can use to check and keep track of your Domain Authority. It includes a bundle of tools that can help analyze different aspects of your website. These tools include the following:
- website health checker
- SEO monitoring
- On-Page SEO checker
- free backlink checker
- website rank tracker
- website backlink tracker
These tools can help you examine your website’s SEO performance and score. It can also assist you in improving your domain and site’s health by helping you determine where you need to focus.
The beauty of Site Checker is that it provides several analysis tools in one place.
SiteChecker is great for keeping an eye on website analytics and SEO audit reports.
SEMrush is another multifunctional SEO tool that you can use for keeping track of your domain authority. It also helps businesses with keywords, site audits, domain analysis, backlinks checking, competition spy, content analysis, PPC performance, and more.
Since SEMrush offers a variety of analysis tools it is really handy for digital marketers and SEO experts.
SEMrush allows domain versus domain analysis which is useful for checking on your competitors and obtaining competitive intelligence, which means you can gather key details of your competitors’ domains.
This tool can help you obtain the common keywords used throughout the website and determine the SERP for each keyword. This feature makes SEMrush a great tool for analyzing domain and page authority.
Branding and Domain Authority
You may notice that some businesses or brands are effortlessly authoritative in their respective industries. However, this does not happen for no reason. They have keywords that naturally exist on their websites which carries some weight.
For instance, websites like YouTube, Apple, Adobe, and IMDB all have high DA without even trying because they have relevant keywords naturally blended into the content all over their site.
Reason Why Should You Be Concerned About Your Domain Authority
Digital marketing is all about establishing a strong online presence. You can achieve this through quality content, engaging social media posts, and effective SEO strategies.
Search Engine Optimization plays a significant role in boosting online presence since people obtain information by using search engines like Google. Better SEO strategy means better ranking. You should care about this since this determines the placement of your website on the result pages.
Domain Authority refers to the number of backlinks your website has, and backlinking is something SEO experts work on so that a website can rank well on SERPs. However, does this mean that your domain authority affects your ranking? Not necessarily.
Search engines like Google do not use a website’s domain authority as a metric in rankings. However, a study by Ahrefs discovered a correlation between Domain Authority and SERP ranking.
Although DA may not be one of the criteria for determining a website’s SEO ranking, the domain authority may be a useful metric to gauge your organic traffic from search engines.
How Does Your Domain Authority Help Your Ranking?
Search engines do not use domain authority or rating as an important ranking factor. Then, how does it help your business or brand?
Although the power of your domain or your website domain authority is not a ranking factor, the authority of the individual pages on your website helps your search engine rankings.
Although John Mueller, Google’s analyst, confirmed that they do not use anything like the website authority score– improving your domain authority indirectly affects your ranking. Improving your domain authority means boosting the authority of each page on your website. And improving individual page authority means better SEO ranking.
The Indirect Effect of Domain Authority to SEO Ranking
Although domain authority is not an SEO ranking factor, it can still indirectly influence your ranking. For instance, if your website has high domain authority, it means it has a lot of “link juice”. A lot of quality link juice leads to a higher ranking.
However, it takes more than just one method to obtain link juice. Aside from having other reputable website links to yours– you can also do internal linking.
Internal linking means passing link juice to your own pages. So even if a particular page does not have external backlinks, it can still rank higher with the help of internal links from its very own domain.
If you want to boost your SEO rankings, then you should consider improving your domain authority strategy as well.
Understanding Domain Authority Scores
Now that you get what domain authority is, why you should care, and how to check it– now you need to understand what search engines consider as a good domain authority score.
Domain Authority scores range from 1 to 100. The higher your domain authority score, the higher you can expect from organic web traffic and your SERP rankings.
All new website starts with a domain authority score of one. You need to work on your backlinks to improve your score. Moz mentions that sites with many external links usually have higher DA compared to small websites with fewer inbound links. So that is something that you will want to work on.
One of the most effective ways of gauging your domain authority is by measuring it against other comparable or similar sites. This method will not only help you strategize for improvement, but it will also help you get to know your competitors.
Domain Score Fluctuation
A domain authority score has many moving parts, your DA can fluctuate over time and you would have no idea what changed. Identifying why your domain authority score went up or down can be challenging, but the tools discussed above may be able to assist.
Massive growth in link numbers may lead to domain authority score fluctuation as well. This kind of fluctuation significantly affects websites with domain authority.
If you have been exerting efforts to earn links but see no changes or experience a dip in your DA score instead of an increase, then you may have earned links from sites that do not contribute to your ranking on search engines.
Optimizing Your Domain Authority
There are several ways to optimize and improve your domain authority score including:
- SEO – by improving your SEO, you are increasing the chances of better website traffic.
- Content Marketing – content is and has always been king. Create engaging content that is worth sharing to improve your domain score and website traffic.
- Paid Media – although organic traffic is great, you can gain more by using paid strategies. Effective paid media will have a sure ROI.
Your domain authority relies on many factors including keywords, content, quality backlinks, and many more. The better your backlinks are, the better chances you have at increasing your website DA.
Increasing Your Domain Authority Score
Much like SEO, raising your domain authority takes time. It is a long-term process and there are more ways than one to do it.
The first step in improving your DA is to conduct a link audit. You need to understand what you are dealing with, so you need to conduct a link audit. Make sure that links to your website do not include black-hat SEO methods.
You can use one of the tools listed above to get insights into your domain score, the current number of backlinks, and referring domains.
The next thing you need to do is research. Keep in mind that backlinks are not created equal. You cannot rely on just any backlinks to increase your DA score, you need quality backlinks to improve.
You can search for local directories or a list of “the bests” in your industry.
How to Improve Your Domain Authority with SEO Work
Although your domain authority score does not directly influence your SEO ranking, it can still impact the results of your SEO campaigns.
As mentioned previously, higher domain authority scores usually correlate with higher search engine rankings. So if you are trying to rank for a competitive search term or keyword, then it pays to improve your DA score.
Steps to Improving DA Score with SEO Work
Here is how you can improve your domain authority score while working on your SEO campaign.
Step 1: Conduct a comparative analysis.
Compare your business website DA score with your competitors in the industry. If your DA score is lower than your competitor’s score, then you will know that you must apply some changes in your strategies.
You can study what other businesses in the industry do so that you can apply it to your own plans. Increasing your score indirectly influences an increase in your SEO ranking as well.
Step 2: Increase production of quality content.
Content is king. Quality content attracts engagement. And of course, quality content helps your target audience and other brands to trust your company.
Quality content gives other websites a reason to link to yours. You need to work on creating unique or specialized content relevant to your product or services. Providing better information in your niche will significantly help your business stand out in your industry.
The better your content, the better chances that other websites will link to it, which improves your domain authority.
Step 3: Check the quality of referring sites.
As mentioned previously, you need quality links. It means that you do not want questionable websites sending links to your website. You need to make sure that only quality websites are pointing to you.
Backlinks are like friends, you want to have a few quality backlinks rather than have lots of ineffective ones.
Step 4: Evaluate the website before you do outreach.
SEO outreach aims to create backlinks to your company website by reaching out to other companies to link to your business. This SEO campaign helps enhance your organic visibility on search engines.
However, before you reach out, you should check your target website’s DA score first. Check how well their pages rank in search. Keep in mind that the higher their domain authority, the better they can boost your DA score.
You can reach out to companies that you have a close relationship with to help boost your DA score. Look for ways where both companies can benefit and support each other’s online presence.
You can swap testimonials or search existing content for opportunities to link to each other’s websites.
Step 5: Try guest posting on other websites.
Guest posting, as the name suggests, means posting on another website’s blog as a guest. You contribute content to someone else’s website in exchange for an external backlink to your own website.
This method will help you get your brand and website out there. However, you should choose the websites you reach out to wisely because some sites are better suited for this than others.
One of the things you want to check is if the website has its links set to follow or nofollow. You want to guest post for a website with its links set to follow since nofollow links do not contribute to your ranking.
Much like in the outreach campaign, you want to check their domain and page authority to make sure that they can help your own DA score. You also need to make sure who their audience is and if their goals are similar to yours.
In a Nutshell
Understanding domain authority may seem like an intimidating task since it involves many factors that indirectly contribute to your SEO ranking. Analyzing them all seems daunting.
However, with the help of research, the right tools, and maybe some help from experts– you can improve your DA score and achieve a better SERP ranking.
Although domain authority is not an SEO ranking factor, it is worth monitoring, and optimizing it is worth it.