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Anyone working on SEO knows that various factors and metrics influence a webpage’s Google rankings. Among these measurements, domain authority is one that’s been closely tracked by many, knowing its impact on a website’s SEO quality. Excellent domain authority often translates to better SERP ranking.
Unfortunately, building domain authority is not easy. You have to consider various elements, such as your site’s internal links, backlinks, content quality and more.
In this article, you’ll learn what domain authority is and discover domain authority-building tactics for an effective SEO strategy.
What is domain authority (DA)?
Domain authority indicates your site’s relevance and credibility to a particular subject area. Initially developed by Moz, it is a metric that can predict your website’s likelihood of ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). Domain authority is a score on a scale of one to 100, where a higher score means a better chance to rank.
Determining a site’s domain authority involves several factors computed by a machine learning algorithm. For instance, the domain’s age usually matters. Long-time and popular websites have high DA, while new ones have around 1 to 20.
The quantity and quality of inbound links are also crucial. The more high-quality backlinks point to your site, the better your DA rating will be.
While domain authority helps assess a site’s ranking ability, it’s not really an “absolute” metric. No specific range of scores can be considered “good” or “bad.” Suppose your site has a DA score of 50. This might sound like a high DA, but if your competitors have higher scores, you might still struggle to outrank them. Simply put, DA is a comparative metric where a “good” score depends on your competitors’ ratings.
Moreover, domain authority is not a Google ranking factor. Yes, it can predict your website’s potential to outrank competitors, but this metric per se cannot influence your website’s SERP ranking. Nevertheless, you must still pay attention to your site’s domain authority to see how it fares compared to your competitors.
Related: How to Create an Effective SEO Strategy—A 2023 Guide
How to build your site’s domain authority
Your site’s domain authority can be a reflection of its SEO performance. Some Google ranking factors, such as the quantity of root domain links, the number of reputable internal/external page links, and content quality, can also impact domain authority. So, it’s basically hitting two birds with one stone — building a website’s domain authority also improves its SEO health.
Here are five foolproof ways to boost your website’s domain authority.
1. Produce high-quality content
Most websites’ bread and butter is making high-quality content that people want to read.
Another reason to produce killer content is to link your pages to other websites as they find them informative and valuable. For example, writers researching for information related to your niche might find your content helpful and shareable, so they link your page in their pieces.
In short, you’ll get more organic backlinks if your content is high-quality and reputable.
Here are some tips to craft content that attracts links:
- Add statistics and data: Websites will most likely link other sites with content presenting facts backed by statistics, especially when trying to prove a point. You can do your research and survey to get unique data that is unavailable to your competitors.
- Strive for readability and accuracy: Ensure the information you want to convey is factual and clear.
- Solve a problem: A link-worthy content provides useful answers to people’s questions. You can identify common inquiries that will pique people’s interest through keyword research.
- Conduct interviews with professionals and experts: You can attract more links by producing content filled with expert-level knowledge extracted from your interviews with professionals and thought leaders.
Related: Content Creation Is About Quality, Not Quantity. Here’s How to Create the Content People Actually Want.
2. Focus on your backlinks’ quality
High-quality backlinks like those from popular websites assert your site’s credibility and reputation, improving your domain authority.
It’s essential to acquire as many high-quality backlinks as possible. You can reach out to owners of leading websites in your niche, ask for guest blogs from reputable industry leaders, or forge partnerships with well-known sites.
3. Get rid of bad or low-quality links
Spammy or toxic links pointing to your site are a big no-no in SEO. They must be removed or disavowed before Google decides to penalize you.
But what makes an inbound link “spammy,” “toxic,” or “low-quality”?
Spammy or toxic links usually come from substandard websites with low domain authority. They typically engage in unnatural or manipulative link-building practices and, thus, fail to adhere to Google’s link spam updates.
It’s important to regularly audit your link profile (manually or using SEO tools) to pinpoint these bad links. Before you disavow them, you can reach out to the content owner (if possible) and ask them to remove the link. Otherwise, you may use the Google Disavow Links tool page to disavow these links and tell Google not to consider them for your site’s ranking.
4. Enhance your website’s internal linking
A well-made internal linking structure can aid Google in crawling and indexing your web pages, boosting their visibility and domain authority. If done well, internal links can keep visitors engaged in your content and entice them to view other pages.
Here are some tips for smart internal linking:
- Make your linked pages relevant.
- Anchor texts must be descriptive, keyword-rich, and match the linked page.
- Avoid using identical anchor texts for different linked pages.
- Keep internal links below 100. Your page might look spammy with excessive internal links.
Related: Enhance Your Website’s Visibility and Dominate Your Competition With These Powerful Techniques
5. Don’t forget your on-page SEO
Never neglect the basics of optimizing pages for the search engine and users: well-optimized title and meta-description, correct heading usage, natural use of keywords, search intent consideration, and incorporating optimized images and videos. Furthermore, with Google’s mobile-first indexing priority, you must also optimize your website for mobile use, such as ensuring its content fits well and is readable on screen.
Building domain authority is a holistic process that focuses on robust link building, quality content production, and backlink quality auditing and management. It’s not easy and takes time to succeed, but striving for high domain authority can lead to better ranking results.
