To rank higher on the pages of search engines, you need to improve your website’s domain authority.
And as you do this, Google and other search engines will be keener to show your content at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs).
But how do you do this? What is a domain authority anyway?
My goal today is to help you get acquainted with DA or domain authority, and also provide you with critical steps you need to do to improve your DA.
By the end of this tutorial, you will be able to draw and execute actions plans that will improve your domain’s authority and page rankings.
What is Domain Authority?
Domain authority is a proprietary name and measurement system that Moz introduced. It is a score that determines a domain’s strength in search engine rankings.
The purpose of the score is to predict how a website is likely to rank on the SERPs. As a score, it only ranges between 1 and 100, with 100 being the most likely to get attention and ranking from search engines.
Websites that have a domain rank of 100 are websites like Wikipedia—websites that have an unquestionable authority.
Essentially, a domain with a domain score or DA, has a better likelihood of ranking high in SERPs.
There are many other variations of this score, such as Authority Score by SEMRush and PageRank by Google, which has long been stopped.
To get your Domain Authority score, you need to go to Moz and simply type your domain name in the box.
Why is Domain Authority Important?
DA is important because it measures your credibility. It is built on the backbone of backlinking.
A backlink is a link from another website, which points to yours. In SEO, your pages get more link juice if you have a lot of backlinks. A backlink is an upvote from a community—from people all over the world that publish web content.
A large number of high-quality links tells Google that you must be a credible source of information. Since DA is a measurement that predicts your ranking ability, you need to execute action plans that will improve your score.
In a nutshell, here are the reasons why a high DA is important:
- It signals to search engines that you are credible
- A high DA means more links to your site
- The links to your site can bring traffic
- Search engines are likely to show your pages at the top of the SERPs
- Users will find you more credible if they were referred to you
Domain authority tells you how likely you are to rank. If your DA score is high, it only means that your content is likely to show on the first page of the SERPs. And if so, you are also likely to get more clicks, and thus a higher volume of traffic.
Traffic is the most important aspect of an online business. Without it, you cannot sell your products, show ads, or build an email list. Pretty much, a website that has no traffic is not going to generate revenue.
Steps to Improve Domain Authority
Now, how do you build and improve your domain authority? The main thrust of a high DA is backlinking, so many of the steps that I will show you are related to getting backlinks.
Here are some steps to help you do it:
1. Increase linking root domains
A root domain refers to one domain. Let us say that your website received ten backlinks. Three are from website A, three from website B, and four from website C. In this case, you only have THREE linking root domains, not 10.
In Google’s eyes, three backlinks from one website do not matter much as far as authority is concerned.
Why? Because it comes from one entity only.
To be able to increase the number of sites linking to you, you need to do some guest posting. Or, you can join organizations like Backlink Society. It is a website where you swap links with members for free.
2. Improve the quality of the backlink
If the websites linking to you are low-quality sites, search engines will naturally think that you are getting links from spam sites and private blog networks. Your goal is to get backlinks from websites that already have high authority.
3. Optimize page content
You need to make your website and pages optimized for search engines.
What does this mean? Here are some tips:
- Keyword – use the right keywords for in your title, text body, and meta descriptions.
- Page speed – your web page must load really fast; poor speed performance will make Google dislike your pages as they do not create a good user experience.
- Quality of content – your web content must be helpful, not spammy. Google is so smart now that it can detect if your website is offering value or not. Do not bombard your pages with ads—they do not help your cause.
Page optimization requires a lot of work. You need to find a balance between on-page and off-page SEO. Most importantly, you have to write content that solves problems, not fluff.
If you need help in writing content, you have to look for an affordable freelance writer who can consistently supply you with high-quality content.
4. Publish relevant content
Authority has something to do with being a credible source of information on your niche. If you are operating a website about fish care, your content must be about fish care.
You should not write about SEO if your website is about aquariums.
You need to establish yourself as the go-to person in your niche. And to do this, you have to publish content that is within the scope of your industry.
5. Create linkable content
Linkable content is shareable content. Most of the time, these are long listicles that people will not want to write about. Instead, they would rather lead their readers to your site by backlinking to you.
To build linkable content, you need to consider length, value, and relevance. Long posts that provide help are more likely to be shared than short ones.
Also, you have to make sure that your content is relevant to the times. This is why many websites add a year to their blog titles—it tells people that the content is updated.
Lastly, make your site mobile-friendly. If your website uses a theme that is not built for mobile, switch to a new one right away.
Many internet users today access content on phones. Even Google is not going to put your pages on the SERPs if your website is not mobile-friendly.
Summary
DA is a measurement that tells you how likely your website is going to rank. If you want your website to rank, you need to get backlinks from other sites—especially so from other websites that have the same niche as yours.
Your key focus now must be to build backlinks to your website. You can do this by guest posting and by collaborating with other content developers.
Whatever it is you do, you should never pay for backlinks. This will only hurt your website. The best thing you can do is to submit guest posts or join groups where you can swap backlinks with each other.
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