By Domain Authority we mean the result of the search engine ranking that describes the relevance of a given domain. DA evaluates how well a specific website will rank in SERPs (search engine result pages).
A brief history…
The term domain authority was coined by SEO consultants Moz, who created a tool to track over 40 ranking factors that indicate the likelihood that a certain website ranks higher. Developed by Moz, domain authority ranks a website on a scale of 1 (the lowest) to 100 (the highest). A website with higher DA scores indicates a better possibility of ranking on the search engine results.
As we mentioned above, Domain Authority scores range from 1 to 100. When considering a high DA score, you refer to a domain ranked 60 and above on the DA scale. High Domain Authority scores correspond to a greater likelihood of a website ranking higher in SERPs. Google, YouTube, Facebook, WordPress, Twitter, and Wikipedia are websites with the highest Domain Authority scores.
A good DA is between 50 to 60 on the Domain Authority scale. Good DA corresponds to a website ranking that can compete in SERPs for moderately competitive keywords.
The importance of Domain Authority in SEO:
DA is important for SEO because it represents approximately the real ranking capability of a certain website. To add more, Domain Authority is a widely accepted score for many SEO experts and link builders as it can help measure a specific website’s performance. Usually, a high Domain Authority website ranks better than a low Domain authority with SEO. Still, be mindful that Domain Authority is not a metric that Google uses to determine ranking in its algorithm.
Domain Authority in SEO alone has no direct effect on search engine results pages.
DA is only an SEO performance indicator by third-party software (Moz). For example, if you look at high-ranking websites, you will notice that they have an excellent domain rating. Therefore, you should focus on increasing your DA and PA (Page Authority) because they often help your content on your website rank higher for your target keywords. Page Authority is another Moz metric that predicts how well a certain page will rank on SERPs.
What can affect Domain Authority?
The age of a domain is an approximate estimate of how old a website is, and it has a great impact on Domain Authority. For example, if a domain is registered long ago, it will have more Authority than its competitors. But here’s a thing to keep in mind: the Domain has to be active. Otherwise, it won’t affect at all Domain Authority.
E.g., If a domain was registered in 2016, but it is not used since then, it will develop age but not DA.
Another thing to know is that SEO experts and bloggers would rather link to a website with a higher age and domain score since it specifies a higher-quality website. Usually, Domain Age provides reliability and credibility, and this is all you need to get relevant backlinks.
Domain Age is a ranking factor between Domain Authority and keyword ranking. Even though there is some correlation evidence, it may not be a helpful metric compared to other DA measures. Thus, using a long-term SEO strategy to increase DA is more effective than shortcuts.
Know that buying old and inactive domains will not help your website rank faster. Even though you have a domain with age, it won’t affect Google’s ranking decisions. Instead, you should have an old domain (registered a long time ago) that has been constantly active and has accumulated backlinks through referring (linking) domains.
Number of linking domains
Linking domains are external domains or websites that link out to your site. In principle, these are domains from which your site has at least one backlink or URL.
Short history…
After analyzing one thousand million pages on the Internet, Ahrefs (an SEO tool)revealed a strong correlation between linking domains and SEO. According to Ahrefs, a shocking 90.63 of general content on the Internet gets zero traffic from Google for the simple reason; they have no domain links. Referring domains increase your website’s Domain Authority, and that’s why it is highly important to have them on your website. The more referring links your website has, the more search traffic it will receive.
After following the latest SEO guidelines, focus on getting many root domains linking to your site. While doing that, establish a DA checker tool that will give you a clearer conception of your current site authority. Domain Authority checker can also help you track how your website authority changes over time as you aggregate more link domains.
Use the following backlink analysis tools Ahrefs, LinkMiner, or Semrush, if you want to check how many linking domains you have. If you’re going to increase the current number of your referring domains, you can use different sources such as HARO, Buzzstream, SourceBottle, and other journalism services.
You can also do multitudinous things to increase the number of linking domains.
- Write relevant content
- Contribute to other websites
- Tap into PR networks (the most important) to increase your total backlinks.
Total number of backlinks
Having backlinks is essential for your website because it can level up your DA, even if they come from the same linking domains. Therefore, you need to focus on building large quantities of backlinks from high Domain Authority websites relevant to yours. Know that if you have a great number of backlinks from reliable websites, you can also have a higher score.
In terms of backlink accumulations, marketers are still skeptical about what is more important in backlinks, quality or quantity. But, again, we’ve got you covered. The optimal solution has high-quality backlinks, making a much bigger difference in your backlink profile and rankings.
Example: If a high DA website is linked to your content, your site can be pulled up in the search engine results pages, even if you only get a single backlink. Whereas, when a low Domain Authority spam does the same in large quantities, it won’t have an impact at all, and your website can get penalized by Google. So make sure you remove bad backlinks from your backlink profile and have high Domain Authority websites linked out to your website to increase your Domain Authority.
How can you improve Domain Authority?
1.Get more high-authority backlinks.
To develop greater page authority, you have to get backlinks from high Domain Authority blogs, relevant industry sites, and large publications. Again, HARO comes to our aid with editorial links as it is considered a goldmine for building white hat SEO links from highly authoritative channels.
Another way to collect authoritative backlinks is to create high-quality content (with the help of SEO) and content rating tools. Your main goal has te bo to create the best content possible on a specific topic, and in this way, many reputable websites will link out to your pages. In addition, this will improve your websites’ Domain Authority and bring more organic traffic.
2.Get fewer spammy backlinks.
As to your link-building strategy, you are identifying and removing harmful backlinks is very important because they negatively impact your rankings. For example, suppose you are attempting to manipulate PageRank with these toxic/spammy backlinks. In that case, you will get a manual action penalty from Google or get a ranking demotion in SERPs during an algorithm update.
So, once you identify these backlinks, you should disappear them immediately from Google Search Console.
3.Get more traffic driving backlinks.
Attracting proper backlinks that drive real traffic is better than getting a group of URLs from other useful and not relevant sites to your website. Your primary purpose is to get a high Domain Authority link and a mention that delivers qualified traffic to your linked web page. To do that, you have to pay attention to the linking page’s inbound and outbound links. So, if it has a high number of incoming backlinks, it will probably rank higher in the search engine conclusion pages, and it will likely give your backlinks more exposure.
So, your focus should be on a backlink/URL on a high DA website with a lot of incoming backlinks (and a few outgoing backlinks).
