In today’s marketing language, SEO is as common as the words Facebook and Twitter to web developers, webmasters, and blog owners. It is short for Search Engine Optimization, and these words are self-explanatory as to where the phrase is applicable. Domain Authority (DA) is the word that explains the authority of a website domain.
Search Engine Optimization is a framework, a set of rules and guidelines, that websites and blog sites follow to keep themselves, not only visible but on top of search engine results. In general, SEO is very important. It helps businesses grow – reach their marketing objectives and expand their reach. Its importance can be seen in how businesses spend so much on paying for people who will maintain their websites’ search engine ranking. In 2016, the SEO industry was worth $65 billion. And to date, the industry just keeps on growing, and developments are non-stop. All these despite misguided news that the industry is dying.
What is Domain Authority?
Ever since SEO was introduced to the world, different strategies have evolved within and around it that online marketers and developers have adopted. Some keep things clean and follow the rules set by search engines like Google. On the other hand, there are those agencies that opt for the easier route and use back-hand and shady SEO tools and tactics to get ahead. Thus, Google has, over the years, revamped its system and criteria for search engine rankings. And year after year, developers and marketers do their best to keep up with the game.
Today, a Software as a Service company (Saas), Moz, created a metric that is used to rate a website on a scale of 1 to 100 (1 being low and 100 the highest). The Domain Authority (DA) determines whether a website will have a high search engine ranking.
Although Domain Authority is no longer new to the ranks of SEO tools, many still have not heard of it, and many more utilize it. With the purpose Domain Authority, it can be pretty obvious how important it is in Search Engine Optimization. Since there is no way one can actually determine the machinery behind Google’s ranking, Domain Authority provides a website’s overall SEO health. Thus, it gives the owner, developer, or marketer an idea of the website’s ranking. It is not simply used as a measure of one’s SEO inputs though, but a way to see if your search ranking is higher than that of your competitor’s.
Unlike Google’s PageRank, Domain Authority does not affect page ranking. It is solely created to provide scores, by putting into account all factors that affect a website’s rankings. According to Moz, scores are evaluated through signals (they have 40), which include the following: Website content quality, quality, and relevance of the website’s incoming links, social scores or the popularity of the website on the basis of social media networks, the number of backward links pointing to the website. The authority of those links also matters, and the website’s overall SEO performance.
To Improve Your Domain Authority, Here Are The Things You Can Do:
Set your SEO Foundation – On-Page SEO
Domain Authority does not discount the importance of SEO efforts. In fact, it is the basic foundation to have good SEO. Keywords, alt tags, word count, URL, site structures, and all things SEO need to be improved to hit a higher Domain Authority.
Internal Linking – Hyper Linking to the relevant page inside the website, known as internal linking passes link juice and page authority to the page linked and helps the user and search engine to easily navigate to the relevant page.
Internal linking reduces the bounce rate and serves more information to the users.
Generate High-Quality Links – In order to improve the DA of a website you should make a link strategy to get high-quality links. Bloggers can ask other bloggers to link back to their blog or they can produce good content with the link back on the sites having a great presence on the web, holding high authority. Getting a backlink from .gov, .edu, and org sites is an advantage for the website.
Guest posting can be a great idea, you can ask other webmaster and you can write for them and request for a Do-Follow link to your website as a reward of the content you delivered.
Social Sharing – Creating a post for social media sites and sharing all across the social media sites added value to the sites for which you want to increase DA. Getting shares in the content you post on social media can increase the visibility of the content you have posted on the website and help in achieving good results.
Domain Age- Domain Age is also one of the factors that play a crucial role. It tells the user and the search engine how long the website is registered and active. It is a trust factor of the website that conveys trust to the users and search engines.
Build on high-quality and consistent content – Quality Content
Content marketing and SEO go together and work hand in hand. As much as SEO is important for Domain Authority, the website content has a direct impact on it. As commonly phrased in the world of SEO, content is king. The quality of your content is very important. What should you have that other website cannot offer to the readers and viewers? Be unique and creative. Being consistent also gets your website going. Posting content from time to time is not enough. You gain more views and attention if your posts are updated and not just relevant.
Work on the speed- Loading Speed
Websites that have low-speed loading have high bounce rates, and this reflects badly on the Domain Authority. Loading should be best maintained at 2-3 seconds, according to Kissmetrics. Beyond that time, you can no longer expect them to linger patiently. Tools are available online to help your website have a better speed performance.
Be mobile-friendly
It might not have mattered so much in the past, but nowadays since phones are performing pretty much like minicomputers, having a mobile-friendly website is a plus plus plus on your score. A study done by ComScore, it showed that the number of people who use their mobile phones for internet searching these days has surpassed the number of people who surfed online through their computers in 2015. This fact has upped the game, and Google has included a mobile-friendly website as a factor in rankings. You have to adapt to this change for your website to keep up with its ranking.
Remove bad backlinks – Disavow Links
Checking on the links is one of the things that developers and marketers forget to do, even when the setting of internal and external links is part of the basics of SEO. A broken or inactive link can poorly reflect on your Domain Authority. So from time to time, you need to have the links checked, you can contact the owner of the broken or inactive link to have it fixed. But if the owner is unreachable and is inactive about it, you can opt to disavow that link. Clearing off bad links makes a huge impact on your Domain Authority.
To see the output of all your SEO and Domain Authority efforts would require patience. What many newbies fail to do is to give up long before improvements have started taking ground. Remember those good things take time and patience. Consider it a workspace that does not immediately grow in a short matter of time, especially when you are starting from scratch. Just continue on doing all the required rules and be consistent, and you are off to a good start. In the long run, you will see all your patience and efforts have not been put to waste.
