With the rising competition in the online business industry, just building a website is not enough. You need to optimize your website to rank higher on SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) and achieve maximum visibility. And this is how most of your customers will find you.  

Many SEO strategists use the DA (domain authority) metric to understand and quantify a website’s ranking potential. However, it’s not just for the strategists. Anyone who wants to rank higher in search results can benefit from having an in-depth understanding of the DA metric.  

Let’s learn about domain authority in detail. 

What is domain authority? 

Domain authority is a metric developed by Moz. It quantifies and indicates how likely is a website to rank in top search engine results.  

DA is measured on a scale of 0-100 with higher scores showing higher authority and predicting stronger ranking potential. However, it is important to note that DA works independently of Google rankings and doesn’t interact with the SERPs. Therefore, it doesn’t have an impact on search engine results.  

You can check your website’s DA score for free using the domain authority checker. 

How is DA calculated?  

Moz uses several factors to calculate DA. One of the most important ones is the number of inbound links (when another website links back to your website). These links are also called backlinks. Moz gathers this information with the help of the Link Explorer Index, which is constantly updated. Websites having a higher number of backlinks and unique referring domains are likely to have higher DA scores.  

This ranking is then used for comparing websites and tracking progress over time (essentially regarding the website’s contextual link-building strength). As we mentioned previously, DA merely indicates a website’s probability to rank on SERPs and doesn’t affect the rankings directly. Nonetheless, a good DA score is important to stay ahead of SEO practices. 

 What is a good domain authority score?  

Earning a perfect DA score (i.e., 100) is nearly impossible. Only the most popular and biggest websites have earned it. That is why Moz emphasizes that the DA metric is comparative. Websites having lower DA scores can (and often) rank higher in search engine results.  

For example, suppose your website has a DA score of 23. This may be lower as compared to millions of other websites, but if it is higher than that of your competitors, you are likely to outrank them for the important keywords in your industry. 

Simply put, a good DA score is a score higher than that of your competitors or other domains that you hope to outrank. 

How to increase domain authority?  

As DA is mainly calculated through backlinks. Implementing off-page (or off-site) strategies like link building is one of the best ways to improve your score. But this isn’t as easy as it seems, as we do not have any control over whether other websites will choose to link to ours.  

Moreover, some link-building strategies may even be “black hat” (SEO practices against search engine guidelines), consequently resulting in Google penalizing your website if it appears to be engaging in spammy link practices or paying for the backlinks.  

Nonetheless, there are multiple ways to increase your domain’s overall authority, and ultimately, your DA score. A few of the common yet effective link-building strategies are: 

1. Get listed in the directories 

Getting the domain listed across online directories is one of the impactful and cost-effective ways for small and local businesses to increase their DA. Even local SEO strategies (like citation building) are some affordable growth strategies that you can try. With such practices, Google will better understand the areas and markets you serve, and the relevant backlinks will increase your DA score. 

2. Write well-researched and engaging content 

Focus on writing well-researched and keyword-targeted content so that other websites find it and link to it naturally. When a business or blogger would want to write about a similar topic, they might find your post and link back to your website (that happens only if they deem it insightful or the information is unique). If you share a thought leadership piece, or original research, especially something hard to replicate, you are more likely to get a backlink. 

3. Try to gain back the broken links 

Though this strategy is advanced and might require you to use backlink tools, broken link building can help you in finding prospective link opportunities that can elevate your website’s DA score. The process is very straightforward: 

  • Use a broken link checker tool like that of ahrefs. 
  • Analyze and create content that can replace the missing resource (or you can even find that existing content on your website). 
  • Get in touch with the editor and offer the newly created content as a replacement 

 4. Write guest posts 

Publishers are always looking for unique and researched content. Writing original research, thought leadership or blog content for high DA websites in your industry is a great way of earning more backlinks to your website. They may offer a link back to your website either in the byline or in the body content, helping you increase your DA score. 

READ : Does Domain Age Really Matter? Older is Better, Right? 

 How to apply DA to your website’s SEO 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of practices that any website owner can adopt to improve their website’s performance in search engine results. You can apply DA to your website’s SEO in the following ways: 

1. Draw a comparison 

Check your direct competitors’ DA scores and make a comparison between their websites and yours. Plan out methods to improve your own score and outrank them in the search engine rankings.  

2. Increase the amount of content 

Lower domain authority means you might need to work on improving and increasing the content on your website. With high-quality content published on your page, you’ll effectively invite other websites to link to it, boosting your backlinks and DA score in the process. 

3. Assess the websites linked to you  

Check to see whether the websites that have linked back to you are reputable sources. Their DA scores can be used as your website’s quality indicator. If the resources aren’t credible, try improving your backlink profile. 

4. Launch a link-building campaign 

If you feel that authoritative resources like news outlets and education institutions can connect to your website, reach out to them. Offer a guest article in exchange for a link back to your website. 

Start building your domain authority today 

Building your website’s domain authority is not a short-term or one-time process. It is an ongoing and a time-consuming process that doesn’t immediately produce any desired result. Therefore, keep following the best practices (that we have given above) and continuously track your progress. You can even outsource the work to trusted agencies offering SEO services like BigRock. Besides deploying effective SEO strategies and helping you boost your domain authority, our experts also put in arduous efforts to improve the quantity and quality of your leads.