Domain Authority or DA is a metric developed by Moz that predicts how likely a domain is to appear in the SERPs. However, it is not directly used by Google and is only a metric that can give you an idea of the site’s potential. The different factors included in your DA score are backlinks, domains, search traffic, and other external factors.
Although many of these are essential components of what Google looks for in high ranking sites, it will not always directly convert to Google performance. Google also takes account of the site quality which is not included in DA and can impact the keywords your site appears for. DA is measured on a scale of 1-100 with 100 being the maximum you can receive. It is not realistic to aim for a site score of 100 as you are unlikely to ever compete with huge sites such as Google, Amazon and Facebook. Your DA aim should be to outperform your competitors in your industry. For example, if you own a coffee shop in Limerick City you are unlikely to outperform the likes of Starbucks, instead work on having a higher DA than other small coffee shops in the area.
How to check Domain Authority?
There are plenty of free online DA checkers, simply search DA score checker and you will find them. We recommend using the original creator of DA’s site, Moz, if possible. You will also get a whole host of other information about the number of backlinks and their quality score.
How to Increase Domain Authority
Domain authority measures the number of sites your firm has received backlinks from. It does not investigate the quality of the links. Google uses backlinks to help determine the industry your firm is operating in. If your site is ranking high for sunglasses in Dublin but you own a hardware business in Galway then your backlinks and website need to be analysed. Either your site itself or unrelated links are misleading Google bots about your product or service.
Here are 5 key elements to a killer DA performance.
Quality>Quantity
100 good quality, related backlinks from well-respected sites it is worth more than 1000 links from poor quality unrelated ones. If you find yourself with too many spam links, read our blog on how to use Googles Disavow tool.
Analyse Your Backlinks
You should ensure that all your links are ‘do follow’, MOZ can provide you with these details. If a link is ‘don’t follow, you should look to get this changed.
Create Quality Content
By this, we usually mean to begin writing a blog that posts relevant content on a regular basis. By doing so you boost your chances of naturally occurring links and will therefore increase DA. Make sure your content is tightly related to your firm’s niche as this will increase the number of links that help Google determine what you do.
Update Content.
You should continuously analyse your web pages and update any that have a low DA score. Ensuring there are no published pages that are sample or filler pages will help improve Googles view of your site. Happy Google bots will mean a good site performance. If you would like our professional team to manage this for you, click here to see our management services.
Compare and Copy Competitors.
Pick three firms that are your top competitors online and analyse the type of links they have and try to mimic these. Spread your content across social media such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to maximise your audience and traffic flow.
Building a good quality DA does not happen overnight, it is tempting to buy cheap backlinks from a spam site but cheating the system will only hurt your site’s performance. Stick with the steps above and in time you will begin to see results. While increasing your DA is good, you should also look at what type of links are building your DA as this is just as important for Google.