What is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority (DA) is a metric developed by Moz to establish the credibility of a website. It is ranked on a scale of one to 100, with sites such as Facebook, Google and the BBC achieving the top parameters and brand new websites starting at 1. Domain authority helps to determine a websites position on search engine results pages (SERP) and ultimately impacts the amount of traffic that is driven to the site.

domain authority graph

How is Domain Authority Calculated?

Like Google, Moz keep their authority algorithm a strictly guarded secret, so there is no definitive list of what features that determine DA. What we do know, however, is that it consists of an amalgamation of metrics and factors such as total number of links and linking domains are likely to be influential.

 

What number should I aim for?

You can find your own websites DA using a number of free online tools. Of course, the higher the number the better, but be careful not to fixate on the absolute score. DA is a measure of ability to rank in relation to other listings; therefore you should look at your DA in comparison to your competitors and aim to achieve a higher score.

It is also important to note that domain authority is calculated on a logarithmic scale. This means that it is easier to increase a DA from 10 to 20 than it is from 90-100.

 

How can I improve my Domain Authority?

Due to the fact that DA is determined by considering a range of factors, it is difficult to know what aspects to target first; therefore you should aim to achieve a higher domain by employing SEO best practice across the site.

Link building 

Links are one of the most important things to consider when attempting to improve a websites SEO. You should endeavour to have inbound links from relevant websites within your niche that, where possible, have a higher DA than your own.

Quality not quantity is important, therefore you should carry out an audit and evaluate your websites existing links before embarking on a link building campaign. Use a link-checking tool to ensure that none are broken and remove any toxic links to untrustworthy sites that could be having a negative impact on your SEO.

It is common for internal links to be neglected, however these also play an important role in SEO. Systematically assess the content on your website and see whether you have missed any opportunities to link to any other relevant content on your site.

Content

Regularly creating engaging and sharable content for your site, whether this in the form of a blog or page copy is incredibly important. When crafting copy you should ensure that the sentences are short and avoid complicated words and jargon. You should also try to write in a natural manner, which avoids the overuse of keywords. Google is now highly sophisticated and can recognise topics and sentence strings.

website copy and blog content

Titles and Descriptions 

Search engines use titles and descriptions to determine a page’s content and its relevance to a search query, so it is important that these are used so that search engines can easily access this information. Start by checking that all pages have relevant titles and appropriate descriptions. You should also ensure that all images contain an alt description.

Responsive site 

Increasingly, users are viewing websites on mobile phones and tablets, therefore in a bid to improve browsing experience Google penalises websites that do not render well on devices. This means that making sure your website is responsive is a priority. Similarly, website speed will affect engagement and traffic so should be taken into consideration.

mobile and tablet friendly website

Page Speed

You should also ensure that your web pages load quickly. Not only does Google look favourably upon fast websites, but it aids engagement and a users experience on the site. You can check your websites speed using the Google page speed tool.

google page speed tool google page speed industry comparison

If your website doesn’t perform as well as you’d have hoped – please feel free to contact us to find out what can be done to improve.