This Is Why People Care About Domain Authority

By: | August 30, 2016 | Tags: , , , , , , |

#Bloggers can improve their Domain Authority and #SEO

Were you confused by last week’s post 5 Creative Ways of Promoting Your New Blog Now?

After all, complex terms the post used like Domain Authority might motivate you to bounce to another blog instead of sticking around to get the benefit of the information.

Consider this comment from a reader:

I started a blog a year ago. Really enjoyed the blog as a platform to share my thoughts and ideas but when I start thinking about traffic, it gets demotivating. Has been dismal. I am trying to do some of the things you and others suggested but when it comes to SEO and some of these other ‘tech stuff’, I get turned off.

Consider this reader‘s comment as well:

All this sounds awfully complicated.

Let the unraveling of the complexity begin. Today’s guest author explains the meaning of Domain Authority and how you can increase your score in order to beat the competition and be found more often in search engines.

A Beginner’s Guide to Domain Authority and Ways to Increase It

A guest post by Anuradha Chawla

Although the Domain Authority score is not a recent concept in SEO, there are some bloggers who still don’t understand it very well.  Now this will provide you with a guideline where you can learn about DA (Domain Authority) and some more unknown terms.

Domain authority is certainly one of the most important factors to define your website’s rank and performance in search engines. In the last decade, a website used to get priority on the basis of page-rank. But nowadays, DA plays a great role in ranking.

Today I am going to share with you the basics of Domain Authority.

What is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority is a kind of metric on the scale of 1 to 100 where 100 indicates the best and 1 means the worst. The higher the score, the higher the rank in search engines. This is certainly a competitive metric method to compete against other sites. You can easily compare your DA score with the competitor’s DA score.

There are 40 ranking indicators like the number of links, MozTrust, the number of linking roots, MozRank and some more. These terms will be explained in this article.

How to Check Your Domain Authority?

UPDATE:

Moz closed the Open Site Explorer Site in August, 2018. 

Instead, Open Site Explorer was replaced with Open Link Profiler. 

You can measure Domain Authority using Open Site Explorer or the MozBar, Moz’s free SEO toolbar. Moz incorporates Authority metrics into all Moz Analytics campaigns, as well as the Mozscape API.

In the list, the first one is the official Moz Open Site Explorer where you have to submit your domain or sub-domain address.

You can also use MozBar extension to check the DA of your website. If you want to make a good DA score, then you have to understand MozRank and MozTrust well.

What is MozRank?

This highly depends on your number of links. The quality of the pages you link to is also significant.

MozRank is calculated on the scale of 0-100. Here, 100 is the highest.

What is MozTrust?

MozTrust also greatly depends on links.

Some factors regarding MozTrust that you should remember:

What Websites are Linked To?

Try to link to quality sites if possible. Avoid illegal or spam sites.

Domain Registration Information:

This is also an important factor for the Domain you have. If you possess like ten websites having the same domain registration info and eight of them are bad sites, then it will be difficult for you to gain trust for the other two.

Note: Choosing and buying a domain name is an essential part of your website. Before deciding the domain name, you can find the best match of the domain name with the help of domain suggestion tools.

Domain Age:

Search engines prefer older domains as they are considered as the reliable domain names. Thus, you should never miss out any opportunity to buy older domain names.

The more content you add to your website, the more popularity it gains in the long run. Just concentrate on quality content and backlinks to improve the site Domain Authority slowly.

How to Develop Domain Authority?

Improving your DA can be helpful to achieve a good search engine ranking. Try your best to get links from sites which have a superior Domain Authority score.

Expiration Date of a Domain Name:

This is an essential factor for a first-class website. To have a long-lasting site, this gives you trust. I suggest you extend your site at least for the next few years. It won’t cost that much and this will help you in the long run.

Get More Links:

Many people will agree to the fact that to increase any DA score this is a significant factor. Get more and more backlinks to your site. Those links have to be from well-ranked sites, not low-quality sites. Don’t follow automated methods.

Link Profile:

Try a diversity of sources. Don’t just stick to a few.

Internal Link Structure:

It is another important factor that can be controlled without trouble. You can notice Wikipedia’s impressive internal linking. You may try linking from your old posts. This is an interesting method to engage readers.

Delete Bad Links:

There’s no need for bad links. Monitor your backlinks and if you find one that isn’t to a quality site, remove it immediately. You may use Google Disavow tool for that.

Be a Reliable Source:

Always remember that quality is more significant than quantity. Posting 2-3 good quality posts a week is better than publishing 10 or more low quantity contents. Bring out trustworthy news to gain more visitors.

On Site SEO:

Some few things should be considered to have a proper on-site SEO. Like:

  1. A meta description is necessary. You will find it where you describe your post for search engines.A meta description will help your domain authority improve
  2. Keep up an appropriate heading hierarchy [Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, etc].

Guest Blogging:

Links are a crucial part of SEO, so it’s always good to work on getting more links to your pages.  Guest blogging is one way of doing this as you can approach the sites that you want to write for.

As we are trying to improve your Domain Authority, you want to look for sites with a good score themselves.  The higher their score is, the better it will look for your site when you get a link from them.

For self-hosted bloggers:

Make an Effort to Load Your Site Quicker:

Loading time is a crucial factor for websites. If your site doesn’t load within 3 or 4 seconds, then you must have a look at speed optimization of the site.

  1. You should contact a reliable hosting company. (Note: If you are considering self-hosting or changing hosts, I am an affiliate of A Small Orange.)

Tip: If by chance you stuck with a wrong hosting company, are unaware of the switching process, or afraid of long downtimes which might cause you loss, don’t worry. Check out An Ultimate Guide to Switching from One Web Host to Another.

  1. Compress and edit the images before you upload them.
  2. Use plugins like WP Rocket, Super Cache or W3 Total Cache.
  3. You may utilize CDN from Cloudflare.

Social Media Marketing:

Undoubtedly, social media plays a chief role in ranking your site. Make your website visible in all the modern social media. Make sure that your readers are sharing your site link on the platforms.

Moz’s Domain Authority checker receives an update 1-2 times a month.

Increase your DA score if it’s less than you expected. Get help from the above tips and start working. If your DA is already in a good position, then no need to worry. Just maintain it.

Final words:

If you have noticed the relation between all of the points above, the only factor that matters here is the quality of your blog. If you want to boost up the domain authority of your blog, write epic and quality content.

What is your approach to increase DA? Do let us know in the comments section below.

Anuradha is a full loving person who enjoys her work thoroughly and has a keen interest in writing. She is a professional blogger and actively engages with readers. In her free time, she loves eating new foods, reading books and spending time with her family. She blogs at dhost.com.
Gravatar e-mail: anuradha@dhost.com
Admin blogger’s commentary:
According to BeeBom.com, there are over one billion websites on the Internet. Search engines need a way of ranking them. Domain Authority is one way your site gets ranked.
Readers, please share, so other bloggers know how to improve their Domain Authority and increase their chances of being found in search engines.
Had you heard of Domain Authority before reading Anuradha’s post? Do you make efforts to improve it? What steps do you take? I look forward to reading your views in the comments section.

Related Posts:

5 Creative Ways of Promoting Your New Blog Now discusses Domain Authority and how to guest author for a blog with a high Domain Authority.

  1. John Doe

    Another great post about seo. This one as do all the posts on your blog was full of great info.

    • Anuradha Chawla

      Hello John,

      Glad that I helped you. Thank you so much for liking the article. Hope to see you again here.

  2. Elaine

    Glad to have found you on Women of Midlife FB Page. Look forward to keeping up with your blog and learning some new tips!

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Elaine,
      Thank you for the nice comments you wrote on my SEO post on Tuesday! I am happy you found me in the MidLife Bloggers’ Facebook group as well! You said you’d be back. I’d love to have your readership. Thank you!
      Janice

  3. GiGi Eats

    Hmmm – I ALWAYS WONDERED why it mattered. I mean, I see the word “authority” and immediately think – oh that’s something blogs must have, but was never sure why!

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Gigi!
      Now you know! If you go to Open Page Rank, you’ll find out you have authority too!
      Great to see you! Thanks for commenting on my article.
      Janice

  4. Linda Jenkinson

    Very good article but I need even a further explanation of what each term means… do you mean links to quality sites as listing your sources of the article? I’d like further info on linking too. And how does owning your own domain trump a free blog site like Blogger?

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Lin,
      Thanks for the compliments. I agree Anuradha did a good job with complex subject matter.
      You wrote: do you mean links to quality sites as listing your sources of the article ?
      Links to your site and out of your site are important. They give you Google juice which improves your SEO. So yes, you can link to “authority” sources. I have a “Sources” section regularly at the end of my posts. Sometimes, I’ll link to a reference where I give a statistic.
      As far as links into your site, that’s harder since it depends on others. Find people in your niche with quality blogs and ask them to publish your link and offer to publish theirs. Great content will also motivate people to link to you.
      How does owning your own domain trump free sites? I don’t think it matters what platform the free site is on. The point is you don’t your own content or Email list on a free site. What if they fold??
      I wrote the author and told her you have questions, so she may be by to answer as well. Thanks for writing.
      Janice

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Jeannine,
      Thank you for dropping by my site on Tuesday. I agree my guest author did a great job. Thanks for the compliments and for writing us.
      Janice

  5. dgkaye

    Excellent info Janice. I’m bookmarking this one! I must improve my SEO 🙂

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Debby,
      Thanks for bookmarking. If you have any questions about SEO, let me know. Thanks for writing and your kind words about my guest author’s article.
      Janice

  6. Melinda Mitchell

    Hi BBFFJ, thanks for checking in on me!
    Another thing to learn?? But Teach, my brain is full!!
    BBFFM

    • Janice Wald

      Hi BBFFM,
      You wrote that you’ve been found on the first page of Google more than once. It sounds like you’re doing fine in the SEO department.
      Thanks for writing.
      BBFFJ

  7. Sylvia Kalungi

    Looks like You and Paul had the same thoughts for this week Janice.

    Blog traffic and Blog authority go hand in hand. The higher your Domain or Blog authority the higher the chances you are getting more organic traffic. This Beginners Guide is so well put and I ma sure a wonderful resource for any new bloggers.

    I find lots of new bloggers have the same questions and comments as you received. The Mother of all questions is: Are they willing to change the status Quo? Of course they are….

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Julie,
      Thanks for writing. I’m glad you liked my guest author’s article. Why did you say Paul and I had the same idea?
      As far as your comment about people being willing to learn, many find SEO complicated, but where’s there’s a will, there’s a way, just like you said.

  8. Soumya Roy

    I believe Domain age was used to be a factor but now-a-days domain age has no or very less authority over ranking as well as Moz metrics. And you said it correctly and even I suggest the same to all my student optimizers that the more we diversify our linking sources and anchor texts the better values we should get over time. Link cleaning is surely another important factor. Rest of the points are absolutely perfect to improve the DA and ranking.

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Soumya,
      Great to see you again. I haven’t seen you in a long time.
      You have student optimizers? You must be very knowledgeable about SEO, and it sounds like you are.
      Do you mind if I ask, what is link cleaning?
      Thanks for the information and for the comments. Thanks as well for letting us know the update about domain age.
      Janice

  9. Lisa/Syncopated Mama

    Wow, so much great info here. I’ve pinned it to come back to and work on over time, since there’s so much!

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Lisa,
      Great to see you here!
      I agree it was a long, detail-filled post. Thanks for pinning! The bottom line is links are important. Google feels if you link to others and they link to you, you must be doing something right, and they enable their users to find you in search engines more often. I hope that was clear.
      Thanks for your comments.
      Janice

  10. Sowjanya

    Hi Janice,

    Resourceful! You clarified all my doubts regarding domain authority. No more questions asked. I’m working on increasing my domain authority. I purchased a new domain. My blog DA slowly grew from 1 to 23 in 6 months. I don’t know whether Its a good growth or a slow steady growth.Planning to produce more valuable content and link up to popular sites like yours in the upcoming days.

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Sowjanya,
      Thank you for calling my site valuable. Much appreciated! Thank you for saying you will link to me. Very thoughtful of you! I will look forward to that. I am glad that you liked my article on domain authority. Congratulations on growing your new blog. Thank you for writing me today.
      Janice

  11. Techkhalifa

    Thanks Janice, some of these days I often visit your blog. I read a lot and I have learned from your writing.

    • Janice Wald

      Fascinating comment. I never considered that. I think I will post about other SEO factors. My site isn’t yet 3 years old. If Google doesn’t care about longevity, that’s good for me.
      Janice

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  14. Alisha Ross

    Just a quick question, not very relevant thought. You indicated before you disavow the bad links, we should try to get these links pruned. Of course, if we can prune them, it is good. But is it necessary that one needs to do this exercise to convince Google that enough effort has been put to remove the bad links, like the way it is expected in case of manual action revoking?

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Alisha,
      I will try to contact the guest author who wrote about disavowing links and ask him your question. Thank you for reaching out with your question. Where did you find the article? May I ask? I always wonder.
      Janice

    • Janice Wald

      Do you have the link to the post that mentioned disavowing bad links so I can find the author?
      Thanks
      Janice

  15. Bella D. @ Self-Publishing Made Easy Now

    This is such a good read. I have learned a lot about domain authority. Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful ideas about the topic. I hope to read more articles like this.

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Bella,
      Domain Authority is important if you want to outrank your online competitors. Thanks for writing to tell me you found the article informative.
      Janice

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