Domain Authority is the most important factor in Search Engine Optimization. Having a high Domain Authority means a good position in SERP, which indirectly means getting massive organic traffic to your blog. Today, I am writing this article on how to increase Domain Authority for your blog. I am breaking down this article into following topics to cover all aspects of Domain Authority:
What Is Domain Authority?
How Is Domain Authority calculated?
Why Is Domain Authority important?
How To Check Domain Authority
How To Increase Domain Authority?
1) What is Domain Authority?
If you are blogging for quite a long time, you definitely would have heard about domain authority. Domain authority, developed by Moz, is a metric that describe how search engines rank you based on your authority or credibility on the web. Domain authority tells the power of a domain name. The Domain Authority is a score based on a scale of 100, the higher your rating, the better. You might have notice your competitor websites are ranking higher even though they have less information or content. This is because of Domain Authority of their blogs and better page link which make sure search engines are showing better authority page. In this article, we will learn how to improve domain authority & increase page authority
2) How is Domain Authority Calculated?
Now, you know what domain authority is. The next question that comes to mind is – How is Domain Authority calculated? There are many factors that decide Moz domain authority. Major factors are:
Root domain backlinks: Backlinks are the relationship amongst pages on the Internet. Backlinks describe the links coming into a web page or document. Root domain backlinks describe links coming into your root domain (e.g. CatchUpdates.com). The thumb rule is – Quality is better than quantity. It is better to have few backlinks from high reputed websites rather than having high numbers of backlinks from same or below average websites.
Moz Rank: Moz Rank of a website is based on its link profile and ranges from 0-10; the higher the better.
Moz trust: Moztrust is like Moz Rank but it focuses on your proximity with authority links. Moztrust checks how well you have connections and networks with trusted websites. If a website linking to you is being linked to any authority site you are benefitted.
Quality content: Quality content is the king. When you write quality content, you will be benefitted. People will like to link to rich content provided by you. This indirectly means a rise in your domain authority.
Social Network: Social network is at its best now. This plays a vital role in your domain authority. The better you are at Social network i.e. total number of shares and likes your articles get in the Social platform, the better your domain authority will be. It basically checks how your website is performing on social media channels.
Domain Age: Domain age is also a major factor in calculating domain authority. If your domain age is high, it increases trust and ensures you are serving your audience from a long time.
How to Increase Domain Authority
3) Why is Domain Authority Important?
In simple words, Search engines love high domain authority sites. Do I need to explain more why domain authority is important? If you are ranking top in searches then you probably do not need any other thing from your website. You can sit and enjoy massive traffic and income coming from your site. Domain authority not only helps in getting higher ranking and traffic on domain pages, but also you will get lots of offers of direct advertising and guest posts 🙂
4) How to Check Domain Authority
There are lots of online tools available to check domain authority. You can check your domain authority by using the official toolbar from MOZ. Alternatively, you can calculate your domain authority from OpenSiteExplorer(OSE) (Majestic SEO Site Explorer)
Other tools that you can sue to check domain authority are – SmallSeoTools, Moonsy, Bulk DA Checker, SeoWeather. You need to track timely and try to increase domain authority as much as you can. (Tips to increase domain authority are stated below). If your domain authority is going down, you are doing wrong and you need to implement your strategy again. If you are seeing an increment in your domain authority, you are doing great. There is no standard value for optimum domain authority. Anyone with a Domain score of 20 would want to achieve 30 in the next update and similarly, someone with DA 50 (domain authority score) would hope to make it 60 the next time. So it’s a relative factor. Along with checking domain authority score, you can also check page authority, majestic trust flow, check domain metrics and backlinks to your site etc from Moz.
5) How to Increase Domain Authority?
Now coming to the main part of this article – How to increase domain authority. I hope now you know about Domain authority, how it is calculated and how to check DA. As mentioned, Domain authority is important to rank higher in SERP. Site authority is different from page authority. I will explain what is page authority & domain authority vs page authority later. Below are the tips on how to build domain authority –
Guest Blogging
“Stick a fork in it and guest blogging is done.”- Matt Cutts. Guest blogging is dead! It can be heard in the previous year because of a guy who headed the anti-spam team at Google, then Matt Cutts declared that the guest blogging had become to be a more and more spammy practice. However, the truth is that the guest blogging is still very much alive and is the most excellent opportunity for endorsing the brand now. But, be vigilant to discover the difference between the legible websites and the fake ones. Use the credible channel to promulgate the content.
Also Read: The Power of Guest Blogging
You can find the highly reputed websites under your niche and then can do guest blogging on them. You can provide quality content to targeted website (where you are doing guest blogging) and in return, can get backlinks to your domain. As mentioned earlier, root domain linking is the major factor in calculating domain authority. So if you are doing guest blogging in a proper way, it will definitely help you to increase domain authority.
Blog Commenting
It is also a good technique to get quality backlinks and maintain relationships with bloggers under your niche. But the thumb rule is never commented just for the sake of getting a backlink. Mostly, all comments are approved by the moderator. So make sure you are adding value to their post through blog comments. It increases the probability to get your comments approved (thus providing you backlink) which will help to get good domain authority indirectly.
Follow SEO Guidelines Properly
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the soul of blogging. Without SEO, your blog is nothing. It will never get that popularity as it should be. To improve domain authority, you need to follow SEO guidelines properly. This includes – optimizing URL Structures, Optimizing Images (Using Alt Tags), submitting sitemaps regularly, robot.txt, breadcrumb, meta tags, heading tags, site navigation and list goes on. You will love to read below articles on SEO-
a) On Page SEO Techniques To Improve Website Ranking
b) How To Do Off Page SEO to Improve Website and Get Instant traffic
c) SEO Checklist For New Websites
d) Common SEO Mistakes You Need To Avoid Right Now
e) How to Boost Your Site’s SEO With Video?
Writing Quality Content
Quality content is the king. When you create quality content, people love to link you in their article. You can create lots of amazing content to your audience. Produce very detailed content on a topic and try to come with totally unique. While writing content, you should not overlook any spelling or grammar mistakes, it looks very bad on your part. For this, I am using Grammarly. It is a free tool you can also use it.
Alo Read: Grammarly Review : A Writing Tool To Detect Plagiarism and Grammar Mistakes
Start Marketing Your Content
After you have written quality content, it is time to start marketing your content. You need to market your content to increase its reach. The more eyes on your content, the more will it help the readers and hence more link backs, more social shares and more authority.
Interlinking Your Content
By interlinking your old posts at appropriate words, you will compel your readers to click on the link and navigate to the other post. If you interlink all the posts then the probability of your readers staying glued to your blog is for a long time. You can use a different variation of anchor text but add an only specific number of links in an article. Not only it will help you to increase traffic but also it will help to lower the bounce rate of your blog.
Also Read: How Bounce Rate Is Calculated and Tips To Decrease It
Social Bookmarking
As mentioned earlier, domain authority is also calculated on the basis of how your website is performing on social media channels. Social Bookmarking is another great way to get backlinks and traffic to your website. It helps to promote content. Reddit, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Digg are such websites where you can submit your bookmarks. The more the bookmarks, the higher domain authority is.
What strategies are you using to improve your domain authority? I will love to add those strategies or if I may have missed now. Do share your feedback in the comment section below.
What Is Domain Authority?
How Is Domain Authority calculated?
Why Is Domain Authority important?
How To Check Domain Authority
How To Increase Domain Authority?
1) What is Domain Authority?
If you are blogging for quite a long time, you definitely would have heard about domain authority. Domain authority, developed by Moz, is a metric that describe how search engines rank you based on your authority or credibility on the web. Domain authority tells the power of a domain name. The Domain Authority is a score based on a scale of 100, the higher your rating, the better. You might have notice your competitor websites are ranking higher even though they have less information or content. This is because of Domain Authority of their blogs and better page link which make sure search engines are showing better authority page. In this article, we will learn how to improve domain authority & increase page authority
2) How is Domain Authority Calculated?
Now, you know what domain authority is. The next question that comes to mind is – How is Domain Authority calculated? There are many factors that decide Moz domain authority. Major factors are:
Root domain backlinks: Backlinks are the relationship amongst pages on the Internet. Backlinks describe the links coming into a web page or document. Root domain backlinks describe links coming into your root domain (e.g. CatchUpdates.com). The thumb rule is – Quality is better than quantity. It is better to have few backlinks from high reputed websites rather than having high numbers of backlinks from same or below average websites.
Moz Rank: Moz Rank of a website is based on its link profile and ranges from 0-10; the higher the better.
Moz trust: Moztrust is like Moz Rank but it focuses on your proximity with authority links. Moztrust checks how well you have connections and networks with trusted websites. If a website linking to you is being linked to any authority site you are benefitted.
Quality content: Quality content is the king. When you write quality content, you will be benefitted. People will like to link to rich content provided by you. This indirectly means a rise in your domain authority.
Social Network: Social network is at its best now. This plays a vital role in your domain authority. The better you are at Social network i.e. total number of shares and likes your articles get in the Social platform, the better your domain authority will be. It basically checks how your website is performing on social media channels.
Domain Age: Domain age is also a major factor in calculating domain authority. If your domain age is high, it increases trust and ensures you are serving your audience from a long time.
How to Increase Domain Authority
3) Why is Domain Authority Important?
In simple words, Search engines love high domain authority sites. Do I need to explain more why domain authority is important? If you are ranking top in searches then you probably do not need any other thing from your website. You can sit and enjoy massive traffic and income coming from your site. Domain authority not only helps in getting higher ranking and traffic on domain pages, but also you will get lots of offers of direct advertising and guest posts 🙂
4) How to Check Domain Authority
There are lots of online tools available to check domain authority. You can check your domain authority by using the official toolbar from MOZ. Alternatively, you can calculate your domain authority from OpenSiteExplorer(OSE) (Majestic SEO Site Explorer)
Other tools that you can sue to check domain authority are – SmallSeoTools, Moonsy, Bulk DA Checker, SeoWeather. You need to track timely and try to increase domain authority as much as you can. (Tips to increase domain authority are stated below). If your domain authority is going down, you are doing wrong and you need to implement your strategy again. If you are seeing an increment in your domain authority, you are doing great. There is no standard value for optimum domain authority. Anyone with a Domain score of 20 would want to achieve 30 in the next update and similarly, someone with DA 50 (domain authority score) would hope to make it 60 the next time. So it’s a relative factor. Along with checking domain authority score, you can also check page authority, majestic trust flow, check domain metrics and backlinks to your site etc from Moz.
5) How to Increase Domain Authority?
Now coming to the main part of this article – How to increase domain authority. I hope now you know about Domain authority, how it is calculated and how to check DA. As mentioned, Domain authority is important to rank higher in SERP. Site authority is different from page authority. I will explain what is page authority & domain authority vs page authority later. Below are the tips on how to build domain authority –
Guest Blogging
“Stick a fork in it and guest blogging is done.”- Matt Cutts. Guest blogging is dead! It can be heard in the previous year because of a guy who headed the anti-spam team at Google, then Matt Cutts declared that the guest blogging had become to be a more and more spammy practice. However, the truth is that the guest blogging is still very much alive and is the most excellent opportunity for endorsing the brand now. But, be vigilant to discover the difference between the legible websites and the fake ones. Use the credible channel to promulgate the content.
Also Read: The Power of Guest Blogging
You can find the highly reputed websites under your niche and then can do guest blogging on them. You can provide quality content to targeted website (where you are doing guest blogging) and in return, can get backlinks to your domain. As mentioned earlier, root domain linking is the major factor in calculating domain authority. So if you are doing guest blogging in a proper way, it will definitely help you to increase domain authority.
Blog Commenting
It is also a good technique to get quality backlinks and maintain relationships with bloggers under your niche. But the thumb rule is never commented just for the sake of getting a backlink. Mostly, all comments are approved by the moderator. So make sure you are adding value to their post through blog comments. It increases the probability to get your comments approved (thus providing you backlink) which will help to get good domain authority indirectly.
Follow SEO Guidelines Properly
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the soul of blogging. Without SEO, your blog is nothing. It will never get that popularity as it should be. To improve domain authority, you need to follow SEO guidelines properly. This includes – optimizing URL Structures, Optimizing Images (Using Alt Tags), submitting sitemaps regularly, robot.txt, breadcrumb, meta tags, heading tags, site navigation and list goes on. You will love to read below articles on SEO-
a) On Page SEO Techniques To Improve Website Ranking
b) How To Do Off Page SEO to Improve Website and Get Instant traffic
c) SEO Checklist For New Websites
d) Common SEO Mistakes You Need To Avoid Right Now
e) How to Boost Your Site’s SEO With Video?
Writing Quality Content
Quality content is the king. When you create quality content, people love to link you in their article. You can create lots of amazing content to your audience. Produce very detailed content on a topic and try to come with totally unique. While writing content, you should not overlook any spelling or grammar mistakes, it looks very bad on your part. For this, I am using Grammarly. It is a free tool you can also use it.
Alo Read: Grammarly Review : A Writing Tool To Detect Plagiarism and Grammar Mistakes
Start Marketing Your Content
After you have written quality content, it is time to start marketing your content. You need to market your content to increase its reach. The more eyes on your content, the more will it help the readers and hence more link backs, more social shares and more authority.
Interlinking Your Content
By interlinking your old posts at appropriate words, you will compel your readers to click on the link and navigate to the other post. If you interlink all the posts then the probability of your readers staying glued to your blog is for a long time. You can use a different variation of anchor text but add an only specific number of links in an article. Not only it will help you to increase traffic but also it will help to lower the bounce rate of your blog.
Also Read: How Bounce Rate Is Calculated and Tips To Decrease It
Social Bookmarking
As mentioned earlier, domain authority is also calculated on the basis of how your website is performing on social media channels. Social Bookmarking is another great way to get backlinks and traffic to your website. It helps to promote content. Reddit, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Digg are such websites where you can submit your bookmarks. The more the bookmarks, the higher domain authority is.
What strategies are you using to improve your domain authority? I will love to add those strategies or if I may have missed now. Do share your feedback in the comment section below.
