How, exactly, do we calculate the strength of a domain on the web? Unfortunately, there isn’t any tool that Google has created to give us this information. But there is a third-party tool that is able to give us an idea as to how strong any given domain is. That tool is Domain Authority.
What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in the SERPs. This metric is scored on a range from 1 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater likelihood of ranking. We say “corresponding” because since this is not a first-party tool, we cannot guarantee causation, just a correlation. It is based on data from the Link Explorer web index and uses dozens of factors in its calculations.
It’s important to note that Google doesn’t use Domain Authority as a ranking factor to decide how to rank websites. So it isn’t a metric that will improve your ranking in the SERPS. However, a good Domain Authority is a good indicator that will help you assess the performance of your website in relation to your competitors.
Nowadays, this metric is not just used by Moz, but other SEO tools such as SEMrush have developed their own authority metric. So, although it isn’t official, it’s still a very useful metric to compare yourself to your competitors.
How Can I Increase my Domain Authority?
The best way to influence the Domain Authority of your website is to improve your site’s overall SEO health, with a higher focus on the quality and quantity of external links pointing to your site.
Because Domain Authority aggregates so many pieces of data, it can be difficult to influence directly. This metric is meant to predict how competitive a given site will be in Google search results, and since Google considers so many ranking factors in determining its rankings, a metric that tries to approximate its determinations must incorporate a similar number of complexity of factors.
Here are a few tips to keep in mind when trying to increase your Domain Authority. Prioritize relevant backlinks, and make sure that all the interesting sites with backlinks are not no-follow sites. Create quality content that is focused on your core audience that makes it easier for you to get natural backlinks. Update your older content to make it new and relevant again. Identify your competitors and study where they get their backlinks from.
What If My Domain Authority Decreases?
The key to understanding Domain Authority fluctuations is recognizing that each domain’s score depends on comparison to other domains all across the scale, so even if a website improves its SEO, its score may not always reflect that.
So if you are #2 and you increase your site health by 30%, but the #1 position also increases their site health by an equal amount, you will still be #2 because it is a comparison metric and not an absolute metric.
Generating links is, unfortunately, one of the most difficult parts of SEO, but it is one of the most important. If this is something that you either struggle with or seems too daunting to even start, contact us today.