What is domain authority and how is it calculated?
This measure, created by Moz, is a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100. That is to say that it is easier to gain 10 points when you have an DA of 20 than when you have an DA of 75. Otherwise said, the bigger your DA, the harder it will be to earn extra points.
Domain authority is calculated by evaluating several factors, including root domain binding and the total number of links, into a single DA score. This score can then be used to compare websites or track a website's ranking strength over time. DA is not a metric used by Google to determine search rankings and has no effect on SERPs.
In general, it is considered that from a DA of 50, the domain authority of a website is strong. As an example, sites like Facebook or YouTube have a domain authority of 100, which is the maximum rating.
Websites such as Joomla.org (91), Drupal.org (91) or leboncoin.fr (90) are other examples of websites with very strong domain authority. You can find out your own domain authority using Moz Domain Analysis.
Don't panic if your DA is weak since as Moz says, this is a comparison tool, it doesn't There is not necessarily a good or bad domain authority score. That being said, the good news is that an DA below 50 means it's time to take action to improve that score. And that is precisely the purpose of this article.
DA for web-eau.net
How to improve the domain authority of your website?
Domain authority is therefore a measure that allows us to see the level of optimization of a website. There are different factors that help increase this score, and not surprisingly, the majority of these factors are associated with SEO practices.
For example, the factors mentioned below are beneficial to improve SEO on search engines but also domain authority:
- The link building
- The quality and quantity of content
- on-page SEO
- Technical SEO
- Website security
- Website bounce rate
- Visitor engagement
- Social media profiles
Many tools offer a domain authority checker using the Moz API, which means that all results are generated by Moz itself. Moz typically updates the domain authority on average every month, and these tools update the database accordingly.
Improve domain authority through your link profiles
The profile of the links pointing to your site (the backlinks) is arguably the most important factor in improving your website's domain authority. It doesn't just impact domain authority as creating quality backlinks is also good for your website SEO.
Many marketers consider building these types of links to be the most important SEO tactic because it increases domain authority faster than most other factors.
Nevertheless, there are different criteria for getting a backlink including the type of backlink as well as the strength of the website giving the backlink.
For example, if you get a do-follow backlink from a site with a DA greater than 50, it will give your site's domain authority more strength.
Although DA depends on the quantity of backlinks, the quality of those also matters a lot. If the backlinks are not qualitative enough, it will not really give you any particular advantages.
web-eau.net's backlinks
The link profile also includes internal links from your website. This is because the links on your site direct your visitors to other relevant web pages, which is beneficial for user navigation as well as search engine optimization.
In addition to having relevant internal links, you should also ensure that you have quality external links in your site. This is because adding backlinks to high quality sites gives a better signal to increase domain authority by showing that you are linking to high quality sites to improve your own content.
To have a high quality link profile you need to avoid having dead links, and if you get a backlink from a low quality or spam site you can always disavow it from your Google Search Console.
Improve DA with on-page SEO
Just like off-page factors - such as backlinks - on-page factors are also extremely important to your website's domain authority. As such, there are different factors in on-page SEO that must be optimized in order to get a better score.
Here is the list of factors to consider:
- Optimization of Title and meta-description tags
- Optimization of the URL structure and permalinks
- Optimization of images and their
alttags
- Searching for keywords and their placement on the page
- Internal and external linking
These SEO factors are essential as they improve user experience and make your website more visible in search results.
Improve DA with content quality
Content (if it's relevant and qualitative) is another important factor in increasing domain authority as most SEO impacts are through content. In this regard, there are different parameters to consider when writing content, as described below:
- Content should be relevant to your audience
- Content must have relevant keywords
- Content must be engaging and be very qualitative
- Content must be interesting and engaging to have a better session rate
- Content must be unique, including for medias (images, videos, etc.)
Improve DA with technical SEO
Technical SEO is important because it helps crawlers easily index your web pages. This technical optimization also increases the user experience, and in this way, you can correct errors to achieve higher rankings and increase DA score.
Here is the list of factors that fall under technical optimization:
- The sitemap.xml
- The robots.txt
- Website speed
- SSL certificate
- Absence of navigation and redirection errors
- Schema markup
Improve domain authority with your social media presence
Social media presence and activity is not only beneficial for brand awareness or higher ranking, it also helps increase domain authority. There are different social media platforms that can bring you huge audience and in this regard you should pay special attention to the following.
You need to create accounts on the most relevant social networks (not all channels will be relevant to your audience) and link them to your website. This will send a signal because people share links from your website and this sends traffic from those social networks.
Conclusion
Whatever your motivations for improving your site's domain authority, remember that it will de facto increase the value of your website.
Likewise, if your site has a stronger domain authority, it will appear more trustworthy in the eyes of users and it will also appear more consistently in search results. So you have every interest in increasing your score and I hope this article helps you.
Do not hesitate to share your experience in this matter in the comments below and to relay these tips around you if they have been useful to you.
