Google uses around 200 ranking factors to determine where your website should be displayed on the search engine results page (SERP). One Google ranking factor that is used is domain authority (DA). But what is it and is domain authority important?
What is domain authority?
Domain authority is an official ranking factor and an important part of your SEO strategy. It’s one of the reasons why your website appears where it does on the search engine results.
Every website has its own domain authority (DA) score that depends on a range of factors. Domain authority scores range from 1 to 100. A good domain authority would have a higher score.
The highest authority sites will have a score in the 90s. These are generally sites that everyone comes across. Therefore, comparing sites like Wikipedia to your own site is not a good idea.
Domain authority is used to measure a whole website’s authority, whereas ‘page authority’ is used to measure individual pages on your website.
How is domain authority calculated?
Domain authority is calculated using multiple factors, such as:
Website age
While hard to improve, the age of your website does play a part in where it’ll rank. If your site has been published for years, providing high quality information that people are engaging with, it’s likely that you will be rewarded. But that’s not to say that a brand new website can’t succeed. Focus on providing relevant content and you may notice a difference.
Spam scores
As you can imagine, Google and other search engines do not like spam. If you go searching and find that your spam score is higher than you’d like, don’t panic. It could just be that there are elements on your website that are usually signs of a spam website. Sometimes these can be nothing to worry about.
Popularity
The popularity of your website is associated with the amount of traffic you receive. But, it’s no good having traffic to your site if people are visiting for a minute and then leaving. This will leave you with a high bounce rate. To lower your bounce rate, you need to make sure you have an efficient, quality website and relevant content.
Links – internal & external links
Relevant backlinks are an important part of your SEO strategy. The key is to only gain backlinks from trusted, reputable websites. If you start inputting your business information to any old website, chances are that you’re going to end up with linking domains from spam sites. This will cause your spam score to increase and negatively impact your site’s SEO.
Content quality
Creating high quality content for your website takes time, and getting into a routine of posting frequently can be tough. But if you want users to stay on your website and potentially make a purchase from you, you need to make sure that your website appears up to date. Visiting a site and seeing no recent articles may appear disappointing.
SEO performance
Your website’s SEO is made up of many factors that you have to work hard on. SEO is a long term strategy rather than an overnight success. It takes time and effort to work out how you can improve your site’s search engine ranking score. There are many reasons why your business needs SEO.
Root domains
Every website has its own root domain, this helps to form your site structure. Most root domains are for website homepages. Each page on your website will contain your root domain. Root domains typically just use your business name to ensure continuity and increase brand recognition.
There are various SEO tools that can be used to give you an actual domain authority calculation.
How to improve domain authority
So, you’ve probably had a look at your site’s domain authority and thought ‘that’s not what I was expecting, how can I improve that?’ The good news is that there are many ways to improve your site’s domain authority score.
Link building
Gaining credible backlinks on your website is key and so is conducting internal linking. Though it can often be tough to decide which sites will have the best impact on your authority.
Like we mentioned earlier, you should avoid spammy websites, these are often referred to as bad links. It is also a good idea to try and gain high quality external links from a number of different sites rather than the same couple. This means Google sees that more sites trust you.
With more content, it becomes easier to create high quality links from your own website. It’s best to create an internal linking structure that you can adapt over time. Just because your site has experienced substantial link growth, doesn’t mean that you’ll be straight to the top of the search results.
Tags
Your website will allow you to use a range of tags. These can include content tags, meta tags, image alt tags and more. Each tag has its own role in improving the optimisation of your website.
Ranking keywords
Whenever you are creating new content for either page copy on your site or for a new article, you need to be conducting keyword research. This means that you can be confident that the content you are creating is relevant to your chosen topic. Check out our guide to keyword research.
Make sure you don’t stuff keywords into your writing, this will not lead to higher scores or more search traffic. Ensure your on page content is readable and answers the questions of your users.
Is domain authority important?
Yes, domain authority is important! Even though Google uses so many ranking factors, each one of them impacts your success. Domain authority measures how much users can trust your site, but you should remember that gaining a high domain authority takes time. This is because age is an important factor of your domain rating.
If you only focus on one single factor, you may find that your ranking does not improve on the search engine results pages. When it comes to search engine optimisation, you need to consider all aspects and work on them simultaneously, this will give you the best chance of success.
Don’t forget that just because your ranking doesn’t change immediately, doesn’t mean what you’re doing isn’t working. Google’s ranking algorithms change frequently and SEO is a long term marketing strategy that can yield impressive results when done correctly.
If you’re ready to improve your website’s SEO, contact us! We’re more than happy to help.