Domain Authority (DA) is a ranking metric that predicts how well a site will rank online. It goes on a scale of 1 to 100: the closer it is to 100, the better your chances of ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs), which will get you more clicks.
To see how your site is currently ranking, you can visit Moz’s free Link Explorer to test your DA. Simply type your website URL in the search bar and click “Analyze”. Just remember: don’t get discouraged if your DA is less than 30 to 50. If you follow these 9 tips today, you will definitely see your DA score improve.
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Domain name seniority
You know that old saying, right? Wisdom comes with age. Well, guess what? The same is true for your domain name. If your domain name is not “old” in age, it will have a lower ranking and online users may not see your site as legitimate.
But with an older domain name, users will not only see your site as more legitimate, but it will also have a much higher DA score than younger domain names. In other words, every time you change your domain, you could be doing yourself more harm than good, as you’re actually tearing down the credibility you’ve built up over the years by starting from scratch.
Therefore, choose an easy-to-remember domain name that is not only relevant to your niche, but also something you are willing to keep for a long time.
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On-page optimization
It’s time to optimize all of the following on your pages:
- Code;
- Content;
- Site structure;
- Metatags;
- Other elements on the page (H1, title tags, alternative image tag, site architecture, etc.).
Improving your DA with optimization can make your site more search engine friendly.
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Create great content
Want to attract high quality links from multiple domains in your niche? Good news! More attractiveness for your site comes from creating high quality content that appeals to your target audience. Otherwise, poor quality content will only drive people away.
Therefore, providing the best possible content will definitely help you improve your DA score (and even provide you with many additional SEO benefits).
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Improvement of internal links
Why worry about getting external links when your internal links need more attention? Yes, focusing too much on external links can cause you to lose sight of internal links.
So why internal links?
These links help push visitors to what they are trying to find on your website. That way, visitors get the best user experience, while you reap the rewards of a higher DA score.
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Link profile cleaning
Having a clean link profile is essential, as it helps you to obtain and maintain an excellent DA score. Therefore, to clean up your link profile, you must remove the bad links.
In this process, you can use tools such as:
- Explore Moz;
- Ahrefs backlink checker;
- SEMrush backlink audit tool.
These tools help you discover any inappropriate or unwanted links.
Once the link audit is complete, contact the website owners to have them remove the link or add the “nofollow tag” (devalue the link). If this does not work, use the Google Disavow tool to remove such links from your profile.
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Know your niche
When you run a site, it is important that you are an expert in what you have to offer online, and your DA is no exception to this. Becoming an authoritative figure in your niche allows you to gain the trust of readers, while providing expert advice to the community.
If you have amazing content (i.e. guest blogging on industry-related forums) and clever ways to engage your target audience, people will see you as an authority in the niche. This not only improves your brand, but also increases your DA score.
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Be compatible with mobile devices
Nowadays, people are on their phones, tablets, etc. Any device they can use while traveling, they will use. In other words, mobile devices are not just the way of the future: it’s happening right now, overtaking laptops since 2014. So, if your website is not yet compatible with mobile devices, now is the time to fix it!
If your website has not yet been optimized for mobile use, not only will it affect your search rankings (since Google favors sites optimized for mobile devices), but you will also lose users who visit your site to begin with.
So, go to Google’s mobile-friendly test and then run a test for your domain. Afterwards, Google will give you a detailed report on how optimized your site is for mobile devices and what you can do to improve it.
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Improves page speed
Let’s face it: no one likes to wait for a web page to load; we want fast results. Therefore, if your site doesn’t load fast enough, users will get frustrated and will most likely go elsewhere. So why not improve the speed of your site?
First, find the cause of why your website is running slower than it should. You can do this by running your website through Google’s PageSpeed Insights; which will analyze the speed of your site. And then, it will identify some effective ways to make your site faster and, consequently, improve your DA score.
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Use social networks
Finally, it is important to increase your social signals, when it comes to gaining more authority with your domain. While search engines like Google do not insist that sites make social signals a priority to increase their rankings, site brokers should still leverage social networks to do the following:
- Promote your sites;
- Promote your products and services;
- Notify people about any events and contests.
As a result, sites are more likely to get Likes, shares and tweets through social networks, rather than search engines alone.
Domain authority is extremely important for your site. First, the DA allows you to analyze how well your website is doing in the search space. It also allows you to compare the performance of your website with that of your rival sites, which shows you where they rank in the search engine results.
So why not make your site thrive today by improving and maintaining your DA score today? Your site will thank you! If you want to outsource this service, Several can help you. Tell us about your project.