One way to boost your SEO is to increase your domain authority (DA).
Domain Authority is a metric created by Moz that lets you know how likely it is that your website will rank well for online searches.
The rating is between one to 100 and the higher your DA, the higher the chances are that your website will appear higher on a search result page over your competition.
One of the factors that go into calculating DA is the number of links from other websites to yours. And as you’ll see ahead, building backlinks is an important way to build your domain authority.
You should know that Google does not take domain authority into account when ranking your website. So, why should you worry about it?
There’s a correlation between having a higher DA and doing better than your competition. And if we think about it, if your competitor’s website has a DA of 35 and you have one of 60, then this gives you the idea that your website should rank higher than your competition since it’s viewed as more interesting and trustworthy.
Another insight that we get from this is that it isn’t necessary for you to aim to get the highest domain authority you can like in the 90s. Just doing better than your competition can give you the edge you need.
Let’s look at how you can practically increase your domain authority.
Optimize your basic website setup
Before you start a link-building strategy to boost your DA, it’s important to make sure that your website is properly set up for the internet. Let’s look at what this means and what you should do.
- Your website should load in 3 seconds or less for the best user experience
- Build your website so that it’s mobile-friendly and responsive to multiple devices
- Create internal links on your website. This means making sure that blog posts and pages link to each other so that search engine crawlers don’t miss any content on your site
When your website functions well and provides a good user experience, you’ll improve your chances of ranking better. And you’ll create basic positive reasons for other companies to link to your website.
Analyze your current DA and your competitions
As mentioned in the introduction, you don’t need to have a DA that’s close to 100 to do well. All you need to do is have a better DA than your competitors.
To begin with, use an SEO tool that analyzes websites for domain authority; most SEO platforms and tools do this. Enter your domain name and that of your main competitions’ and learn what the ranking number is for both.
If you have a lower domain authority score than theirs, then you should follow the tips in the following section to help you build more links and higher DA. If your DA is higher, then you’re on the right track and should maintain your ranking or improve your domain authority further.
Create quality content
At the core of it, you need to build good quality content if you want to have solid domain authority. Posts and pages with rich information that’s easy to read will get links from other sites.
To build good quality content, you need to start by aligning what your business does with what customers are looking for. Ideally, your business should start as a result of fulfilling a customer’s needs.
So start by doing your research. Using SEO tools, look for keywords and phrases that customers use that could also lead them to your business.
Start building blog posts to meet the need for information around these keywords. Also, create content in other formats including videos, infographics, and social media posts. Another important aspect of good quality content is how you format and present it. Make sure that you:
- Create long-form posts as a way to provide a wealth of information
- Focus on evergreen content that answers questions being asked time and again
- Break up your post by creating paragraphs of just 3-4 lines
- Use bullet points wherever you can to organize lists of information
- Organize your content with the help of headings and subheadings
- Add images and videos to your post to illustrate your points or even to entertain your audience
- Build tools like advanced calculators, forms, and other unique tools that other websites could link to
By making your content attractive and internet-friendly, you boost the chances of getting more links to your site and improving your SEO.
Create guest posts
Ideally, if your posts and pages have good content, you’ll see organic traffic and links to your website. However, the truth is that sometimes you need to play a more active role in building backlinks. And the way to do this is by creating guest posts.
Guest posts are where you publish a blog post and write for another website. If you’re an industry expert, then you should find business publications or industry-based publications where you can create helpful posts for their audience.
Such websites may allow you to link to your blog content in the body of your guest posts. And you will often be able to link to your website in the author headline section on the publishing site. Reach out to top industry-related and business blogs and join their communities. You’ll get link-building opportunities that add to your DA by being active and engaging with their audience.
Ask other websites to link to you
You can leverage your competition by using an SEO tool to find out which websites are linking to your competition.
Chances are that if they’re willing to link to your competition they’ll link to yours since they’re interested in the same topic. You could reach out to the publication via email and let them know that you have helpful new posts on your site. Inviting them to share your web content will work if you offer real value and phrase your proposition politely.
There’s another helpful hack to increase links to your domain. Use a contest research tool that can track mentions of your brand or product online that don’t link to your domain names.
Very often, bloggers and businesses mention products and businesses and don’t include links to them. If you reach out to them via email and request them to link to your post, you’ll get a lot of positive responses and build your backlinks.
Here’s an important opposite tip – using an analytics or SEO tool, you may find that there are spammy websites linking to you. Links from such websites actually hurt your business reputation. Search engines may view such spammy links as evidence that you’re building backlinks in unethical ways and could lead to your domain name getting banned. So ‘disavowing’ such links is a critical way to keep your domain authority up.
Back to you
In this post, I’ve covered some critical information that can help you build your domain authority. Making a few changes and building up your DA will have positive effects even though it’s not a ranking factor.
With the tips given here, you’ll improve your site experience and build your audience as you grow online. You’ll stay ahead of the competition and stand out as people look for content and products.
