Everybody wants to rule the world - and the digital sphere.
Thanks to the general rules of authority, and, you know, life - not everyone can rule the digital sphere. There can only be some, or rather, a handful, who reign superior.
A lot of companies use Domain Authority (DA) to evaluate and study the effectiveness of their digital strategies.
You might be wondering, though - what does this metric really mean? Will a high domain authority help with ranking on Google, and ruling the digital space?
Domain authority is useful when comparing with competitors, yes - but it isn’t exactly a ranking factor for Google.
Let us explain.
What is domain authority?
In order to support your digital strategy as well as possible, you first must make sure that you know what domain authority is and isn’t.
In a nutshell, Domain Authority (DA) is a metric that aims to predict how likely a domain is to appear in the search engine results page (SERP) in comparison to its competitors.
As briefly mentioned, keep in mind that Google doesn't actually use Domain Authority as a factor when determining how to rank websites.
Because of this, it isn’t necessarily a metric that will improve your ranking in the SERP. It will, however, indicate how well your website is performing in comparison to your direct competitors.
A number of SEO tools, such as Moz and SEMrush, have their own visions of Authority metrics - which use algorithms that take data from backlinks, search traffic, and referring domains, all of which contribute to determining the Authority score.
Although it isn’t an official ranking, it’s still useful in knowing your site health in relation to your competitors.
What is a good domain authority score?
Moz’s Domain Authority search engine ranking score ranges from 1 to 100, and the higher the number - the probability of better results in the SERP.
The main metrics that this tool uses takes into account both the quality and quantity of links that a webpage receives.
If a page has backlinks from pages with a high authority, such as Wikipedia, Google, newspapers, or magazines - it then has a higher probability of having a higher score.
Depending on the industry the website is involved with and the characteristics of the website in question, it will be better to seek out backlinks from specific websites.
For example, a local business would likely want to be linked to by industry magazines or regional newspapers, as this would be preferable for the target audience in question.
Essentially, this means that determining solid website authority is dependent on the individual business, and differs for everyone. It’s ultimately important that you analyse your top competitors and draw conclusions that are tailored to your own website, based on both your ranking and the rankings of competitors.
How can I check my Domain Authority?
If you wanted to use Moz, you can check your website’s Domain Authority for free through Link Explorer. Entering your domain’s root URL (for example, localdigital.com.au) will show you the webpage’s Domain Authority score.
This tool can provide you with other metrics too - including the number of unique pages linking to a page (Inbound Links), the number of unique external linking domains (Linking Domains) and the total number of keywords that this website is ranking in the top 50 positions on Google for (ranking keywords).
What is the difference between domain authority and page authority?
Domain Authority measures the probability of an entire web domain ranking in the SERP, whilst Page Authority focuses specifically on the probability of ranking each of the pages of the website individually.
This ultimately enables the ability to evaluate the performance of individual pages (blog posts, product pages, and more) to determine which ones need fine-tuning to achieve a higher score.
The Page Authority indicator can also help you in prioritising and defining the next actions to develop within your digital strategy, based on the pages that have the most scope for improvement.
How can I build domain authority?
It’s the million dollar question you’ve all been waiting for - how can I rank better than my competitors and build domain authority?
The answer lies in the quality of your links - not just the total number.
As Google themselves has said, it isn’t just about the total number of links, but the quality - the ones that actually help understand what your website is about.
When building domain authority, here are a few pro tips:
- Quality over quantity: prioritise fewer significant backlinks over more insignificant links.
- Regularly analyse your backlinks and make sure that all interesting sites with backlinks have a dofollow.
- Focus on the quality of content on your site - quality content makes it significantly easier to achieve natural backlinks.
- Generate content that focuses on your core audience - increasing your chances for viral content is always ideal.
- Update older content that has a low page authority score, and add new information that could be of interest to users.
- Identify who your competitors are, and compare yourself to them - analyse what you do and don’t do in comparison, as this could help increase website visibility.
- Study where your main competitors gather backlinks - can you also find yourself with similar backlinks?
- Find unique and original ways to spread your web content, using channels like EDM newsletters or social media.
Building Domain Authority is a definite long-term strategy, which takes time and a lack of immediate results. Following the above practices, however, will help in increasing your website visibility on SERP, and therefore increasing traffic on your site.
Our final pro tip - work on these actions to improve the quality and quantity of your leads, don’t dwell too much on just your Domain Authority score!
Website authority: rule the digital space
Congratulations! You know the ins and outs of domain authority, what it means, and how it can contribute to your success in the digital sphere.
Make sure you don’t only focus on this metric - there are countless others that can help improve your rankings, generate leads, and increase traffic to your site.
Good luck!
