One of the factors that influence the positioning of any business is the domain authority of the website. When your domain authority gets higher, the better your search engine ranking will be. Therefore, the more chances you will have to appear in the top positions of the SERPs.
In today’s article, you will learn:
- What is domain authority?
- Measuring tools
- Techniques to increase your domain authority.
Domain authority is a piece of any SEO strategy. Suppose you want to know the way to obtain a greater Domain Authority and better position your content. In that case, this guide will give you some of the best techniques to achieve it. But first, some concepts might be confusing to you; let’s make them clear.
What is Domain Authority?
The domain authority is nothing more or less than the popularity of a website on the Internet than others.
It is one of the many factors that the Google algorithm uses to determine the quality of a website and, on that quality, to know its position in the search engine results pages.
Note: When we talk about domain authority, we should not confuse this term with page authority since each one follows different metrics to improve positioning. The former refers to the website’s authority as a whole. In contrast, page authority refers to the authority of each of the pages of the website.
DA is measured based on several aspects that qualify a website; some are for example:
- Total number of domains and links pointing to a website
- The quality of those links and domains
- The quality of the internal link building of websites
- Website traffic
- User experience
As you can see, much of an excellent strategy to increase domain authority revolves around the links or backlinks that you generate.
The more links and domains that point to your site, the better.
Still, when we talk about links, we mean both do-follow and no-follow links. These terms must be clear since each type of connection fulfills a different function.
Link Do-Follow vs. No-Follow:
No-Follow link: These links receive the no-follow attribute indicating to search engines not to follow those links. As these are untracked links, they do not influence the authority of your domain. Example: <a href= <http://destinesite> rel= no-follow »> Anchor Test </a>
Do-Follow link: These are usually set by default, so no HTML attribute is needed to place them. Search engines crawl these links, so your domain authority will benefit.
Example: <a href=http://destinationsite> Anchor Test </a>
You probably think that the links that interest you are only the do-follow ones because they help you increase your domain authority.
Well, it is not quite so.
Let me tell you that Google once created the no-follow attribute to control manipulation and improper positioning in search results and thus facilitate safe sites’ ranking.
For you to Understand it Better:
Imagine that you start a paid advertising campaign on other portals so that all the banners link to your website. Google will consider this action as manipulative since they are not backlinks generated thanks to your site’s quality but because you have invested money.
If all your links are only do-follow, Google and other search engines will have suspicions of manipulation. They will classify your links as spam in a way that will negatively affect your positioning.
Therefore, it is recommended to have a balance between both do-follow and no-follow links.
Tools to Measure Domain Authority:
To apply the proper techniques to increase your domain’s authority, it is essential to overview your website’s status and the aspects that require more dedication.
This section presents you with two top-rated tools that will help you measure your domain’s authority and obtain relevant data about it.
MOZ:
Both domain authority and page authority were developed by MOZ company. It is software that offers a series of resources to analyze and optimize websites and, in this way, carry out SEO strategies that best suit each of the businesses.
MOZ Open Site Explorer: This tool developed by MOZ allows you to know the domain authority for free by simply inserting the URL of your website. Even of the site whose domain you would like to check. Prior registration is necessary.
Some of the info this tool can provide you are the URLs that have been created recently, the age of the domain. And the site’s reputation, the pages with the best rankings, the number of internal links and backlinks, the keywords most used by the website, etc.
AHREFS:
Unlike MOZ, you don’t need previous registration; you can check at a single glance and free. Your domain authority or that of other sites and the number of do-follow links. This allows you to quickly analyze how effective the backlink strategy you are carrying out is being.
With Ahrefs, you can know the backlinks that point to a website and its origin. And other info like the evolution of the positioning strategy, the analysis of keywords, the SEO on-page, the authority of page (URL Rating), etc.
Naturally, both in MOZ and Ahrefs, extra paid functionalities will allow you to expand your knowledge according to your needs.
Best Techniques to Increase the Authority of your Domain
As we have mentioned before, each websites’ domain authority depends on the number of backlinks pointing to your site. That said, here is the first technique to increase the DA of your domain.
Develop a Successful Link Building Strategy:
Link building is a system that involves creating external links pointing to your website domain to generate authority and thus improve positioning. The higher the authority of those domains that point to yours, the better.
For this reason, it is vital that, when generating backlinks, you make a good selection of the websites that you would like to link to your domain. So, the question remains: how can I get those damn backlinks?
There exist several ways to generate links to develop a strong and effective link-building strategy. Some of the methods are, for example:
Take Advantage of Guest Posting:
The famous guest posting consists of publishing your content as a guest author on a third-party website. This way, you have the opportunity to include in the content that you generate some other backlink that points to your domain.
This practice, on occasions, tends to become an exchange of content between both websites. Website or blog on which you published your content will have the possibility also to publish its content on your site, including links to your domain. It is an action that is usually carried out free of charge, and both parties will benefit.
Guest posting is a proven effective way to increase both traffic and domain authority for websites.
Tip: Please keep in mind that when selecting the website you would like to write for, it is vitally important that its target group and industry are relevant to yours. Otherwise, you’re targeting the wrong audience. You will not attract new visitors to your site, and your collaborative efforts will have been in vain.
For instance, if you have a store that sells pet care. The most logical thing would be for you to write for a blog whose readers are pet owners who are interested, for example, in cat food.
Don’t start generating backlinks just like that!
Domain authority, in this case, is also related to increased conversions. So once again, select the site for which you would like to write thoroughly.
If your website has several domains, link them together!
Suppose your business has a presence in other markets. Therefore, this allows you to create a link-building strategy between your domains without requiring much effort and increasing each of them’ authority.
For example, we’d announce our website’s launch for online merchants in Portugal a couple of weeks before launching. To reinforce the Portuguese domain’s authority, each of the websites (Poland, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, etc.) will report their respective blogs about this event, including a backlink pointing to the Portuguese website.
Suppose your company website or online store has a blog. In that case, you could announce the online store’s launch in Portugal (or in other countries). You can even write an article about the best-selling products in different countries and take advantage of the occasion to include backlinks to the respective domains.
There are thousands of ways to link your domains, and I’m sure you can think of many others apart from the ones I have named.
Get Mentions from Third Parties:
Another alternative to guest posting but would involve some cost. Still, less effort would be to agree with a blogger or influencer that refers to your products or services.
If, for example, you offer sporting goods in your store, the right solution would be to agree with an essential blogger in that area to refer to your site in its content.
This action, again, will help you increase the reach of your products and the authority of your domain.
Another way to get third-party mentions would be through the media. This is possibly the most impactful way to increase the authority of your domain.
Also, getting mentions and backlinks in authority media will give your brand more visibility.
It is not so difficult to achieve …
Keep in mind that bloggers are always looking for interesting content to write about. So, find something interesting to communicate about your brand or your services and rekindle your content marketing strategy!
And this brings us to the second technique.
Develop a Content Marketing Strategy:
Content marketing is a proven essential SEO tool. However, today, many online marketers still undervalue it and focus only on paid advertising.
There are thousands of ways to incorporate a good content marketing strategy into your online store, from product descriptions to launching a blog, organizing webinars, creating podcasts, etc. Many podcasts transcribe dialogue and create a verbatim post, so you could take advantage of this to include backlinks to your site.
If your eCommerce sells sporting goods, it will be more relevant to Google if you have a blog that recommends your store with relevant information for athletes.
Google and the media alike love to see a site stay active by creating fresh content. With the help, for example, of guides, tutorials, and additional information about your products, you are not only helping your customers. Also, you are increasing the chances that third-party sites link to yours.
Hint: Utilize social media networks to spread your content and thus reach more users. This will have a positive impact on your domain authority in the long run.
Generate Internal Links in your Content:
Once you have curated your content marketing strategy, you need to put this third method into practice.
Try always to link the content you create with other internal content or product pages, naturally. It is a way of showing Google that the contents are related to each other and follow a coherence in your theme.
Additionally, (proper) internal links provide a good user experience, something Google also scores for more domain authority.
I recommend looking at our free white paper to dig deeper into this topic and optimize your site’s internal links.
Check for Broken Links:
And now, if we come to the fourth and last technique. But because it is the last, it is no less essential. Even it is a critical technique if we do not want lower-ranking positions and lose DA.
Generating internal links between your content and getting links for your site only is not enough to improve your authority. It is also good to pay attention to the maintenance of these links.
By this, if you point to a modified or removed site, the link will indicate a page is not in existence (404 error). Thus, you will lose domain authority. The same is true if third-party sites point to certain content on your site that has ceased to exist.
Therefore, it is vital to identify the links that no longer exist and take them off your page. It is achieved, for example, with tools like Ahref that offer you an overview of links on your site that are broken.
Doing the 301 redirect from time to time would be another option. Google is informed that a URL has been modified to avoid broken links.
A large number of backlinks your site has is not so significant, but the quality of these. Suppose the third-party sites that point to your site are relevant. In that case, you will notice a positive impact on the authority of your domain.
And in the end, we always talk about the most crucial thing: an effective content strategy. As we already mentioned in previous articles, content is and will always be the “king.” Therefore, if you want to stand out enough that more and more websites point to yours, producing premium content that provides consumers with added value is essential.
Improving your website’s Domain Authority is essential to positioning your content in search engines. At SEO Vendor, we offer you the possibility of preparing winning SEO strategies.