How Can I Check My Site’s Domain Authority
You can find out the Domain Authority of any website using Moz’s Link Explorer, the MozBar , or in the SERP Analysis section of Keyword Explorer. Domain Authority metrics are also incorporated into all Moz Pro campaigns, the Moz API, and dozens of SEO and online marketing platforms across the web.
Check your Domain Authority for free:
What Is A Domain Authority Score
Domain Authority , also known as page rank, is an algorithm Google uses to estimate how important a website is within its ranking results. Its based on several factors, including the number of backlinks pointing toward a specific website and the popularity of similar sites.
The formula looks like this:
How Can I Improve My Domain Authority
Your #1 priority for Domain Authority is earning good quality links back to your website.
The popularity and trustworthiness of a domain is, in part, measured by the number of inbound links and the quality of the websites that they are coming from. These links tell Google that your website has useful information that is worth linking to, sharing and talking about. This is why link building strategies like content marketing, blogger outreach, press releases and social media are so important. Its also vital to regularly evaluate your links, and get rid of any bad spammy backlinks that could be impacting on your own spam score. If you have one of these toxic links, your first step is to contact the linking party and politely request they remove the link. If they refuse, or dont reply, you will have to disavow it in Search Console.
#2 Wait a while
This is the easiest and most frustrating thing you can do to improve your Domain Authority. With great age comes great Domain Authority, as the old saying goes. Contrary to popular belief SEO is not magic and doesnt happen overnight. It takes time to improve your Domain Authority and you need to be in it for the long game. While youre waiting, make sure youre keeping the site updated with fresh linkable content.
FSM.
If you have any further questions or need help with an SEO or digital marketing conundrum then please get in touch.
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Website Structure And User Experience
Tidy up your website
Do you have too many 301 redirects, broken links and duplicate pages on your site? Are there any technical issues on your website that could be affecting the website crawler?
If you think about how search engines work, you need to make sure crawlers can crawl the site to index pages easy. That’s why any issues in your website structure can lead to a drop in the domain rankings.
One of the best ways to find out if there are any issues is to work with your SEO agency to check crawlability or use a tool such as Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl.
Google Search Consoles Index Coverage Report is also a really useful tool to show the indexing state of all your web pages that Google has crawled, or tried to crawl.
The report groups your web pages into those with: error, valid with warnings, valid or excluded.
Once you know where the problems are, you can build a plan to fix them, and improve your domain authority.
Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
You cannot afford for your site not to be mobile-friendly. Just look at the numbers: over 58% of all searchesin Google are now done from a mobile device.
Not only will it hurt your search engine rankings and Domain Authority score, data shows that 52% of customers are less likely to engage with a brand because of a bad mobile experience. On the other side of the equation, 74% of users more likely to return to mobile optimized sites.
Use to test how easily a visitor can use your page on a mobile device.
How Is It Different To Page Authority
In the past, Googles PageRank was arguably the most popular tool for measuring the quality and authority of a specific page. However, it was removed from the publics toolbox last year after dying a slow and painful death. Now, Mozs Page Authority is probably the best measure of the strength of an individual page. It is possible to have a higher page authority than domain authority, and vice versa. While both are important to your search visibility, generally speaking you should prioritise Domain Authority as its a more long-term investment. Improving your Domain Authority should have an impact across all of your pages anyway. As always, though, it also depends on your overall goal. If your aim is to compete for a specific high-value keyword, for instance, you may want to target a single pages authority for a while.
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Why Does Da Matter
Even though its not a ranking factor, its the closest thing we have to a metric that attempts to predict how well a site will rank. Experts have been known to spar over the accuracy of the metric meaning, is it an accurate prediction?
The jury is still out on that one, but the general consensus is that DA is nonetheless valuable for link building purposes. Search engines favor sites with links from authoritative sources, and DA is a fairly reliable metric for determining what qualifies as an authoritative source in Googles eyes.
What Is A Good Domain Authority
If your website is 5 6 old then your DA should be between 50 60, if your website is 3 4 years old then your DA should be between 40 50 If your website is 1 2 years old
Then your DA should be between 25 40, if your website is 4 8 months old then you do not have to worry about DA, just keep working on your website then your websites DA automatically grew up
If your DA is not stable with so many years, then you have to pay attention to your Domain Authority, if you are a new blogger then you will have to pay attention to your website, DA will increase automatically.
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Domain Authority Vs Pagerank
PageRank is an algorithm created by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to score a pages importance on a scale from 0 to 10.
Googles PageRank calculation uses the number and quality of links pointing to a web page to measure its authority. Websites that have a higher number and higher quality of links will have a higher PageRank.
Toolbar Page Rank, as its colloquially called, no longer exists as Google stopped publicly updating it.
Like Domain Authority, PageRank is on a logarithmic scale. However, Domain Authority is calculated with a broader range of metrics than PageRank.
Moz uses a similar algorithm to PageRank, MozRank, as one of the factors to calculate DA. Like PageRank, MozRank looks at quantity and quality of linking pages to determine its score.
Domain Rating Vs Domain Authority What Is The Difference
Domain Rating is a statistical measure that assigns a numerical ranking to every website on the Internet. It ranges from 0-100, with higher numbers meaning a greater ranking. Domain Authority is similar, but instead of being based on a statistical calculation, it’s Moz’s operationalization of link equity into a 100-point logarithmic scale.
Both DR and DA are based on the quantity and quality of inbound links to a website, but they use different algorithms and data sets to arrive at their final numbers.
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Test The Responsiveness Of Your Website
Websites need to run smoothly on every device of access including mobile.
A responsive website is more likely to offer a satisfying experience to all users, regardless of whether they are on smartphones or tablets.
One of Googles ranking factors is responsiveness. So, if your site can adapt to any type of screen, certainly this will have a good impact on your SEO.
Likewise, a site with good responsiveness can also achieve a high DA score.
Why Should I Care About Domain Authority
Although Google doesnt use domain authority in their rankings, but a study by Ahrefs found a correlation between DA and SERP ranking.
The results of this study suggest DA may be a useful metric by which to gauge how much organic traffic you may receive from Google.
If you want to grow your SEO rankings, consider ramping up your domain authority strategy. However, it can take a while to develop authority, so dont worry if you dont see results right away.
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They Have The Wrong Content
We use a lot of great tools for SEO analysis at Brafton.
But nothing beats eyeballing the search results for yourself.
We always take a close look at the types of content returned in the Google SERP before greenlighting a keyword. There are plenty of good clues there as to what type of content is most likely to perform well.
For example, if you Google your target keyword and see the top positions dominated by comparison websites, you might struggle to break in if youre not a comparison website.
What Influences Domain Authority
In SEO, links determine authoritymore specifically, links from other sites to yours.
You can think of a link as a vote.
When a site links to your site, the search engine algorithm will view that link as an endorsement of the content on your site.
Off-page optimization, also known as link building, is the process of strategically acquiring links from third parties to your site to increase the authority of your pages.
Generally speaking, more links = more authority.
However, not all links are created equalheres the summary:
- Links from unique root domains are more valuable than the number of backlinks from the same domain
- Links that come from high-authority referring domains are considered high-quality backlinks
- Links that come from sites that are relevant to the theme or topic of your content are more valuable
- Links that include relevant keywords along with domain name are more valuable
- Links that are placed in the higher parts and inside the body of the page are more valuable
Remember domain rating is NOT Google Rating, and thus, it has NO effect on your Google ranking.
Link building is considered to be a complicated part of SEOwhich is why, if you manage to master it, youll have an unfair advantage against the competition.
Learn more about how to build links in the link-building section of our SEO Checklist.
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Ensure The Page Loads Quickly With Pagespeed Insights
Quick page loading is another key parameter for sites with good Domain Authority.
Therefore, monitoring this loading time is fundamental as a continuous task. To do this, use specialized tools such as PageSpeed Insights.
The average time is 0.5 to 2 seconds. If your site is above this limit, then you have reason to work on optimizations.
Benchmarking Against Your Competitors
If your website “authority” is higher than that of your competitors, then your site is stronger than theirs in terms of “link popularity.”
For example, ahrefs.com has a Domain Rating of 88. Moz.com has a Domain Rating of 91.
That’s because it has more backlinks from websites with strong link profiles, which leads to a higher “authority” score .
TIP. If two websites have the same Domain Rating, then you should use Ahrefs Rank to judge their relative strength.
Comparing your Domain Rating to other websites in your industry can tell you whether your competitors are doing better or worse than you. If they’re doing better, then you may want to analyze their backlink profile in Ahrefs Site Explorer for untapped link opportunities.
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Does Domain Authority Have Any Effect On Seo Rankings
As we have told you before, domain authority scores have nothing to do with the seo ranking factors of the search engine, directly! But it is true that it can have an indirect effect on your ranking. For example, if a website has a higher da score then it means that it has a lot of quality links which are also a good seo ranking factor. In the same manner, if the DA score of a site is low then it means that it has some missing factors that can push its position.
A Low DA score doesnt mean that you would have a low ranking position. Even if your DA score is 30, you can still be on the top of the search results. It can be because other sites in the competition might have a lower score than yours. In the same way, having a DA score of 90 doesnt mean that you would be on the top as there might be some other sites that would have better SEO factors than yours.
So you should not take domain authority as a ranking factor but you can surely keep track of it in order to grow your site in the eyes of the search engine!
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Core Vitals And Core Vitals Test
Core Vitals and the accompanying core vitals test are the essential elements that make up a good website. These include URL, title, meta description, keywords, heading, body content, and other vital factors that make up a website. The key idea behind a core vital test is to ensure that users encounter the most optimized version of your website.
As far as Domain Authority is concerned, one needs to keep in mind that domain authority is not mandatory, but rather indicates the overall strength of its score.
As per a recent report, Google has announced a new algorithm called Mobilegeddon 2.0, which aims to penalize websites that do not render well on smartphones and tablets. Since domain authority is based on the number of clicks, it will drop if pages drop. Hence, we must ensure that our websites load fast on all devices.
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What Is Page Authority
To understand what is page authority you first need to understand domain authority because it works in much the same way on a smaller scale. In the same way domain authority is a score of a website, page authority is a score of a specific page within your website. The page authority score goes even further, predicting a pages performance based on domain authority and many of the same factors that are used to establish domain authority.
In addition to the mentioned factors, there are additional factors that are taken into consideration. Because of this, you can have a page on a website with higher or lower page authority than the domain authority of the overall website that it is found on. Like DA, page authority is also scored from one to one hundred and can fluctuate over time.
Maintaining decent page authority for the content you created to populate your website is important when you are trying to make your content visible. The higher the page authority number is the better. But again, it is a number that is comparative so it is hard to say what is good and what is bad unless you have another resource to compare it to.
What Is A Good Domain Authority Score
Domain authority scores range from one to 100. When you have a greater domain authority score, its more likely youll see increases in web traffic and SERP rankings.
When you debut a new website, its domain authority is one. Moz points out sites with many external links are usually higher when it comes to DA, while small business sites and those with fewer inbound links generally have a lower DA score.
A strong gauge for your site is to measure it against other comparable or similar sites. Your DA can fluctuate over time and, with so many moving parts, identifying why it changed can be challenging. But dont give up.
Moz highlights several factors that can influence your score.
One could simply be that your link profile growth hasnt been seen by their index yet.
Another occurs when higher-authority sites experience massive growth in link numbers, which may skew the scaling process. This kind of fluctuation may more significantly impact domain authorities on the lower end.
You may also have earned links from sites that dont contribute to ranking on Google. If Moz crawls a different amount of link domains than it did last time it went through your site, results may be affected.
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Keywords Are Part Of On
Hardly ever is there talk about on-page SEO without mention of the term keywords.
In fact, many think that SEO is just all about keywords. It isnt, but keywords are important if you are concerned about growing your domain authority and boosting your sites visibility.
Keywords should be smoothly added to a pages content so that it flows naturally. Gone are the days of keyword stuffing. Worse still, Google penalizes sites that are guilty of it. Therefore, keywords should be cleverly spread throughout the text, and even included in the image alt texts.
Why Did My Domain Authority Go Down And Other Top Domain Authority Questions Answered
No one can say for sure how big the internet is, but we know its prodigious. There are:
- Nearly 2 billion live websites.
- More than 100 trillion total web pages.
- At least 2.5 quintillion bytes of data added to it daily.
- An incalculably vast number of links between pages.
For context, NASA estimates that there are 250 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The scale of the internet is best described as cosmic.
If the internet is its own universe, Google is its most prolific voyager. The search engine crawls the webs expanse 40,000 times per second. Each time, it returns with links to what it believes are the most authoritative sources of content for a search query.
So, is your site a beacon of authority that will light up searchers paths to knowledge, or a mote of dust whose content is bound to dwell in the deepest recesses of search engine results pages ?
Theres no way of knowing for sure. But Domain Authority may just be the closest you can come to an answer.
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