What is Domain Authority?

To have a successful brand, you need to get your eCommerce site as high up the search engine ranks as possible. Sometimes, though, you don’t really know how well your site is actually doing. And even when you think you are doing all the right things, it still isn’t as high up in search results as you had hoped. 

In this case you can check out your domain authority (DA) to see how your website is really perceived. Domain Authority is a search engine ranking score that gives a measure of how successful a site is when it comes to search engine results. It was created by software development company Moz, and gives an overview of likely search engine performance. 

It gives sites a score ranked between 1 and 100, with the higher end of the scale representing a better outcome. Finding out your score helps you with building your brand and creating a website that you know clients and customers will want to engage with. It will also help you see the areas that may need a little more improvement. 

DA is a popular replacement for Google’s PageRank.

How Domain Authority is Calculated

There are 40 factors that Moz looks for to calculate the DA score. These include things like root domains or inbound links. The latter is especially important in calculating the score, as a site with a high amount of inbound links from authoritative and relevant domains will score higher. 

Say, for example, you run a broadband firm. It won’t be enough just to talk about your products, you will need to have inbound links to blog posts, product pages, and more to help you score higher. Sites with no inbound links at all tend to have an authority score of around one. 

The issues with Domain Authority 

One issue with the Moz scoring system is that when you score a high rating, it is harder to improve on than if you score low. So, for example, if you scored 70, you would have to make a lot more effort to improve on your score than if you scored 30. Meaning, even if you devise a new, successful marketing campaign to boost traffic or get rid of any bad links, the impact on your DA score will still be less. 

To add to this, there is also a possibility of your domain authority decreasing through no fault of your own. This happens when a globally popular site, such as Twitter, gets a high number of backlinks or otherwise improves. This automatically pushes your site down the search ranks in comparison and lowers your score. 

What this essentially means is that you will always be compared to the highest Domain Authority sites. These are sites like Amazon or Wikipedia with which you can do little to compete. So, when it comes to getting a ‘high’ score, the best thing to do is to try and get a score that is bigger than your most direct competition. 

Because of those limitations, you shouldn’t use your DA score as your only indicator of how successful your site is. It should be used as a comparative measurement, rather than an absolute one. 

One thing to keep in mind is that a new business’s DA score will always be one. So, if you are a tech start-up and are desperately trying to rank for the keywords “send fax from computer” you have some work ahead to reach the kind of DA that may help you onto page one. 

How to Get the Best Score Possible

Because of the complexities behind DA scores, there isn’t really a definitive level that defines a good or bad score. However, if you want to get ahead of the competition, then you should aim to get a higher score than their domains. 

There are three principle ways to do this.

1. Auditing your link profile.

A link profile is a list of all the backlinks to your website. To make your score higher, Google prefers it if the links are from high authority sites. So, it doesn’t matter if your links are about fashion or asking “what is a fax number?” they should be from more trusted sites. Using an SEO tool will help you figure out which links are healthy and which ones should be changed. 

2. Create engaging content.

Engagement metrics, such as bounce rate or organic traffic, can make a big difference to your score. Therefore, to boost your rating, you need to create quality content to attract people to your site and keep them there. 

3. Earn high-quality backlinks.

Doing this is an essential part of increasing your DA score. You can use something called ‘the skyscraper method’ to do this effectively. It is a content marketing method that involves assessing the content of your competitors and ensuring yours is better. That way, it’s more likely to earn more valuable backlinks.  

Conclusion

You can’t achieve a high Domain Authority score overnight. But with research, trial and error, and effort, in due course, it will improve. And when it does, you will have a crucial edge over your competition.