Domain Authority (DA) refers to how relevant your website is in a specific industry or area. This also shows your expertise and how trustworthy your website is on the internet.
Moz also developed DA to predict how well your website will rank in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). According to Moz, a score between 40 and 50 is considered average, while between 50 and 60 is considered good. 60 and higher would be considered excellent!
So, why should you focus on improving domain authority?
A good Domain Authority score will increase trust from users and search engines; it can also help your website rank higher and be more competitive in your niche. So, if you want to increase website authority score, here are the things you should do.
1. Optimize Your On-Page SEO
The first in the list is on-page SEO because it directly impacts user experience and how they navigate your website. Plus, on-page SEO also makes your website search engine-friendly.
Key Areas to Focus On:
- Use of target keywords: Part of on-page SEO is using target keywords to help you reach your audiences. Using relevant keywords will lead you to the right customers or clients who can help your business grow.
- Optimized title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and image alt tags: These SEO elements help search engines understand the webpage’s structure, so follow guidelines to make your website pass Google’s standard.
- Structured and clear content layout: It’s also recommended that you organize your content with headings, bullet points, and visuals to make it look more structured. This will make it easier for online users to navigate your website.
By improving your on-page SEO, you’ll improve your user experience and help increase your DA score over time!
2. Create High-Quality Content
Another strategy you need to follow is to create high-quality and valuable content because you can attract backlinks, which can improve your DA score! After all, search engines also like valuable and fresh content and will reward them by ranking the content higher in search engines. Indeed, you can say content is king in the SEO landscape!
Tips to Create Engaging Content
- Conduct keyword research for relevant topics: Keywords are one of the essential SEO elements to include in your content to make it relevant and informative. So, do keyword research before creating content for your blogs or web pages.
- Use multimedia (images, videos) to enhance content: You can also include multimedia elements like images and videos to make your content more engaging and appealing to most people.
- Regularly update old content to keep it relevant: You can repurpose some content and make it more relevant by adding trendy information, keywords, and multimedia elements.
High-quality content will also help you acquire backlinks naturally, improving your DA score.
3. Build a Strong Internal Linking Structure
Internal linking is an SEO strategy you must consider when improving your domain authority score. This process distributes page authority across all web pages, which improves your ranking in the SERPS. On top of this, internal links can improve the navigational experience of your online visitors.
Best Practices For Internal Linking
- Link to older articles to improve content: When posting a new blog article, you can link relevant articles to keep the readers engaged. In doing so, you’ll have better retention, which leads to improved user experience.
- Use descriptive anchor text for better SEO: Aside from using generic phrases like “click here” or “visit us,” use more descriptive anchor text so readers will click on it. This will signal to search engines that your content is highly engaging and will be ranked higher in the SERP.
4. Earn High-Quality Backlinks
Earning high-quality backlinks is also a sure way to improve your domain authority score! Since you acquire quality links, you will get more “votes of confidence” and signal to search engines that your website is trustworthy and reliable. Through time, you will increase your DA score and improve your website performance.
Effective Backlink Building Strategies
- Guest blogging on relevant, authoritative websites: A classic off-page SEO strategy is guest blogging and email outreach. You can offer an article to be posted on another website to earn quality links through partnership and professionalism.
- Create link-worthy content (e.g., infographics, research): Indeed, you must create linkable content so journalists, industry experts, and bloggers can refer to your outputs. The best way to do this is to create infographics, articles with data, and video content.
- Build relationships with industry influencers: Nowadays, influencer marketing is gaining popularity among the younger generation. So, build relationships with industry influencers to expand your reach and earn links naturally.
5. Focus on Technical SEO
Technical SEO can also improve Domain Authority by ensuring proper crawling and indexing. Without proper technical SEO strategies, you may experience slow-loading pages, indexing issues, and other factors that can affect your website’s performance.
If left unsolved, this will decrease your DA score because it signals to search engines that your website is unreliable. So, here are some key areas to improve:
Key Areas to Optimize
- Mobile-friendliness and responsive design: Since most people use mobile phones, optimize your website to be mobile-friendly with responsive web design.
- Fast page load speed: Fast page loading speed also improves the user experience because slow-loading pages can frustrate online users. Follow technical SEO guidelines like using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to keep your website loading fast.
- Secure website (HTTPS): Security is essential in the digital landscape to prevent cyber issues. So, ensure HTTPS for trustworthiness and security so search engines can favor your website for higher rankings.
6. Improve User Experience (UX)
User Experience (UX) is also essential when improving your domain authority score. UX can affect bounce rate, time on site, and click-through rate, which signals to search engines whether your website is worthy of ranking. Strive to improve your website’s user experience for better performance. Here’s how you can do it:
How to Improve UX
- Easy-to-navigate design: UX is all about making your website easy to navigate. Hence, focus on implementing UX design principles to make it engaging and help your DA score improve.
- Fast-loading pages and optimized images: UX can also shorten loading time! To improve website performance, you can optimize images and reduce plugins.
- Engaging and structured content: UX principles can make your website engaging because they make your content more structured. This can help your online users understand the content and lead to increased engagement.
7. Increase Social Shares and Engagement
According to Hubspot, social media can help SEO because you engage with your followers, increase engagement, and attract potential customers through search. While it’s not a direct ranking factor, your social media profiles can increase traffic and brand visibility.
So, here’s how you can improve social sharing to different platforms that can increase your DA score:
- Integrate social sharing buttons on your website: By including social sharing buttons on your website, you can encourage your followers to share your content through their social media platforms. This will redirect them to different platforms to share your content.
- Promote content across different platforms: Nowadays, you need to diversify your reach by promoting your content on different platforms. You can use Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube to reach more audiences.
- Engage with users and communities relevant to your niche: As a brand, you must engage with users and communities so that people are familiar with your business offers or services. By utilizing social media, you can improve your DA score.
8. Fix Broken Links
Links are directly related to Domain Authority because they signify the trustworthiness of your website. So, when you have a broken link, it’s not a good sign in the eyes of the search engine because you’re losing authority. Of course, urgent action is needed to retain your DA score.
Here’s how you can turn broken links into opportunities:
- Regularly audit your website for broken links: Keep it a habit to periodically audit your website for broken links by replacing them with a more relevant link that adds value to the content. This will maintain the authority score and improve your SEO performance.
- Use tools like Google Search Console or third-party platforms to find and fix broken links: If you want to have an accurate backlink audit, you can also use tools like SEMrush, Ahref, and Moz to identify broken links that you need to fix.
9. Ensure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly
SEMrush shared that “visitors on mobile devices accounted for 233% more unique visits than those on desktops.” These statistics show that more and more people are using mobile phones when searching online. Hence, mobile optimization is important for increasing your website’s ranking and improving your DA score.
Steps to Optimize for Mobile
- Use responsive design: In addition to UX design, responsive web design can make your website adjust to different devices, such as phones. It ensures that your website fits seamlessly into different screen sizes.
- Test your website on mobile devices for usability and performance: Regularly test your website to see if it’s usable on mobile devices. This can also help you determine which areas need improvement to increase your DA score.
10. Be Consistent with Content Updates
Remember that achieving a high domain authority score requires hard work and patience. It’s not an overnight success, so you need consistent efforts that will yield results. Keep posting fresh content because it signals relevance and authority to search engines.
Here’s what you can do to maintain consistent updates:
- Set a publishing schedule: You can schedule when to post content. To increase traffic, perhaps you can schedule two blogs monthly and three social media posts weekly.
- Regularly update old posts to maintain relevance: You can also recycle old content and update it with trendy information to maintain relevance, which can increase your DA score.
Striving for an Excellent Score
Improving Domain Authority is a sure way to boost your SEO performance, but keeping the score high can take patience and perseverance. You must show consistent SEO efforts to achieve an excellent score of 60 and above. You can also use tools like this Domain Age Checker to monitor and assess the age of your domain, which can influence your authority.
Implementing the strategies above is recommended to see long-term results for your business. Feel free to use this article as a guide when you need a reference.
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