You’ve poured capital, time, and resources into your business website. The design looks great and the layout is user-friendly. When you went live, you expected the numbers to be there.
Yet, months later, online traffic still isn’t where you’d like it to be and your sales are still lagging.
What gives?
Turns out, even the best websites can continue to rank low on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) if their Domain Authority (DA) is low. The good news? You can raise your DA in less than 10 steps, and we’re here to show you how.
Today, we’re sharing seven simple ways you can give your DA a much-needed boost and finally start seeing the activity you’ve been missing.
Ready to learn more? Let’s dive in!
What is Domain Authority?
Before we delve into how to raise your DA ranking, let’s review the background of this metric, first.
In short, DA is a search engine ranking score that Moz assigns to every website. It reveals how relevant and authoritative your site is for a specific niche or industry. Your DA can range from 0 to 100, with higher numbers preferred.
For instance, if you’re in the software business and trying to appeal to corporate executives around the world, does your website meet their needs and expectations? Are you delivering the quality content they’re looking for or is your site devoid of real purpose?
The higher your DA is, the higher you’ll appear on SERPs and the more organic traffic you’ll attract.
A Seattle-based Software as a Service (SaaS) company, Moz is recognized as an industry leader in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) space, helping companies and individuals around the world improve their visibility in the competitive search engine sphere. Though Moz is behind the original DA concept, other companies have created similar ranking scales that assign domains a number based on myriad criteria.
If you think your DA doesn’t matter, think again. These scores are requested more than one billion times per year as web users try to determine the credibility of a given website.
How Does Moz Calculate DA?
Moz uses a complex algorithm to determine your site’s DA. In all, there are 40 signals they analyze. Some of those include:
- The quality of the content on your website
- The quantity of incoming links going to your website
- The quality and relevancy of those incoming links
- The popularity of your domain and mentions in social media networks
- Your website’s general SEO performance
Raise Your DA One Step at a Time
If you don’t already know your DA, it’s easy to find. Head to the Moz Link Explorer Tool. Then, enter your domain and check out the result.
If your number isn’t where you want it to be, these seven steps can get you there.
Step 1: Strengthen Your Domain Name
Does your domain name look spammy from the onset? You could be detracting potential visitors from that alone, and Moz recognizes this and will rank it accordingly.
If you’re starting out, make sure your domain name is relevant to the content on your website. It should be easy to remember and include keywords that relate to your industry.
Step 2: Clean Up Your On-Page SEO
Whether you want to improve your Google search ranking, your DA score or both, SEO matters.
To this end, take the time to optimize all of your on-site content to align with SEO best practices. This includes taking a closer look at your web pages, landing pages, blog posts, videos and more.
Take the time to enter relevant title tags and image alt tags onto all content. Also, use short-form and long-form keywords as appropriate and make sure all of your permalinks are concise to encourage access by a wider audience of users.
Step 3: Create Relevant, Linkable Content
Both Google and Moz reward websites that provide a regular, updated stream of content that is interesting, informative and helpful to readers.
If you’re only regurgitating what someone else wrote or putting together slapdash blogs in an effort to post daily, your ranks will suffer.
Your DA will improve if you can earn high-quality links from multiple reputable domains. How do you get there? You have to create content that others crave.
The better your information is, the more people will want to share it, and the more trustworthy your website becomes. Along the way, you’ll also establish valuable thought leadership for your brand.
Step 4: Reconsider Your Internal Links
Yes, high-quality external links are ideal. Yet, they’re rendered ineffective if your internal linking structure is sub-par.
The purpose of internal links is to direct your online readers to other bits of content on your website that can help them learn more about a given topic or find the answers they need. For instance, at the end of your blog posts, you can link to related blog posts on your site that can offer deeper insights on the topic discussed.
If you can provide excellent internal links, you’ll keep them on your page longer and deliver a top-notch user experience (UX) that keeps them coming back for more. You’ll also make it a breeze for search engines to index your entire site, rather than just a page or two.
On the other hand, if you send your users on a wild goose chase, you’ll do the opposite.
Even if your links take users to the depths of your online catalog, they should be able to make their way back to your homepage in a few clicks. Pretend you’re visiting your site for the first time and gauge how user-friendly your internal linking structure is, making adjustments as necessary.
Step 5: Clean Up Your Link Profile
Speaking of links, one of the most important factors Moz considers when determining your DA is your link profile. This takes into account the backlinks from other websites that point back to your site.
The process of optimizing and cleaning up your link profile is called Off-Page SEO. There are a few pieces to this puzzle.
First, you’ll need to remove all bad, toxic or broken links from your link profile.
You can use the Moz Link Explorer tool to find which links are good and which are low-quality. Then, you’ll need to contact the website owners for each of those sites and request that they either remove the link or devalue it (by making it a “no-follow” link).
At the same time, make sure that any external links you’ve included in your own content don’t lead to bad or broken sites.
Step 6: Optimize For Mobile Use
Research shows that by 2025, 72% of people will only access the Internet using a smartphone.
How does your website look when you access it from a mobile device? If your images take ions to load, your graphics are blurry and your layout is wonky, it’s time for an overhaul.
This failure to adapt can harm your search engine rankings as well as your DA score. You’ll also lose out on an opportunity to connect with an entire audience that’s trying to reach your content on a handheld device.
If you’re not sure how mobile-friendly your website is, Google makes it easy to check. Use its Mobile-Friendly Test to learn where you can improve.
Step 7: Leverage Social Media
Part of Moz’s DA algorithm is a category called Social Signals. These signals measure how popular your content is across the major social media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and more.
As such, the only way to obtain those coveted signals is to promote your content on social media.
If you aren’t already active on social media, now is the time to get on board. Every time you create a new piece of content, whether it’s a podcast, blog post, e-course or video, post that link on your profile and encourage your online followers to like it, comment on it, and share it with others in their community. You should also include social share buttons directly on your webpage to make this step as simple as possible.
This is a free and effective way to expand your audience reach and boost your DA at the same time!
Improve Your DA and Watch Online Traffic Rise
High-performing websites don’t happen overnight. They’re the result of a dedicated effort to make your corner of the Internet as successful as possible.
Moz’s DA ranking is a critical factor in analyzing the overall performance of your domain. It’s within your control to make yours as high as possible, but we know the steps can be a little daunting.
That’s where we come in.
We’re online marketing experts dedicated to helping business owners like you earn the visibility, traffic, and sales you deserve.
Contact us today to learn more and let’s take this next step together.