In search engine optimization (SEO) there are many factors that one can relate to the better ranking of websites. Among these factors, one that is mostly discussed among SEO experts is Domain Authority famous as DA.
But is domain authority really a ranking factor?
Does Google consider it for ranking websites?
If these are the questions in your mind then stick with us. We are going to remove all the misconceptions in your mind regarding domain authority. Below we are going to tell you what actually domain authority is and why it matters in SEO.
What Does Domain Authority Mean for Your Website?
Domain authority (DA) is a metric from MOZ, in which they score a website between 1 to 100 within a particular niche/industry. This gives an idea about where your websites might stand up on SERPs (search engine result pages) in their relevant niche.
But, is domain authority used as a ranking factor by search engines like Google? Our short and straight answer to this will be “No, it doesn’t.”
The reason? Because various Google employees have mentioned it multiple times as only a tool by MOZ.
For example, John Muller a search advocate at Google while replying to a comment on Twitter says that “Google doesn’t use domain authority.”
But do not think of it as a useless metric. The higher the domain authority of your website, the chances of its better ranking in the relevant niche.
How is Domain Authority Calculated?
The domain authority score (1 to 100) is calculated by Moz based on multiple factors. For example, it considers the domain age, spam score, number of backlinks, link relevancy, number of referring domains, etc.
But one important thing you should know is that this scoring metric is not only from the MOZ. Many SEO tools have somewhat similar metrics on which they score down the websites in their relevant industry.
For example, SEMrush a famous SEO platform uses a similar metric and uses the word “Authority Score” for it. Likewise, Ahrefs presents this metric as “Domain Rating” and Majestic as “Flow Metric Score.”
How to Check the Domain Authority?
There are various online tools that you can use to check the domain authority of your website. Like, the domain analysis tool by Moz. Simply paste your site’s URL in the box and press the Check DA button.
But this tool by MOZ only allows you to submit one URL at a time. Plus, you can only check 3 URLs for free otherwise, you have to get a pro subscription.
If you need to check the DA of multiple websites at once you have to go for alternatives like DA PA Checker by Prepostseo. The tool allows you to check the authority of 500 URLs in one go. Plus, you do not have to pay anything, it’s free to use.
Why You Should Care About Domain Authority in SEO?
Domain authority matters for SEO persons as it helps them estimate the expected ranking of their website. They can better compare their websites with the one’s ranking on the top. This helps them to make changes to their SEO strategies accordingly.
Let us explain it to you in more detail so you can have a better understanding of why DA matters in SEO. But before that, it is worth noting that implementing good SEO practices will automatically increase your website’s DA.
Similarly, if you focus on increasing DA, you’ll build backlinks, increase topical authority, reduce spam scores, etc. This will automatically boost your site’s SEO performance.
Benchmark for SEO performance
One of the main reasons that DA matters in SEO is that it acts as a benchmark for your SEO performance.
For example, if you started a new blog with a fresh domain, means your domain authority is zero. But the competitor you have chosen has a DA of around 30 or 40.
It is obvious that to rank better and drive organic traffic to your site you’ll publish more content, improve website speed, build backlinks, etc.
To check the impact of your SEO efforts you can use DA as a metric and compare it with your competitors time by time.
Assist to Prioritize SEO Efforts
Domain authority can assist you in prioritizing SEO efforts for your website. For example, if your website has low domain authority, this is a signal for you to start building good backlinks.
If you already have made a good number of backlinks then you need to focus on indexing them.
Plus, while checking the DA with tools we also got the spam score result. If the spam score is high then it means that it is time to disavow toxic backlinks.
Ways to Improve Your Website DA
There are multiple ways that you can opt to improve your website domain authority. Below we have enlisted the six that are most crucial.
- Create quality content that helps readers in some way. Do not craft content to impress the search engines. They can now differentiate whether the content is written to help readers or just to get a high ranking.
- Try getting backlinks from high-authority websites that are most relevant to your niche. Avoid getting backlinks from adult or gambling websites. They are on the hit list of search engines like Google.
- Backlinks alone can do nothing. Focus on doing on-page optimization. Use the heading tags properly in your content and consider adding any missing meta description.
- Optimize your site for tablets and mobile devices. Improve the site speed by leveraging CDNs or browser caching.
- Fix the technical SEO errors on your site like broken links, canonical tags, sitemaps, etc.
- Focus on personal branding. Increase social signals to your website.
Wrapping Up
Domain authority is a metric by MOZ that assists SEO professionals in analyzing the performance of their site on search engines. We hope that the above blog post has assisted you well in understanding why it matters for SEO. And the ways you can improve the DA of your website.