How to boost your website’s domain authority

Is your website struggling to organically reach those all-important and highly-sought-after top search ranking positions? If so, you may want to consider trying to improve your domain authority.

But what is a domain authority score, and why is it so important?

Below, we define domain authority, explain what’s considered good domain authority and help you to figure out why your website isn’t showing up where you want it to.

So, if you’re eager to bring in more customers and cement your company as an authority in your sector, simply carry on reading to find out how to increase domain authority from the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) experts at Aqueous Digital.

What is domain authority?

Put simply, domain authority refers to how credible and authoritative your website is deemed to be by a search engine. Domain authority is calculated based on multiple factors including a domain’s relevance on a particular subject as well as the number and quality of backlinks. Using an automated analytic algorithm, what’s known as a ‘domain authority score’ (DA score) is then created from this data.

Each domain will therefore be assigned a DA score between 1-100 on a logarithmic scale. The higher the score, the more reliable, relevant and authoritative the domain.

This metric was developed by the SEO and data management software company, Moz, in order to predict just how likely it is that the website will appear on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Why does a DA score matter?

If you want your content to appear higher up on SERPs (just like every business should!), a good domain authority score is essential. This is because Google, the world’s most popular and largest search engine, wants its users to find only the most relevant and reliable content, ensuring they are provided with a credible and accurate answer to whatever their query is.

While Google will prioritise websites with higher DA scores, they may use some domain-like metrics to decide where your content should be positioned in SERPs. Generally, however, a high DA score means that your website is reliable and has high-quality content – two factors that Google values – but what is considered a ‘good’ DA score and how does your domain measure up?

What is a good domain authority?

Typically, a ‘good’ DA score is classed as anywhere between 50 and 60, while a value of between 40 and 50 is deemed average.

Anything above 60 is widely considered excellent.

Every domain will initially have a DA score of 1, so regardless of the name of your domain or industry that your website is a part of, every site starts off with a blank slate.

However, as the website begins to build backlinks, create quality content featuring vital keywords and optimise their technical SEO, this score will start to grow. Some websites with the highest domain authority scores include Google itself, Apple, YouTube and Microsoft. Each one of these domains is the biggest and most well-known in their respective industries.

It’s also worth noting that this value will vary according to the level of competition in the industry. The more competition, the harder it can be for a domain to move up the ranks. However, if your domain has little competition but is still struggling with a plateauing domain authority score, then you might be wondering what you’re doing wrong. Let’s find out!

Why is my domain authority not increasing?

As mentioned above, your domain authority score will start at 1, but what happens if your score doesn’t increase and, more importantly, what could be preventing your domain from rising up the ranks?

First and foremost, if you’re using the Moz Mozscape index to keep track of your DA score, it’s worth noting that this is only updated every three to four weeks, so you’re unlikely to see any movement for at least a month no matter how much effort you’re putting into improving your score.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that due to DA scores being rated on a logarithmic scale, it’s much easier for websites with a lower DA score, for example around 20 to 30, to increase their score than it is for domains with a significantly higher to up theirs. So, if you’re despairing over your relatively low DA score, it isn’t all bad news and there are plenty of SEO strategies that you can employ to help increase this number.

In fact, your DA score is unlikely to increase unless you’re actively implementing these strategies. While creating content will naturally improve your DA score, you’ll only see significant progress if you utilise vital SEO tools.

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How to increase my DA score?

If you want to see your DA score shoot up, then you’ll need to become (at the very least) familiar with SEO. SEO is the process of improving the positioning of your website’s content in search results in order to drive more traffic towards your site. This process can involve boosting your domain using both paid and organic search, and is a fundamental part of increasing your domain authority.

Eager to find out how to increase domain authority on your website? With decades of collective experience, we recommend implementing a three-pronged approach. Our strategy for increasing the domain authority score of a website includes link-building, the creation of content and streamlining your technical SEO. We explore each one of these crucial elements in more detail below.

Build high-quality backlinks

Backlinks are one of Google’s most powerful ranking factors that contribute to your DA score. Defined as “an external online link that points from the page of one website to the page of another”, both the amount and quality of backlinks matter. The quality of backlinks in particular, can make the most substantial difference to how Google views your website. The question therefore becomes, how can you obtain high-quality backlinks?

There are several ways that you can obtain backlinks (including buying them) for your website, but the experienced expert SEO team here at Aqueous Digital recommends conducting competitor backlink analysis and using backlink outreach. The first stage of competitor backlink analysis involves using an SEO toolset to create a list of domains that provide backlinks to your primary competitors.

From here, you can research which of the relevant domains have the best domain authority scores and begin the outreach stage of the process. Depending on the scale of the domain, you’ll need to reach out to the marketing department or CEO with an incentive in exchange for a backlink. As buying backlinks goes against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, it’s best practice for this incentive to be in the form of a piece of content.

If you can offer high-quality and relevant content to the domain you’re seeking a backlink from, they’re more likely to accept your proposal. Simply repeat this process for a number of domains and soon you’ll start to see DA score growth.

Create great content

Not only will the creation of great content aid you on your backlinking pursuit, but frequently publishing high-quality content has other benefits, too. A good content strategy can drive brand awareness, help your company to receive more enquiries about certain products or even help you to rank for different keywords.

To help achieve these aims while simultaneously growing your DA score using content, you’ll require a content strategy. A content strategy will allow you to plan the different topics and types of content that you want to create as well as providing timelines of when you want to publish each piece.

Part of the content strategy should also be creating a list of keywords that you want to target with each piece of content. This keyword research is vital for attracting your target audience and pushing your content up the search position ranks. Keywords with a considerable monthly search volume should therefore be included in the pieces of content that you want to rank the highest.

In the eyes of Google, the inclusion of these keywords throughout your content will also help to identify your domain as an authority in your industry. Ultimately, high-quality content informed by SEO practices (such as keyword research) can have a significant positive impact on your organic traffic, the number of enquiries you receive and your overall online visibility.

Target technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to the process of optimising a website so that it can be more effectively crawled by search engines with the ultimate aim of creating an increase in organic traffic. The main components of technical SEO include crawling, indexing, rendering and the overall website architecture.

By auditing and improving upon your site’s technical SEO, you’ll be able to spot any harmful elements before Google has the chance to index your website. These negative elements could include harmful, poor-quality links. Alternatively, there may something preventing Google from crawling some of your great content.

With a helping hand from tools like Google’s Search Console, you’ll be able to remove or disavow any bad links as well as highlight the pages you really want Google to find and crawl. By directing Google towards the positives of your website while also minimising the negative elements of your domain, you’ll be making your site more ‘Google-friendly’. Subsequently, if Google can accurately analyse your website, it’s more likely to spot the many features that build good domain authority, boosting your DA score.

How long does it take to increase domain authority?

Increasing your domain authority is by no means an overnight task or a quick fix to receiving more organic traffic to your website. While you may be able to see improvement in your positions on organic SERPs within just a few weeks, your DA score may not budge for up to six months.

Ultimately, while there’s no fixed timeline for increasing your DA score, the amount of effort you put into increasing your domain authority should eventually be reflected in your DA score. Naturally, however, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever become one of the domains with the highest DA scores, so targeting a DA score of 100 is just unrealistic. Instead, uncover the DA scores of your closest competitors and make this number your target for a more realistic and achievable goal.

Increase your DA score with Aqueous Digital

With a helping hand from the talented and highly-experienced SEO specialist team at Aqueous Digital, you could gain vital domain authority for your business. Regardless of whether you want to boost the number of conversions made through your website or build your company’s credibility, we use a reliable combination of technical, on-page and off-page SEO to help improve your DA score.

As part of this strategy, we offer a professional backlinking service where we reach out to authoritative and credible domains on your behalf. In exchange for valuable backlinks from these sources, we can provide relevant and high-quality content (created either by one of our in-house writers or a member of your own team).

To build domain authority using on-page SEO, we also implement bespoke content strategies. These content strategies are built around specific keywords with significant search volume, helping to direct more organic traffic to your website. Moreover, the considerable bank of content created as a result helps to highlight the authority of your domain.

If you want to strengthen your domain authority score while also improving your search ranking positions, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with a highly-knowledgeable member of our Manchester or Cheshire team today. Our award-winning company specialises in both paid and organic search, so why not get in contact now to find out how we can boost your business?

To discuss your SEO requirements and backlinking goals over the phone, please feel free to call us on 08000 285 1424. Alternatively, you can always get in touch with us by emailing your enquiry to agency@aqueous-digital.co.uk or using our handy online contact form. Simply fill in your contact details and we’ll be in touch shortly to perform your free website health check and no-obligation consultation!