What is Domain Authority and Why Does It Matter to SEO?
An introduction to Domain Authority and your Domain Authority Score
Domain Authority is a very important factor in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) even though it's not strictly speaking a ranking factor per se. It's a number that ranges from 1 to 100, and it plays a significant role in how well a website will rank on search engines like Google relative to other sites trying to rank for the same keyword, topic or content. In terms of its impact on ranking keywords on search engines, domain authority is essentially a relative measure, not an absolute one - this will be explained in more detail over the course of this article. Like a lot of SEO terms, a Domain Authority Score might not mean a great deal to a lot of website owners looking to increase web traffic to their website, but it's worth gaining an understanding of how important it is for increasing search traffic to your website from the major search engines.
What is Domain Authority?
Website Domain Authority is a score (developed by Moz) that predicts how likely your website will rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). This ranking system ranges from 1 - 100, with higher numbers corresponding to greater chances for your website to appear higher on the search engine results pages. A higher Domain Authority indicates that your site is more trusted and likely to generate more traffic than a site with lower authority. In this blog post, we will explore what Domain Authority means and why it matters for SEO!
Who are Moz and why did they develop the Domain Authority Score?
Moz was founded by Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig in 2004. It was called SEOmoz and started as a blog and an online community where some of the world's first SEO experts shared their research and ideas. They launched the Beginner's Guide to SEO and their first Search Ranking Factors study, and that hub of industry expertise transformed into a small consulting firm and led them to create some of their first SEO tools - https://moz.com/about
How does Moz calculate page authority?
"Domain Authority is calculated by evaluating multiple factors, including linking root domains and the total number of links, into a single DA score. This score can then be used when comparing websites or tracking the "ranking strength" of a website over time. Domain Authority is not a Google ranking factor and has no effect on the SERPs."
Reference - https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority
The key takeaway here is that the higher the quality of the inbound links to your website, the higher your Domain Authority score is likely to be.
Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty is the next concept to cover as we seek to understand the relevance of domain authority and what that means for our and other websites.
Keywords - these are the words and phrases people type into search engines in order to find what they're looking for. They describe a piece of content or more broadly an entire website. These keywords or phrases help search engines understand what the website or content is about and so by identifying appropriate keywords and keyphrases you can have an outsized impact with respect to achieving your on-page SEO goals.
Keyword Difficulty - this is another relative measure used by many SEO tools. Each keyword or phrase will have a relative measure (usually between 1-100, of how hard it will be to rank well in the search results for that particular keyword. For example, the keyword 'mortgage' has a difficulty of 80 (according to SEMRush), 'buy to let mortgage' has a keyword difficulty of 52.
Now that we understand how our domain has a relative strength by way of Domain Authority and that a keyword or keyphrase also has a relative difficulty in terms of ranking we can move on to the relevance and credibility of a website.
Relevance and Credibility
Now that we've explained Domain Authority (DA) and Keyword (Ranking) Difficulty as a relative score out of 100 we can start piecing this all together.
The bottom line - a site with a higher DA will be more likely to rank well for a keyword with higher keyword difficulty. As a rule of thumb in the SEO space, when targeting keywords for a website or piece of content you should focus on keywords that don't have a higher keyword difficulty score that's too far above your domain authority score - all other things being equal. This last statement is very important as I will now explain as relevance and credibility are very important factors.
Relevance
Let's say that the BBC website in the UK, which has a very strong Domain Authority score of 95, wanted to rank for the keyword 'mortgage' with a keyword difficulty of 80. The DA is quite a bit higher than the keyword difficulty score of 80, BUT, it's not really relevant content for the BBC website so Google and other search engines aren't likely to give content on the BBC website about mortgages higher rankings than a site with a lot more relevance in this space. As it happens Money Supermarket with a DA of 68 ranks #1 in Google in the UK for that keyword as clearly that site has much more relevance. As well as relevance, other factors come into play and I've listed some of these factors below.
Credibility and Authority
Having credibility and authority in your 'space' is also important to both your websites ability to rank and your overall Domain Authority. Your credibility as a business or as a trusted source of information is important and will gain you things like high quality backlinks, relevant backlinks and will also likely gain you links from other similar sites. All of these link profile factors will be seen by the major search engines as an endorsement of your website and content. Think of it this way, if your website contains information that is considered to be relevant to a large audience (I say this in a relative rather than absolute sense) and the content on your website has meaning, value and authority then this ultimately plays a significant role in your overall Domain Authority as it has influence over the factors we have already covered.
Create high-quality content
If everything else was equal (in terms of Search Engine Optimisation opportunity) then the quality of your content is critical. If you have a similar DA to all your competitor websites and you want to rank for a keyword that is highly relevant to your industry or niche, the quality of your content is paramount. If you research your topic and keywords and write high quality, relevant and authoritative content, then all else being equal you should be able to rank well for it. Promoting and sharing your content is also critical to obtaining authoritative backlinks as well as citation flow as you obtain references and shares but starting with high quality content should always be your main objective.
Reputable sites
Above we've talked about writing good content, which applies not just to a single web page but also an entire website, but also promoting your content, obtaining backlinks and building a good link profile for your content and website overall. Links to your website or content from reputable sites with a higher Domain Authority than yours are the most valuable. These are called referring domains and are one of the domain authority measures that will improve your overall domain authority over time.
How do I find my website's Domain Authority Score?
Moz's domain authority checker tool will show you top competitive SEO metrics like Domain Authority, linking domains, top pages, ranking keywords, and more overall SEO ranking factors. This is a free tool and doesn't require any subscription so can be useful for checking your own DA score vs your competitors' websites for instance.
Alternatives to Domain Authority
Each of Moz's main competitors has similar domain authority metrics which I have listed below, essentially they are measuring the same thing and they will vary based on the slightly different ways of calculating the score but each will give you a relative authority score.
Moz - Domain Authority
Firstly, for reference, here's what Moz say about their Domain Authority Metric - Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). Domain Authority scores range from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to greater likelihood of ranking. It's worth noting that they go on to say - Domain Authority is not a Google ranking factor and has no effect on the SERPs. That's not confusing
SEMRush - Authority Score
Here's what SEMRush say about their Authority Score Metric - Authority Score is our compound domain score that grades the overall quality of a website or a webpage. The higher the score, the more assumed weight a domain’s or webpage’s backlinks could have.
AHREFS - Domain Rating
Here's what AHREFS say about their Domain Rating Metric - Domain Rating (DR) shows the strength of a target website’s backlink profile on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100, with latter being the strongest. The purpose of Domain Rating (DR) is very straightforward—to assess the “relative link popularity” of a given website.
Alexa - Competitive Power
Here's what Alexa says about their Competitive Power score is based on your site's past performance in organic search. Increasing your site's organic search traffic will improve the score. The best way to do this is to create content on your site that targets specific keywords that are relevant to your audience.
What Determines Domain or Website Authority?
Domain Authority is a ranking score calculated by evaluating multiple factors, including linking root domains and the total number of links. This single DA Score can then be used when comparing websites or tracking the "ranking strength" over time for your website on Search engines like Google!
What does Domain Authority tell you?
A domain authority score is a search engine ranking metric or score that helps determine how likely your website will rank on SERP (search engine results page). Moz created these numbers, with higher scores meaning greater chances for rankings (1-100).
What is the highest Domain Authority?
The highest domain authority score is 100. At the time of writing Google and Youtube have a domain authority score of 100.
What is a good Domain Authority score?
As we've explained in this article, domain authority is a relative measure that you can use to determine how likely it is that your website or content will rank for a keyword or topic. As such, there isn't really such a thing as a good score as it needs to be evaluated in the context of what your objectives are and how strong your competition is.
How to Increase Domain Authority?
In a nutshell - write, publish and promote good quality content. Seek to obtain external links to this content from websites with high domain authority. If your content is really good and useful then people will share it and that's how passive link building can help build domain authority.
My Domain Authority is low - how do I rank my website?
Create quality content! If you have used some sort of keyword research tool and you aren't trying to rank for keywords that aren't too difficult to rank for relative to your current domain authority then writing, publishing and sharing unique high quality content will help build your authority over time.
What is Page Authority?
Page Authority (PA) is an also important ranking factor. PA scores range from 1 to 100, with higher numbers corresponding to a better chance of appearing at the top results when someone searches for your product or service by typing in relevant keywords
- Moz explains that this number should always be considered alongside other metrics such as domain authority and keyword density because they are closely related. These relationships are explained in more detail above.
Does Domain Age Affect my Authority?
Yes. But everyone has to start somewhere and by creating quality content from the outset as one of the top goals for your website, you will be well on your way to improving your authority faster than by just adding content for content's sake. Use a domain authority checker tool to check your site's domain authority on a regular basis, avoid any black hat SEO tactics (do not be tempted to buy links) and make link profile growth one of your key performance indicators as well as use domain authority as a key part for your search engine optimisation strategy.
More about Mountain SEO
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