What Is Domain Authority and Why Is It Important?

If you’re familiar with SEO, you know that domain authority is key to ranking well on SERPs. In fact, research shows that over 70% of SEO experts check their website’s domain rating at least once a month.

But what is domain authority? How is it measured? And most importantly, how do you improve your website’s rating?

Lucky for you, we’re ready to answer all of your questions. After reading this post, you’ll be an expert on domain authority and ready to improve your website’s performance with proven, time-tested methods.

Quick Takeaways

• Domain authority indicates the likelihood of a website ranking on SERPs, and is calculated by the quality of a website’s backlinks
• Over 55% of websites don’t receive organic traffic because they don’t have backlinks
• Focusing on quality over quantity is the most effective way to improve your website’s score
• It takes 42% of companies more than 3 months to see a significant increase in their score after implementing link-building practices

Optimizing your website’s domain authority is as easy as understanding, measuring and taking simple steps to improve.

What Is Domain Authority?

Domain authority is a numeric score, developed by Moz, that represents how likely a website is to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) compared to its competitors. These scores fall anywhere between 1 to 100, with higher ratings indicating a higher likelihood of appearing on the SERPs.

Although, it’s important to know that Google doesn’t consider domain authority a factor of ranking websites. That means a high domain authority score isn’t going to improve your ranking, but will be a good indicator of how well your website performs in comparison to competitors.

Why Is It Important?

A recent study found that domain ratings and keyword rankings are closely correlated, proving that domain authority is helpful when estimating a website’s likelihood of seeing organic traffic on search engines.

Image Source: Ahrefs

When you understand your site’s organic traffic and how likely it is to rank, you’re more equipped to build your brand and create a website that encourages your audience to engage. It also points out areas that could use some improvement.

How Is Domain Authority Calculated?

Did you know that over 55% of websites don’t receive organic traffic because they lack backlinks? Backlinks are links placed on other businesses’ websites that point back to your own, generating organic traffic and improving domain authority. To learn more about backlinks, enjoy the short video below.

Video Source: PWD Digital Agency

Domain authority measures the quality and quantity of backlinks to a specific website, making it easier to understand how you can drive more organic traffic. It’s calculated using a machine learning algorithm’s assumption of how often search engines are using a specific domain in its SERPs.

Since domain ratings are predictions, they’re likely to fluctuate as new data becomes available. Influential factors to domain authority include:

• Link profile growth that hasn’t been captured in Moz’s web index yet
• High-authority websites experienced significant link growth & skewed the scaling process
• Your earned links don’t contribute to Google rankings
• Your website’s score is on the low end of the spectrum, resulting in a greater impact to new data

Including quality backlinks can help avoid significant changes in your score, but doesn’t rule out fluctuations since competitor backlinks can’t be controlled.

What’s A Good Domain Rating?

Generally speaking, domain ratings range from 1 to 100, with larger numbers representing a higher likelihood of ranking on the SERPs. Consider the following ranges for a basic understanding of the rating scale:

• <30 is poor
• 30 – 40 is below average
• 40 – 50 is average
• 50 – 60 is good
• 60 – 70 is very good
• >80 is excellent

But, keep in mind that your domain rating isn’t absolute. To truly understand where your website stands, you must compare your score to that of similar sites.

For example, a rating of 70 may seem high, but if competitors have scores of 90 or above, your website can be improved. All in all, your website has a good ranking so long as it’s higher than or comparable to your competition.

How Can I Find My Website’s Domain Rating?

You can check the domain rating of any website for free with Moz’s Domain Authority Checker. Not only can you learn your website’s domain authority, but also your:

• Linking Root Domains
• Ranking Keywords
• Spam Score

Image Source: Moz

Knowing how your root domains, keywords and spam score compares to competitors will also help you determine areas of your website that need improvement.

How To Build Your Domain Authority

If your website’s rating is lower than expected, all hope is not lost. There’s a few things you can do to improve your ranking and start performing better than your competitors. To start building your website’s domain authority, prioritize:

• Quality Over Quantity. A few relevant backlinks are far more helpful than thousands of low-quality links.
• Analyzing Your Backlinks. Make sure that your backlinks have a do-follow, or allow search engines to point back to your website.
• Deliver Quality Content. High-quality content is not only more engaging for readers, but it’s also far more likely to get organic backlinks.
• Focus On Your Audience. Sharing content that’s appealing to your target audience is more likely to be shared or go viral.
• Update Old Content. Re-visit old pages and blog posts with low page authority and update them with new, quality backlinks relevant to the needs of your readers
• Share Your Content. Consistently post your content on social media or send email newsletter to generate traffic to your content.
• Understand Your Competition. Figure out where your competition is getting their quality backlinks from and determine whether you can get similar ones.

Building your domain authority doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, research shows that 42% of companies only reported a noticeable increase after 3 months.

But, it’s worth the wait. Enhancing domain authority is one of the best ways to increase your business’s visibility and generate more traffic to your site.

Improve Your Domain Authority Today

Every successful business has a high domain authority, ultimately generating more traffic and leads to their website. With the right research and backlinks, you too can achieve great domain authority for your website.

Although, increasing your business’s score can take a bit of determination and effort. Take advantage of expert knowledge and check out Marketing Insider Group’s SEO Blog Writing Service today, or schedule a quick consultation now to learn more!