Despite these differences, domain authority is a crucial measure of the site’s online stature and the chance of continued success for all websites.
But why do digital marketing professionals cherish this metric? Our BRANDefenders guide to domain authority answers all your questions and lets you know how to build yours.
This isn’t a measure of “trust” in the sense that we usually refer to pages as being “trustworthy” or not — that refers to whether the page is safe to visit. Instead, this describes a well-regarded website by other websites to be considered helpful by the search algorithm.
At BRANDefenders, we understand that this metric is an excellent way for business owners to monitor their website’s success over time. While numerous digital marketing services can indicate your site’s domain authority score, a popular choice is a software developer called Moz.
Moz allows you to check any website’s DA score, ranking sites from 1-100. 1 is a new site, while 100 means it’s the internet’s most-referenced website.
Strong page authority can bring traffic to your site just because that single page ranks highly. It also contributes to overall domain authority, so it’s worth building this up independently.
Think of a YouTube channel that consistently achieved 10k views per video until that one video blew up and hit 300k. While not everyone who watched the big hit will watch every other video on the channel, it contributes to long-term success by dramatically boosting visibility.
While the factors contributing to good domain authority are the same factors that will help you rank highly on Google, the metric itself is not used in ranking calculations. The domain authority score you’ll find on Moz is an analysis rather than a contributing factor.
The exact methodology that search algorithms use is somewhat secretive and constantly updating. Likewise, Moz doesn’t give up too much information on how it makes its decisions.
However, the main factors are pretty well-known in digital marketing.
Here are the most prominent factors that contribute to your domain authority.
The volume of inbound links directed to a website plays a massive role in determining its credibility. More links mean more external sources that regard the website as trustworthy enough to reference — however, it’s not just about quantity. Quality is more important.
The root domain of external sites linking back to your website determines how seriously search engines take the reference. A site’s root domain is the “Wikipedia” part of www.wikipedia.org. A highly-regarded root domain will be taken much more seriously than an inbound link from a website with a low authority score.
If this system seems somewhat circular, that’s because it is. It’s the search engines’ way of getting websites to peer-review each other. It also protects against black-hat SEO and digital marketing tricks like building blank websites simply to link back to the page you’re trying to rank.
At BRANDefenders, we know that the search algorithms are far too clever for lazy black hat techniques these days. Building domain authority organically is the only way.
Google and other search engines play a role in determining domain authority scores. Search links are still links, after all. Sites with higher search traffic tend to be rated more highly than those that never appear in searches.
Inbound links’ click-through rate helps determine whether the links are well-placed and relevant. A higher click-through rate means that your inbound links served a useful purpose on the website linking to you and weren’t simply thrown in to help you rank more highly. Paid links are an accepted part of digital marketing, but search engines will punish lazy attempts at paid linking compared to relevant, informative referencing.
Improving click-through rate is vital in so many areas of digital marketing. At BRANDefenders, we help our clients optimize their websites to enhance click-through performance, whether in search traffic or inbound links.
Would it be nice to know search algorithms inside out? Of course, it would. However, we don’t need to be discouraged just because the information giants like to keep a few secrets to themselves.
A successful digital marketing strategy is about paring information down to relevant and actionable information. At BRANDefenders, that’s how we consistently help our clients build their domain authority. We know the primary factors that create domain authority, and we help clients through a clear plan to get them where they want to be.
Domain authority is calculated on an absolute scale. This means that crudely speaking, 1 = no links at all, while 100 = the most high-quality inbound links of any site on the internet. Only a few websites will rank above 90 for this reason, and for most small-to-medium-sized businesses, it’s a steep ask to crack those top spots.
Consider your domain authority relative to your competitors rather than relative to massive platforms. At BRANDefenders, we can analyze your key competitors’ performance and bring your score up.
There are a few more caveats worth noting:
It’s like saying that having a good credit score improves your credit score. Instead, think of the factors behind the information rather than the metric itself. The SEO, backlinking, and digital marketing strategies offered by BRANDefenders will help improve your standing in Google’s eyes, and, as a result, your domain authority will be reported as higher.
Remember that quality is more important than quantity. You want to be referenced by high-quality sources — put content on your website that those sources will feel comfortable linking to. The team at BRANDefenders can help you devise a complete backlinking strategy for this.
BRANDefenders will improve your domain authority score alongside other key success metrics of your online business. Get in touch with us about improving your website’s domain authority today.