How to Build a Domain Authority: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners?

If you are trying to get your website to rank higher in a search engine, then you might be a little familiar with the term domain authority.

 

However, this term can be somewhat puzzling for beginners. Is domain authority an acknowledged ranking criterion by Google or not? Questions like these will be answered in this article, along with some tips you can apply to improve this metric.

 

What is Domain Authority?

 

Domain authority is a parameter that determines the credibility or authority of your website. However, this metric has yet to be officially acknowledged by Google. Instead, it is a measure provided by Moz.

 

Domain authority is actually a score from 1 to 100 that depends on multiple factors. This score estimates the performance of your website in a search engine. Even though Google does not officially recognize this score, it is still a handy measure. Many online businesses take this score very seriously.

 

Similarly, another measure named page authority is also a metric created by Moz. It is only for part of the website. Instead, it estimates the performance of separate web pages. A website has only one domain authority score but can have multiple page authority scores.

 

What Is a Good Domain Authority Score?

 

You might be wondering how you can evaluate whether your score is good. As mentioned before, the domain authority score ranges from 1 to 100. Here is an estimation of how good different scores are:

 

 

Again, this scale is just an estimation and not something factual. However, you can use this scale to determine where your website stands. Your DA score should be between 70-100.

 

How to Build Domain Authority?

 

There is a myriad of different factors that affect domain authority. If you want to improve your web’s domain authority, then you should pay attention to these factors and improve them. Given in the following is a list of them.

 

Getting Backlinks from Trusted Sources

 

A backlink is a link that, upon being clicked, takes a user from one website to some other site. Such backlinks can be used in content for various purposes, such as for references or examples. 

 

Backlinks are the most important factor in terms of determining the domain authority of a website by a landside. If your content is being used as a reference by other websites, then it (your content) is credible.

 

 

These links can also attract new traffic from users interested in your content. Therefore, getting backlinks to get a high domain authority score is very important.

 

When trying to get backlinks, one thing to take care of is to study the source. If your content gets linked by poor or spammy websites, then your DA score might get decreased. So, ensure that only authoritative and trusted sites link your work.

 

As a beginner, the best way for you to get backlinks is to build relations with other web admins and ask for non-reciprocal link exchange.

 

Similarly, you can also look out for the sources from where your competitors are getting links. You can pursue these sources to backlink your content.

 

Write Quality Content

 

Your domain authority score is also determined by the quality of your content and its relevance to the topic or the keyword. Create content that interests your target audience. Similarly, it should also provide valuable information to them.

 

 

Users who find your content useful might share your work with others. This way, you can build a strong digital presence and get some backlinks. And as explained before, these backlinks will result in you getting a higher domain authority score.

 

So, how can you create such quality content for a better DA score? There are several simple and straightforward steps that you can follow to achieve this,

 

• Research your audience and your topic
• Create content that solves the audience’s queries
• Don’t add generalized information that people already know
• Use facts and figures to make your content authoritative
• Don’t make writing errors (proofread your work)

 

These are some of the most basic steps to help you create valuable content.

 

If you follow them, then users might explore your work and consequently share if they are impressed by it.

 

Improve User Experience

 

User experience is very important for domain authority. If a user faces difficulty while navigating through your content, then there is a high chance that he might leave. You must ensure that a website visitor gets a smooth user experience.

 

 

The first step for improving user experience is to fix any possible problems that your website might have. You have to ensure that your website is responsive and that all of the buttons, such as the search button, work perfectly. Adding a large number of adverts to your web pages should also be avoided.

 

Similarly, your website should work perfectly on mobile devices. This is because a major share of traffic usually comes from them.

 

If you take all the necessary measures to ensure a smooth user experience, users will have a good time on your website. This will indirectly contribute to improving your domain authority score.

 

Organize Your Website

 

Even if you are starting out with a newly created website, you still might have more than one web page. These web pages should be segmented to make locating them easier for search engines.

 

This means that these different web pages should have separate and distinct information. If you use the same content on all these pages, then it will be very difficult for the search engine to find them. That’s why you have to design them to have different functions.

 

 

You might wonder how this step relates to increasing a site’s domain authority score. Well, organizing your website can assist search engines and increase your noticeability. Additionally, an organized website can also positively impact user experience. And we have already explained how a good user experience can be useful in building domain authority.

 

Use Internal Linking

 

Linking internally means interlinking your content. So, for example, you are writing an article about a car company, but you have an already published article about cars in general. You can link some of the information used in your already published article in your new article. This is called internal linking.

 

 

This can be very beneficial in increasing your site’s DA score. This is because internal links can result in users spending more time on your web, which is a direct measure for better domain authority.

 

How is Domain Authority Calculated?

 

According to Moz, domain authority is calculated by collecting all the data about a website and condensing it into a single score. This is done via utilizing machine learning technologies. These scores get constantly updated as changes are made to the website.

 

 

The different types of data that determine domain authority can include things like the total number of links and linking root domains. Similarly, factors like the trustworthiness of your site and the number of internal and external links can also impact your domain authority score.

 

But, out of all these factors, the most important is the amount and worth of backlinks.

 

How to Check Domain Authority

 

As you now know, domain authority is a score-based parameter created by Moz. If you want to check your domain authority score, you can use the tool provided by Moz. It is a very simple-to-use tool.

 

All you have to do is enter the URL of the website or webpage whose domain authority or page authority you want to check. After that, you just click the check button, and you will get your scores in the form of a detailed report. This report has all sorts of information, like the top competitors of the entered site and the website’s linking domains over time.

 

The list of metrics keeps going, but some of the main ones are shown in the image above.

 

The domain authority checker by Moz allows users to check one website’s score at a time. You can also use an online bulk DA PA checker if you want to compare the domain authority of multiple websites simultaneously.

 

Final Words

 

Domain authority may not be an official metric to determine your website’s performance, but it is very important. A large majority of successful websites have an impressive domain authority score. That is why you should also take all the necessary steps to improve your domain authority.

 

A few steps have been discussed in the above article for this purpose that, if you follow, will create a visible difference in terms of increasing the domain authority score.