What is Domain Authority

Domain Authority is the term used to describe the SEO Moz website metric that denotes or measures exactly how powerful a domain name is in leveraging top rankings for websites in the Search Engine Results Pages. As a SERPS ranking predictor it will adjudicate a website’s authority and value based on a logarithmic score ranging from 1 to 100 with higher scores corresponding to higher rankings. The ranking scale is predicated on a number of variables such as : a website’s popularity, Moz Rank, Page Authority, IP Address, and authoritative Backlinks. The “website authority checker” is a very useful tool for checking Domain Authority deploying metrics that measure 1. Moz Domain Authority; 2. Moz Page Authority; 3. External Equity Links; 4. Website age and Specific URL Age and 5. Social Media score ( the total combined count from Google+, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest).

Formerly, a website was judged, evaluated and calibrated according to its Google pagerank. That has proved to be a flawed system and has been superseded by Domain Authority score as a more trusted and well maintained factor in measuring rank and web page authority on the internet. The most important reality check is recognising that your website’s DA represents your competitiveness in relation to other websites’ DA ranking score. It is a metric you have to manipulate and hone to your advantage to ensure it adds value to your SEO strategic campaigns and out strips all competitor offerings in delivering top rankings in SERPS.

Domain Authority constitutes over 40 ranking signals including the number of links pointing to the site as well as the number of root domains, that is, the quantity of other sites linking to your site.

Two diagnostic features that deliver important data are MozRank and MozTrust. The former is measured, based on the Link Profile of a Domain which is a calculation predicated on the number of links pointing to a page. It is not only a consideration of quantity but more importantly quality of links that count most – with high quality links scoring heavily in the ratings on a scale of 0-10. The latter also uses links as a measurement, with emphasis on connections to trusted websites on the web. MozTrust basically reflects how near or far your web page is from a trusted “seed” site such as a government site which is highly credible and trustworthy.

Why is it important

With its increasing influence as a ranking factor in SERPS, Domain Authority is an extremely important element in any SEO considerations. For those who have not focused on their Domain Authority score until now, it is time to use some of the Domain Authority checkers that we will outline. Here are some tips to help you achieve a higher DA score and greater Page Authority:

• Though not the strongest ranking factor your Domain Name should be kept updated and never be allowed to expire as it is basically your website’s flagship. It is advisable to extend it for as long as possible as long-lasting websites signal trust to the Search Engines.
• The one factor that will impact your website most is backlinks. Both quantity and quality are very important features in gaining links from quality sites.
• Try and secure relevant quality links from diverse sources that are not interconnected.
• For the blogger it is essential to ensure that posts are linked to other posts on your blog passing link juice from old posts to the latest one.
• Running parallel with creating new links you should ensure that all bad links pointing to your site are removed.
• Again quality content is crucial in creating credibility and authority in your niche which may indirectly help your Domain Authority.
• On-site SEO is another crucial aspect of enabling bots to effectively crawl your site and index your content. This includes SEO activities such as submitting your sitemap file to Google, creating an effective Meta Title and Description of your Homepage, focusing on Noindex archive pages and proper use of Heading Tags specifically for SEO.
• Ensuring your website load time is as fast as possible since Google has made it an official ranking signal.

A good internal link structure can really help in SEO and consequently the domain authority of a site. It is definitely an important factor for bloggers. It is accepted that newer websites with new domains are relying more on rich authoritative content to compensate for domain age. Many still believe that long established domain names harness much greater authority and pagerank influence than younger ones and are therefore an important rank factor. 

Domain Authority is also important from an advertising point of view as advertisers like to check out the metric before reaching out to for paid advertising. Remember that since DA is rated on a 100 point system the score can change after any update. Therefore, the authority score can go down as well as up depending on the status of all the ranking factors or variables. Though they are not absolute metrics, Authority scores are best viewed as comparison figures so you can outclass the competition with greater adherence to Google  algorithmic demands and the implementation of remedial recalibrations and SEO strategies to redress the imbalance.

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