Domain Authority Demystified: How It Impacts Your SEO Efforts

Recently, I conducted a survey among bloggers about what their top struggles were and one of the big issues seems to be this thorny problem of “domain authority.” (You can still add your voice and what you need help with here!)

“My website DA is so low I am doing myself a disserve.”

“I just changed my theme and my domain authority dropped.”

So, how can we tackle this problem? And what even is this mysterious domain authority?

What is Domain Authority?

“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.” from Moz.com

However, it’s important to note that Google doesn’t use it as a means to rank your site. It does help you assess your performance in comparison to your competitors.

“Domain rating is calculated by looking at a number of factors, including the number of links to the website, the quality of those links, and the relevance of the links.” (from codedesign.org)

Does Domain Authority Matter for SEO?

There seems to be some conflicting information out there as to whether it’s a ranking factor or not. Google themselves say it isn’t (this post lists various Google posts on the topic) but it seems to me that they use similar calculations along with other factors.

Google wants to provide information from reliable authorities. So if you have more reliable and credible websites linking to you, that can only work in your favour, right?

This post, from Rellify.com, says we should focus not only on the links but also the trustworthiness of the site: i.e. how old it is, it’s reviews, reputation, and high quality content that visitors rely on.

So it looks to me that yes, DA is important, but there are other factors as well.

Strategies to Improve Domain Authority

1. High quality content creation

This is probably the most important factor. If you can create excellent content that answers your audience’s questions, then this will definitely help you.

Not only that, but you should be writing from your own unique angle. Make the content yours, use your voice, and it will stand the test of time to be visited again and again on your blog.

2. Link building and earning backlinks

This is one of the reasons it’s important to build relationships with people in your industry. Always try and do a good job when you work with brands and PR, over deliver, and keep the connections positive. Big sites can link to you if you do a good job.

Other ways you can build links are:

a) guest posting on authoritative sites – with a link back to yours. I’m also always on the look out for fellow South African mom bloggers to feature, not only because I like to showcase you, but because it helps my SEO too. (Would you like to be featured? Fill in the form here).

b) commenting on other people’s blogs. I’m always in favour of this last option because it’s so encouraging for a blogger to get those comments and it will help you too.

3. Technical SEO improvements

• Audit your links. Using Moz, you can check which sites are linking to you. It was very interesting putting mine in here. Other mom bloggers are pointing to me which is really cool, but another simple thing that you can do for your blog which I also noticed here is adding it to gravatar (your WordPress profile), feedburner (not working anymore, but try feedspot) medium.com (write articles), bloglovin.com (list your blog). Link shortening urls also do really well like bit.ly and goo.gl. Other than Moz, you can also use Google Search Console. You can also use this tool to check where your competitors are getting links.
• Remove spammy links and disavow toxic links. If you have domains pointing to you with high spam scores you can use this the Disavow tool. I don’t recommend this unless you really know what you are doing and try and reach out to the site owners to unlink you first. Your first port of call is to be vigilant with your comments when you approve them.
• More tools to check your SEO: Try Moz Site Crawl and Screaming Frog.
• Share your posts on social media.

4. The right theme

Look for a theme that is:

• visually appealing (people want to stay)
• easy to find things
• a decent site speed (goal: under 3 seconds)
• mobile friendly
• doesn’t require a lot of plugins to work.

If you change your theme, check that your urls all work! (Check Permalinks) Also make sure that your meta data carries through (meta descriptions). You can use a plugin called Rank Math to make sure it carries through. Also check all your images that your alt tags carried through.

Check your headings. Your main title should be H1 and then subheadings H2 and then it goes down from there.

I recommend: Kadence and Restored316. (For more info on how to set up – see my course)

5. Update old content

I should really do this. I just don’t have the time, but it should be done. It’s no good having a competition post on your blog long after the competition has passed. You can, however, update that post to be about the product and not the competition. Or, at least say that the competition is now closed.

Updating old posts isn’t just about updating the facts. You can do updated keyword research and improve your visuals. You may even have more relevant internal links. This post has some good tips.

Tools for Monitoring Domain Authority

• Moz. You can also install the Moz toolbar as a Chrome extension to check other sites or your own. It gives the DA = Domain Authority, PA = Page Authority (how that actual page is ranked)

• Semrush
• Majestic (this one distinguishes between old and fresh links)
• Ahrefs (they use “domain rating” and “url rating” instead of DA and PA. You can see the linking websites.

Check this site for a comparison.

Conclusion

This might all seem like a lot of homework to do to improve your blog, but to craft your skill as a blogger we are always looking to improve ourselves. After all your hard work writing that blog post, you deserve to get it in front of as many eyes as possible.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.