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How to increase domain authority: check and improve your DA score

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17.05.2022
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What is DA?

Domain Authority is one of the key SEO metrics used to assess the quality of a domain . How to quickly raise the Domain Rank is always a relevant question for SEO experts. It indicates the quality of the donor for placing the link, the dynamics of the development of competitors and spammed sites.

Our friends at Collaborator.pro told us what domain authority is, what factors affect the ranking, and how you can quickly increase Domain Authority.

DA or domain authority (Domain Authority from Moz) is a complex metric that reflects the authority of a domain. The more points a site gets, the higher its chances of getting high positions for relevant queries in organic search.

SEO specialists rely on DA from Moz when choosing donors for link building, and if the site scores low, they refuse to post links. Almost every SEO analysis service has its own metrics for evaluating domain quality. For example, Ahrefs offers an analogue of DA — Domain Rating. Unlike Moz's Domain Rank, Ahrefs ties the metric to the quality and quantity of backlinks.

How DA affects SEO

Google ranks sites in search results based on thousands of separate signals, but they don't include Moz's Domain Authority. Although the metric is directly related to the quality of the site and the mass of links, therefore projects with a high DA usually rank high.

Ahrefs research has shown that there is a relationship between Domain Rating and the amount of search traffic. Sites with high DR get the most targeted visitors.

DA should be analyzed only in combination with other indicators. For example, evaluate the authority of a specific page, not just a domain.

Important features of the domain authority indicator:

  • There is no information on accounting for sanctions. A domain can have a high DA even when it is under filters. And posting a link on such a website is dangerous.

  • A weaker evaluation model. Google determines domain authority based on hundreds of metrics, while Moz only uses 40+ signals.

  • A metric is a prediction. DA predicts how high the effectiveness of the site's promotion in search engines is.

  • Best for comparing competitors. With the help of Domain Authority, you can determine the current level of development of projects and find the most successful ones.

Considering the above, the recommendation: It is not worth focusing only on DA when link building or competitor analysis.

Read also: "How hosting affects the ranking and promotion of the site."

How DA is calculated

Moz uses over 40 factors to determine domain authority. It is derived based on machine learning calculations, so the site's rating will fluctuate as new data is received. For example, if a project is actively losing links, this will affect the score.

Domain Authority is calculated on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 100 points. In practice, this means that it is much easier to increase your score from 10 to 20 points than it is to gain two more points from a score of 98. Therefore, it takes a long time to increase DA significantly.

What affects DA:

  1. Number and quality of backlinks. The more trust donors with high authority link to the site, the more chances to occupy high positions in organics. The service has MozRank and MozTrust metrics for evaluating the quality of a link profile.

  2. On-Page and Off-Page SEO. Domain Authority is affected by the quality of each page on the site.

  3. Social signals. The popularity of the project in social networks indirectly affects the ranking and authority of the domain.

  4. Quality content. Even 200 links from "Wikipedia" will be useless without content that corresponds to the intent of users.

  5. Site quality. Each resource has its own characteristics and it is necessary to evaluate the level of development in order to determine its authority.

We see that the fastest way to increase DA is complex work on the site.

How to check DA (services)

The easiest way to check the authority of a domain is to use Moz's tools. DA Checker is integrated into Link Explorer, Keyword Explorer and API.

MozBar

The company has also developed an extension for Google Chrome that allows you to find out the value of DA in a few seconds. After installation, you need to log in to your Moz account.

Using the toolbar is convenient when analyzing the pages of a potential donor. You can save a list of addresses with the highest Page Authority and check the quality of pages manually.

Mass DA check

SEO specialists sometimes sift through dozens or hundreds of potential sites for posting links. In such cases, using the extension or the built-in Moz analyzer is inconvenient.

Mass verification tools come to the rescue. For example, Bulk DA Checker . To get metric values, it is enough to insert a list of addresses and wait a few seconds.

What a DA should ideally be

The ideal DA value is 100 points, but getting a backlink without link attributes from projects of this level is difficult. Some of them have a lower priority because any user can get the link. For example, DA Youtube = 100 points.

Examining the list of TOP-500 sites according to Moz allows us to say that Domain Authority is influenced not only by links. For example, the shortening service goo.gl has 4 million links, and telegram.me has 320 thousand of them. At the same time, the indicators of the domains are the same.

Why is DA falling

Domain authority may decrease because:

  • links disappear from the profile;

  • the DA calculation algorithm has been updated;

  • the site is developing slowly;

  • reduced visibility in organic search;

  • a lot of spammy backlinks appeared;

  • there is a sharp outflow of links after the increase;

  • some donors lost their rating.

How to increase DA: effective ways

SEO specialists spend a lot of time improving their DA score. The problem with this approach is that you should not focus only on the authority of the domain.

It is important to improve the quality of internal and external optimization. In this case, the positions may improve over time, the visibility of the site will increase and the Domain Authority will smoothly go up.

Quality link building

The tactic of getting the maximum number of links is not effective. In this matter, it is better to focus on quality rather than quantity. If the task arises to increase Domain Authority, it is necessary to regularly receive links from authoritative sites.

Checking and rejecting low-quality links to the site

Spam backlinks affect the effectiveness of site promotion and reduce the chances of obtaining high positions. Buying links from spammed donors is not worth it, and mentions that appear naturally should be checked regularly.

Viral marketing

Nonstandard content can trigger a natural link explosion that can affect a site's visibility and Moz ranking. It is difficult to launch, but if you manage to attract the attention of users, the number of mentions will grow quickly.

On-Page and Off-Page SEO

Domain Authority is not related to page rank, but domain authority consists of the quality of individual pages. Therefore, it is important to improve the internal optimization of each section of the site, to make high-quality internal linking.

Publication of quality content

Quality content is the fastest way to get organic links. Even the most trusted resources can link to that page if it has value-added elements or downloadable content.

Read also: "TOP-5 Ukrainian domains for the site" .

Moz's Domain Authority is one of many metrics. Moz (one of the largest link databases) has resources for using this data as a core to calculate your own metrics. But you should not focus on increasing DA, you need to improve the site comprehensively.


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Author: Viktoriia Popova

Content marketer and editor of the Collaborator.pro Blog. A journalist by education, today he specializes in texts about SEO and marketing.