6 Proven Ways on How to Increase Domain Authority (DA)

You must’ve heard about search engine optimization (SEO) at least once. As you start getting more and more familiar with the subject, you start hearing about other terms related to it, such as domain authority. And how an increase in domain authority can bring you more guest posts and better exposure.

And you’ve guessed it right. The lucky term we’re going to unravel in this article is domain authority (DA). If you’ve never heard about it before, we’ll give you a bit of insight into what domain authority is all about. 

Before diving deeper into the subject, there’s one important mention to make. Increasing domain authority is not something that happens in a few minutes or a few days. In the end, it’s an entire process of constantly improving elements. Elements such as your content, your page, or your social media marketing plan. Therefore, you’ll be in the process for a long time.

Now that we got this out of the way, we can jump right in and explore the ways in which you can increase domain authority. 

And we’ll start by asking…

What Is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority (also known as DA) is a metric used to calculate a website’s ranking score. Developed by Moz, the search engine ranking score offers you insight into the relevance of a website. Thus, it shows you if a website is bound to rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

The scores related to Domain Authority range from one to 100. As a starting point, the higher the score, the greater the chance of obtaining a good ranking. Even so, the scale should not be treated as a grading scale. The key here is to obtain a ranking score on the one to 100 scale that places your business in front of your competitors.

Calculating Domain Authority

The score is calculated based on an algorithm developed by Moz, one being the worst score, and 100 the best score. Among the factors used for calculation, examples include the total number of links or linking root domains. It’s also important to mention that domain authority is not a Google ranking factor, according to the Moz website.

Another important mention is that domain authority is not an absolute metric, but rather one that is comparative.

Increasing Domain Authority

There are a few aces up your sleeve you can use to increase domain authority. So, let’s take a look at them:

1. Know Your Competition

Competition is everywhere. Knowing who your direct competitors are is useful for your plan to increase your domain’s authority. But how do you figure out who your competitors are? Well, the answer is by searching for keywords.

The secret is to search for keywords that you’re already ranking for. Or to search for keywords you want to rank for and check the websites that have content similar to yours. Of course, the results will involve bigger companies, and smaller ones as well. 

Bigger businesses will have bigger domain authority, so looking at those first might not be the best idea. Once you’ve identified the competitors who post content similar to yours,  there’s one more thing to do. You can check their domain authority score and start focusing on bringing more visibility to your business.

2. Link to Good Content

It’s no secret that good content will never go out of fashion. And for good reason, as good content is a must if you want to boost your domain authority.

If building links were as easy as linking to chunks of words, we wouldn’t be discussing this topic. So, how do you go around building links?

First, you need to determine how relevant the content is to your audience. If your company focuses on producing shoes, a piece on the importance of using the right bait when going fishing will not help. If we’re still at it, quality over quantity is another principle you need to take into consideration when putting together your content.

This brings us to the importance of the keywords you use. It might be tempting to try and drive more traffic to your website through keywords. The problem appears when you’re subtly sprinkling keywords in your text and they have nothing to do with your business. Unfortunately, that’s a no-go if you want a domain authority improvement.

Last, but not least – get creative! Content is not tied to one format only, and this flexibility can only help your business. How? Videos and quizzes are known to drive traffic to your website. At the same time, though, a well-written blog post can also bring you the same results. 

Using infographics is also an idea if you want to drive traffic. The best part is that you can mix them all – not at the same time, though. Balance your content, make it qualitative, and watch how your domain authority increases.

3. Sharing on Social Media

Sharing is caring, and this principle will apply especially to social media platforms. Creating great content is one thing. Sharing it will help you get your message across. Good content is not meant to sit by itself on your website, with no promotion. And what better tool to use than your social media presence?

Having a social media marketing plan in place can increase your domain authority by having more people clicking on your blog posts. Sharing on social media is just one click away  – and the more people it reaches, the better.

A small social media button can also go a long way. Make sure you include a button for the most popular social media platforms in your article. Thus, your audience can click on the Facebook icon, for example, and have it on their page in an instant.