Whether you’re an SEO expert or have never heard of SEO before, you’ve probably heard of Domain Authority. (DA). The Domain Authority (DA) statistic has been used by SEO specialists for years to evaluate a website’s potential in search engine results.
How crucial is Domain Authority to your personal SEO strategy, though, and what is it exactly? Everyone who cares about their search engine rankings would benefit from a deeper familiarity with Domain Authority, not only SEO specialists.

Domain Authority: What Is It?

Moz’s Domain Authority is a measurement of a website’s potential to perform well in search engine rankings. Domain Authority ranges from 0 to 100, with higher numbers indicating better search engine rankings.

How important is it to have a high Domain Authority?

Domain Authority is measured on a scale from 0 to 100, which might lead to the assumption that higher or lower numbers are better or worse. However, achieving a perfect DA score is extremely difficult, and has previously only been achieved by the largest and most popular websites.

Moz stresses the comparative nature of this statistic for this same reason. Search engines still give high rankings to websites with low DA scores.

Suppose your site’s DA is 25. While that may be modest compared to the millions of other websites out there, if it’s better than the scores of your major competitors, you’ll likely rank higher for keywords that matter to your business.

Checking Domain Authority: A Guide

There are several paths open to you. Just three examples:

• Moz’s SEO Audit Tool for Websites
• The Domain Authority Analyzer on Linkgraph.io
• Website Authority Analyzer by Ahrefs

The Essentials of Domain Authority

So, what is the most important information about Domain Authority that website owners and digital marketers should know?

If your main goal is to simply attract new clients via search, it isn’t vital to understand the ins and outs of this calculation. But Domain Authority has several direct uses in developing an effective SEO strategy. Learn the fundamentals of this site authority indicator here.

DA has no bearing on search engine rankings

However, Google’s ranking algorithm does not take DA into account, even if it can be used to help assess ranking potential.

Because of this, websites that are newer or smaller in size but nonetheless produce high-quality, useful, fresh, and relevant material for users can still rank higher than their competitors despite having lower Domain Authority scores.

However, the number of connecting root domains and the number of linking pages are both Google ranking variables that Moz utilises in its Domain Authority calculation. Therefore, DA scores tend to go hand in hand with other metrics of SEO success such as keyword rankings, average position, and organic traffic.

Google PageRank was the first measure of credibility

Long before Domain Authority existed on the SEO landscape, Google’s PageRank was the initial authority statistic.

Because black-hat SEOs used the fact that Google once displayed PageRank in its toolbar to their advantage, Google no longer makes PageRank scores public.

In essence, a page’s PageRank is shared with every page it connects to. (or link equity). This indicates that pages with a high number of backlinks will be more influential in passing PageRank to related pages.

Improving Domain Authority & off-page SEO go hand-in-hand

Since backlinks are such an integral part of the Domain Authority formula, increasing your site’s authority metrics requires implementing off-page SEO tactics like link building and digital public relations.

Improving your on-page SEO is always a good idea because it increases your site’s relevance and quality in Google’s eyes, but it won’t have as much of an impact on your DA as building backlinks will.

Earning backlinks using off-site tactics, however, is going to become much easier with higher-quality material on your website.

Boosting Your Site’s Domain Authority (safely)

Since backlinks are the primary factor in determining DA, using off-site techniques like link building is the most effective approach to try to raise your score. It’s not as simple as it seems, though, because we can’t make other sites connect to us if they don’t want to.

Furthermore, Google may penalise your website if it looks to be engaging in “black-hat” link development tactics like paying for backlinks or other spammy link practises.

However, there are numerous methods that may be used to securely boost your domain’s authority and, in turn, your DA scores. Here are a few of my go-to link building tactics that are surefire winners and in line with Google’s guidelines.

Register with several databases

Getting your domain included in internet directories has a great influence on your DA and costs less than $100, making it ideal for small and local enterprises. Here are the top 10 listings to get you started. Citation building, a local SEO tactic, is one of the least expensive ways to expand your business.

Create outstanding material

First and foremost, work on improving your content to the point where other sites will want to connect to it on their own. (think E-A-T). If you publish a high-quality, keyword-focused post and it achieves high search engine rankings, a blogger or company researching that issue may find your post and, perhaps, include a link to it in their own.

Post as a guest blogger

Increasing your domain authority (DA) can also be accomplished by contributing blog content, original research, or thought leadership to other high-authority websites in your sector.

If you can supply quality content to a publisher, you’ll not only boost your brand’s authority, but you might even get a backlink to your site in the byline or the piece itself.