Domain Authority (DA): How To Check & Improve It?

Domain authority, as the name suggests, is a measure of the potential of the website to get noticed in search engine rankings. It is a rating given to websites, on a scale of 0 to 100 and takes into account several metrics like Alexa Rank, Google Page Rank, the traffic flow to the site, backlinks generated by it and its comments.

 

According to seoMoz, authority numbers are high level metrics that attempt to answer the question “How strong are this page’s/site’s links in terms of helping them rank for queries in Google.com?”

A higher rating is indicative of a better domain authority.

How exactly is Domain Authority calculated?

The domain authority of a website is a collective measure of its performance on several fronts due to which it is not possible to lay down the exact procedure for calculating DA. In all, more than 150 factors and signals sent out by Google algorithm are taken into account before a website’s domain authority is calculated.

There are three main factors that influence DA. They are:

1. Domain age

In an age when thousands of websites are created every day, and an equal number of them die too because of various reasons, DA serves to indicate how trustworthy the website in question is.

Obviously, the older the website, the more will be its domain authority because search engines are more likely to repose their trust and faith in older websites.

2. Domain popularity

This is a comparison of inbound links to the website vis-à-vis its outbound links.

Inbound links to any website indicate that it contains useful and reliable information. Website owners, bloggers and SEO experts who know about link juice might be able to appreciate and understand the concept faster than those who are unaware of these terms.

The higher the ratio of inbound links to its outbound links, the greater will be its domain authority. Here it is important to point out that the quality of inbound links is as important as the quantity. It is essential to build ‘good’ links.

3. Domain size

The more the number of indexed pages on a website, the greater will be its DA. That is probably because a larger content base generates, more often than not, a larger number of inbound links to the website merely by virtue of its size.

So, the thumb rule is that if you are a website owner:

The older the domain, the higher the domain authority. The more the number of backlinks to your website, the higher your domain authority, and the more the content on your website, the higher will be your domain authority.

How can I influence my domain authority?

Though it would not be right to say that it is impossible to influence DA, doing so is not an easy task.

As described above, an old website with lots of content and back links would generate a higher DA.
But how can I push up the measure of my DA to improve my credibility?

These are a few things that a website owner or blogger can do to increase his DA:

1. Guest Blogging: Do lots of guest posts, because the links generated by guest posts are extremely valuable. Try to get at least 1 dofollow link per guest post, though most bloggers would be happy to offer 2 for quality content.

2. Blog Commenting: Comment heavily, preferably on the blogs in the same niche. Again, prefer to comment on blogs which give dofollow links for comments. Most SEO experts would suggest you to do at least 15 comments after each post. You can easily locate comment luv enabled blogs on the keywords of your choice by typing [comment luv + keyword] in the Google search bar.

For instance, if the main keyword for your last post was ‘Samsung galaxy S3’, you can find out other comment luv enabled blogs writing on the same keyword by typing [comment luv+ Samsung galaxy S3] in the google search bar.

3. Social Bookmarking: Do lots of social bookmarking. Learn how to use Social Networking & Bookmarking for Blog Promotion.

4. Forums: Participate actively in discussions at forums.

5. Article Directories: Submit articles to directories which give you 1-2 dofollow links per submission. Check the Importance of Article Directories in SEO.

6. Press Releases: Distributing press releases is also a good idea. Learn how to write a Good Press Release.

Now while generating enough links is essential, it is of utmost importance to see the QUALITY of links that you are creating. Generating irrelevant links or bad links could do you more harm than good.

Try to get links from authority domains to push up the level of your DA in a shorter period of time. This is because authority domains usually do not give too many back links!

Do not get links from porn sites or gambling sites. If you do so, your website/blog could get hit and pushed down in search engine rankings as well.

Though there is no doubting the fact that a website or blog with greater DA commands more respect, the fact is that most blogs are unable to cross the 50 notch barrier.