How to Increase Domain Authority: 11 Proven Tips

It’s calculated using multiple factors like quality and quantity of backlinks, relevancy of backlinks, content quality, SEO, etc.

However, every domain authority checking tool has developed its own metric to calculate.

So, do Moz and Google use different factors to calculate the DA score of the site?

Maybe or maybe not. It is known that Google has more than 200 various ranking factors.

Also note here, Google doesn’t use Domain Authority as a ranking factor.

A higher DA score has no relation to ranking on the Google search engine result page.

Different domain authority checkers have different scoring factors to calculate DA.

(1) Domain Authority Checker:

The domain authority checker is a tool that lets you know the domain authority score of your website. Here are some domain authority checker tools you can easily use:

• Semrush
• Majestic Trust
• Moz Domain Authority
• Ahrefs Site Explorer

Are Domain Authority & Domain Rating The Same?

The “Domain Rating” (DR) term was coined by Ahrefs. They call it the strength of a website’s backlink profile. Ahrefs DR scales between 0 to 100.

Unlike other domain authority checkers, Ahrefs counts different metrics for domain rating. In 2018, Ahrefs changed the name to Ahrefs Rank with an improved formula. (SEJ)

(2) How Ahrefs’ Calculate Domain Rating:

Domain Rating Score Influencing Factors (Ahrefs): Like Moz, Ahrefs has developed its domain authority metric, Domain Rating. Ahrefs counts websites’ backlink profiles on a 0-100 logarithmic scale, where 100 is highest and 0 is the lowest. Ahrefs shares insights on Domain Rating:

Ahrefs determines domain rating by considering factors such as:

A. The Number of Websites That Link to Your Site:

Ahrefs calls it “Referring Domains.” The number of websites linking to a page or website. But referring domains are not similar to domain rating. Because:

• The following links have an impact on DR.
• Nofollow, UGC, and sponsored links don’t affect DR.

B. The Domain Ratings of The Linking Domains:

Even if you get pools of referring domains, that doesn’t improve your domain authority score. The only thing that matters here is quality over quantity.

Not every stranger can be your good friend. So do links.

If your backlink profile is bagged with high DA websites, then, your domain authority will increase better than that of lower DA websites.

If the DR of the linking website is lower, then it won’t help you increase your DR.

A website’s DR can increase if the Domain Ratings of the linking websites increase. Here, earning domain authority is a win-win situation for both parties.

Even if you’re linking to websites with lower DA, it won’t hurt. Websites with less authority that gradually build links for their pages create value in the long run.

Remember, consistent growth in the DR of the linking websites is likely to increase the DR of your website.

C. The Number of Sites the Referring Sites Links To With At Least One Followed Link.

Means, the referring domains of your referring websites also play a crucial role in increasing the DA of your site.

If the DA of websites on your referring domain site is higher, then it will increase the DA of your referring site equally, resulting in an increased DA of yours.

The combination of DR with other metrics like domain-level traffic or URL rating, deems the overall strength of a page’s backlink profile.

A DR score is not a good indicator of a website’s quality or legitimacy. It’s merely a measure of link reputation.

It is better to combine DR with other metrics like:

Domain-level traffic or Url rating to get a better idea of ranking.

For the overall strength of a page’s backlink profile, consider the following:

• Focus on building links to the pages you want to rank.
• Try to get links from authoritative and high-quality websites—relevant and authoritative pages.

(2) How Does Moz Determine Domain Authority Score?

Moz calculates domain authority with multiple factors, including linking root domains and the total number of links, considering a single DA score. It’s a comparison of websites or gauging the “ranking strength” of a website over time.

For better understanding, check out this: Moz Domain Authority Guide.

Moz has confirmed some factors for DA calculations:

• Inbound links- the number of inbound links referring to a website from different domains.
• Quality of links- the authority of the link and the website linking to a domain.
• Root domains- Moz counts the unique backlinks coming from unique sites. However, Moz considers 100 sites linked from a single site to be one root domain.
• Content quality- The quality of the content and domain rankings on the Google search engine result page.
• On-page SEO- The on-page SEO score of the website.

How Do I Check Domain Authority in Moz?

With Moz, checking domain authority is quite easy and free. Check your website’s DA by following these steps:

• Go to the Link Explorer tool.
• Enter your website’s domain name.
• Click “check authority.”

Moz Free Domain Authority Checker

9. How often should I check my domain authority?

Checking domain authority is a fundamental goal for website owners. Checking domain authority once a month is necessary. So, don’t forget to check your DA score frequently.

10. How Often Does Domain Authority Update?

Some domain authority checkers update their algorithms in months, while others do so in weeks. It is said that Moz updates their DA metrics in real-time.

Ahrefs admitted that indexing updates every 15 minutes, while whole backlinks take two months to update.

11. How to Increase Domain Authority?

Increasing domain authority is a daunting process, but if you choose the right strategy and keep moving you’re not far away from seeing results. Here are some simple and easy tips you can implement. You might have this question.

(1) How Long Does It Take to Increase Domain Authority?

It takes around 90 days to improve domain authority. The backlinks you create take time to get indexed and increase your domain authority. It demands patience as it’s a long journey.

The credibility of these backlinks will gradually flow to your website and increase the domain authority of it.

Do the Following First To Increase Domain Authority:

1) Create Link Worthy Killer Content:

First things first, you need high-quality content. Mediocre content won’t do well at getting high-quality links. Hardly anyone wants to get links from such content. So create content that is link-worthy.

According to Moz, blog posts with 3000+ words receive more backlinks than blog posts under 3000 words. Such content provides in-depth information about the topic and value to the audience.

A study found, good SEO-friendly content rich in targeted keywords will rank you higher organically. Furthermore, content with original data and research is most effective to earn backlinks.

As you can be easily found on search engine result pages, your chances of getting backlinks increase.

You’ll get natural backlinks when you have optimized content.

That shows that you’ve got the potential to rank higher because of your strong domain score.

Creating high-quality content is a requirement to increase your DA score.

2) Link Audit

Link auditing is the process of getting and analyzing backlinks pointing to your website to find good and bad backlinks. You’ll know all spammy backlinks that negatively impact your ranking. A link audit is significant if your website is 3–4 months old. Examine the domains that are linked. Remove spammy links with a 30% spam score.

Where can I find backlinks to your website?

• Google Search Console
• Ahrefs
• Semrush
• Moz
• Majestic
• Bing Webmaster Tool

With the help of these tools, find the linking domains of your website.

• Check the spam score of these domains linking to your site.
• Compare your referring domains to those of your competitors.
• A constant increase in backlinks over a period of time indicates the growth of your domain, which is good.
• Check your anchor text distribution.
• In backlink reports, first, start with a web page, not an entire domain.

If you have more website links with high DA scores, then a few spammy backlinks won’t affect your DA score.

But it is necessary to remove spammy links that in the near future might hurt the DA score of your site as well as its SERP ranking.

Collect the Data and Filter These:

Dead links- The sites that return 403, 404, 410, 503, etc. responses are dead links. Spammy links removal is the basic thing to do for increasing domain authority.

Nofollow links – Nofollow links are not harmful unless they exceed the limit. In fact they do the opposite. According to a recent study, Google will decide whether to pass or not to pass ranking credit for nofollow links and whether to discard or not whenever the nofollow attribute is added. This makes nofollow links more valuable than ever before.

3) Remove Spammy Backlink

The main reason behind the reduction of your website domain rating is high rates of spammy domains. Spammy backlinks are rooted in poor-quality websites of lower DA score that negatively impact your domain authority.

First, ask the website owners of spammy links to remove the links from your site. The chances of their approval is nearly zero, but better to try at least.

If that doesn’t work then you have to disavow the spammy backlinks.

How to Reduce Low-Quality Backlinks?

Here you Can Learn how to Disavow spammy links?

• Create lists of spammy domains to disavow these links.
• Use Google’s “Disavow Links” tools to sort out spammy links.
• Import a text file to disavow these links using Google Search Console.
• After crawling and indexing, Google will be able to disavow. It is a long-term process.

If your website has fewer referring domains to disavow, it won’t take that long. Moreover, you can see your website ranking higher in the SERP in less time.

4) On-Page SEO

Without on-page SEO it’s next to impossible to get backlinks from high domain authority sites. No matter how great content you write, SEO will open doors for you to rank on Google. The chances of high ranking increase the chances of getting backlinks. Here are ways to optimize On-page SEO of your content.

You Can Use These Tools to Audit On-Page SEO:

• SEMRush
• Moz Site Crawl
• Screaming Frog

Check the following for on-page SEO:

• H1 Title
• Keyword optimization
• Meta tag
• Meta description
• URL
• Keyword density
• Image alt text

Find errors and fix them to improve your ranking.

5) Technical SEO Audit:

Fixing technical SEO is important to build Domain Authority. A website with technical issues won’t be able to reach the top of the search engine result page.

Some technical SEO errors will eliminate the natural backlinks you’ve got.

You can use the Moz Site Crawl Tool to check for technical SEO issues that are not increasing your Moz domain authority.

This Tool Addresses Issues Like:

• Slow loading speed
• Mobile-friendly site
• Robots.txt
• Redirect errors
• Canonical errors

Try to sort out the above issues to rank on Google. Once you fix on-page and technical SEO errors, getting backlinks is your bread and butter.

Next, Follow the Further Steps to Increase Domain Authority:

6) Promote Your Content:

Content is a king. No. Marketing is king. No matter how great your content is, if it does not reach your target audience, then it’s worthless. Promote your content through multiple marketing channels. Sharing your content on various social media platforms will boost traffic as well as your website’s domain authority. Social media is way more engaging than other marketing channels. Traffic and branding is an insanely game-changer for website authority.

According to Ruby Rusine, an expert in social media web traffic, “Social signals impact a website’s ranking and authority. Let it be likes, shares, views, mentions, and more.”

7) Improve Your Internal Links:

Internal links make crawling and indexing easy for your website pages.

Also, this also showcases the quality and depth of content that give a better user experience.

The credibility and reliability of these links will boost your domain authority.

8) Recover Unmentions Brand Name:

Many websites might have your brand name cited. Unfortunately, your website is not linked to your website. Unlinked brand mentions or citations can earn you thousands of backlinks.

• Create a list of products, services or anything that represents your brand.
• Use Content Explorer to find websites mentioning your brand name.
• Filter down with tools like Scream Frog SEO Spider or Buzzstream to find the websites that have your brand name without linking back to you.
• Now, reach out to all these prospects to convert unmentioned brand names into links.
• Write emails and ask to add a link to an unmentioned brand name.

9) Get Links from Authoritative and Relevant Websites:

To increase domain authority, build links from high-authority sites. A poor-quality link will harm your DA score. Again, choose quality over quantity. With a planned and effective link-building strategy, it’s easy for you to improve your DA score in less time.

Here are some ways to get high-quality backlinks:

Collab With Your Competitor: Your competitors are not your competitors, but your companions. Befriend them. Collaborate with them. Find out other bloggers and website owners who have written content on a similar topic as yours. List down the websites with a good DA score. Create a well-crafted pitch and email it to them. Explain why you want to contact them. Make sure your pitch is personal and value-driven, otherwise they’ll ignore it. Don’t be so salesy; just politely ask them for backlinks.

Broken Link Building: It is possible to lose some backlinks you’ve got for your website. When a website is redesigned, it may remove some pages or change URLs that result in “dead links” or “broken links.” Find the broken and removed links and fix or replace them with updated URLs.

• Create a list of broken URLs (Error 404).
• You can find broken links with Majestic, Moz, or Ahrefs and export the URLs.
• Use Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl to find pages that return 404.
• Google Analytics will also help you track the broken links.
• Create better, updated, and value-driven content.
• Reach out to site owners by contact form or email and offer the current URL to link your site. They’ll happily update their page with an updated link.

Rebuilding broken links is one of the best ways to boost the DA of your site.

Guest Post: Guest posting can also help your site gain traction and domain authority. Guest posts are a popular and effective way to get backlinks.

• Find websites similar to your niche.
• Ensure it has a 50+ DA score.
• Do some research on the target audience.
• Create high-quality content the audience needs.
• Do some searching on the site you want to guest post on. Visit their website and read the posts they’ve published.
• Consider guidelines before writing content.
• Pitch to the site owner or editor with your outline.

When your work is published, you become an expert in that topic area. Watch your traffic grow as well as your domain authority.

Podcast: Podcasts are an effective way to build links. People love to listen to podcasts. It will produce a highly engaging audience.

Choose the websites with a high DA for podcasts. It should be related to your niche. Always check whether they give links to guests.

After that, pitch yourself. Either they ask for an application or contact via email. Make sure it doesn’t go to spam. In email you should:

• Tell them who you are.
• Why do you want to be a guest on their podcast?
• Explain the topic you want to talk about as a podcast guest.

This can also be an opportunity for you to promote your brand and content to a new audience in addition to gaining backlinks.

Leave a Thoughtful Comment on the High Domain Website: Commenting is another unconventional way to improve your website’s DA. Give thoughtful and insightful comments on the high-DA website. You direct (or steal) traffic away from competitors. It’s an easy way, plus drives traffic to your site as well. Least of other tricks but worth trying.

For any business owner, it’s regrettable to ignore domain authority. It’s a constant steady growth to increase domain authority. A good strategy will help you achieve success. Again, domain score can be a myth and not a path to your higher ranking journey. DA of a Website is not a promise of ranking on SERP but a metric to test the ability of the same.