‘Domain Authority’ (DA) is a phrase you will hear and see quite a lot when you begin exploring the subject of search engine optimisation (SEO). It refers to the relevance of a website for a specific subject area or industry. This relevance has an impact on its rankings in search engines as they assess domain authority through their algorithms.
Domains with higher authority will find obtaining natural inbound links much easier than those with a lesser authority, so it’s in your interests to improve the domain authority of your website.
What is Domain Authority?
Search engines including Google, Bing and Yahoo! have created automated rank algorithms for DA. Without humans to judge the quality of content, they use other factors, such as information, website prestige and the quantity and quality of inbound links.
The more authoritative the site (the greater the DA), the easier it is for your site to rank for more competitive keywords. The greater your authority, the more likely you are to rank higher.
The starting point when planning to raise your domain authority is to improve the quality of your content. A significant body of high quality content will set you on the right track as;
- A known factor in domain authority is information quality
- Good quality information leads to other sites linking to it. Search engines consider the authority of sites linking to you in their calculations. What other websites with domain authority think is important.
- In 2015, Google’s PageRank algorithm included a learning algorithm to assess information quality
A lot of time, effort and commitment is required to improve a domain authority. Is it worth it?
The Benefits of Having a Good DA
Good quality inbound links are a factor in your DA and ultimately, lead to improved rankings, even for more competitive keywords.
The greater your link equity, the more pages of your website will be crawled. If you only have a few backlinks but hundreds of pages, Google will have little inclination to crawl and index those pages.
Not only will higher DA lead to Google crawling more of your pages, but it will also crawl them more frequently.
Greater DA will give you an advantage in search returns and also increase the value of your own links, meaning your internal links will have greater value. It is important to remember to link to yourself!
The higher your DA, the better insulated you are from poor quality or toxic links. If you have a good number of authoritative links, then just a few toxic links aren’t going to have any undue affect on your reputation.
I hope you have found this article on Domain Authority useful. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how Cree Digital could help improve your Domain Authority, please get in touch.