What is domain authority?
Although several online tools can help you check your Domain Authority (DA), Moz offers an accurate DA score with this proprietary evaluation method. A website earns a score on a 100-point scale, with higher numbers correlating to a better chance of ranking on search engines like Google.
Moz bases the data from its Link Explorer web index to create the Domain Authority score, along with dozens of different factors. The calculation uses a machine learning model that finds an accurate algorithm that employs thousands of tangible results to serve as a ranking standard.
If you’re curious about your site’s score, the following steps will help you check and increase it.
How to check your Domain Authority using Moz
The easiest way to find the Domain Authority score for a website is to use the MozBar. It’s Moz’s toolbar that installs as a free Chrome extension. You’ll receive link metrics and other optimization information. You can find it on the Moz website.
MozBar allows you to dig deeper into various page elements, including search results from different regions, countries, or engines. If you upgrade to a Pro subscription, you’ll receive unlimited page optimization reports.
Another way to access Domain Authority information is to use Moz’s Link Explorer. This domain analysis checks across over 40 trillion backlinks to deliver comprehensive information. You’ll need to follow a four-step process to access data with this method.
Enter the URL of the page, post, or website that you want to examine.
Create an account with Moz to access the company’s free SEO tools.
You’ll receive a notification that requires you to verify your email.
After account verification, you’ll receive a comprehensive analysis of the information entered.
The third way to explore Domain Authority information is to use Keyword Explorer’s SERP Analysis section. This research tool reviews over 500 million keywords to drive traffic to your website. You’ll need to follow the same process as using Link Explorer to access results.
Moz also incorporates Domain Authority metrics into their API, all Pro campaigns, and dozens of different online marketing platforms you can find online.
If you stick with a free account with Moz, you can receive up to three reports per day. You get unlimited information when upgrading to a paid subscription.
Is there a good or bad Domain Authority score?
In order to be seen above your competitors in Google rankings, or on any other search engines, it is important to concentrate on just beating your marketplace competition. This means creating helpful content that speaks directly to your target reader (or customer) and preparing it in a way that helps your website SEO efforts. Technically, this means your DA score only needs to beat anyone else trying to rank on the search engine result page (SERP) you are trying to rank first on.
A score of 40-50 is considered average for websites, 50-60 is good and 60+ is classed as excellent. Most websites online score well below 50 in DA terms and they do great business, so please do not feel that you need to strive for gold here. What is important is that the content you create is essentially thought-provoking, or lead generating among your desired customer base and that you cover the basics of good practice in SEO and backlink generation. If you can do this, you will be doing fine. If you have the budget, however, then investing in good S E O and content creation will be a great way to gain improvements more quickly.
How do I increase my Domain Authority score?
The best way to positively influence the Domain Authority score is to improve a website’s overall SEO health. This metric focuses on the quantity and quality of the external links (or backlinks as they are otherwise called) that point to a site and aggregates multiple data points.
Another way to create an overall DA increase is to create higher quality content on both existing individual pages and new ones (by way of blog posts, or extra content, product, or service pages). If you aren’t yet blogging for business, here’s a guide for you.
Whichever way you plan to increase your overall DA, it is most likely going to take numerous actions before the influences of your work are known. This could be days, weeks, or even months.
It is not the same as Page Authority as a data point, which measures the strength of individual pages. Domain Authority sees entire domains and subdomains.
Google does not use Domain Authority within its own context as a ranking point. It’s more of a metric that you can use through Moz’s approach to help with your optimization work. Since you can get this information without a significant financial investment, it’s worth considering in your SEO marketing plan.
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