How To Increase Domain Authority: Top 9 Tips To Boost Domain Authority Of Your Site

What Is Domain Authority & How To Increase Domain Authority: Popular marketing analytics and inbound marketing software company, Moz, developed this metric called Domain Authority (DA), which, as the name suggests, is used to determine the authority of a site. DA is measured on a scale of 1 to 100.

This is one of the most important ranking factors for websites. Higher the DA, the better are the chances of the website to rank higher in SERP, and the more traffic it is likely to get.

To give you an idea, the different DA ranges and what they mean are tabulated below:

0-20	Not Up To The Mark
20-35	Below Average
35-50	Average
50-65	Good
Above 65	Excellent

Google, which doesn’t reveal its algorithm and how it determines ranking, had always been saying that it did not use DA as a ranking factor. But recently, Google’s John Mueller has accepted that Google, indeed, has Domain-Level Authority Metrics.

So, you can see why it is important to increase domain authority of your site. In this article, I will tell you how to increase domain authority.

How To Increase Domain Authority Of Your Site?

Multiple factors, including both technical and non-technical factors, determine the Domain Authority of a site. From the quality of content to how optimized your content is, to social signals and how people behave on your site, everything contributes towards Domain Authority.

Let us look into how to increase Domain Authority:

1. Choose Your Domain Name Wisely

Domain Names play a vital role as it is the first thing visitors will notice about your site. So, spend sufficient time before you decide on your site URL. In order to ensure the domain name represents your website/business/blog accurately, try to include the most relevant keyword that describes your site in the domain name.

However, remember that this may not be possible always because of the rising number of sites on a daily basis. If the domain name that you come up with is not available, check for some other variations of the word. Also, ensure you are not getting into any copyright issues. Other are various other factors that must be kept in mind while selecting the domain name which you can read here.

2. Have A Clean Site Structure

Like in businesses of any other type, when it comes to the online world too, users always come first and having a clean site-structure ensures better user experience. Make sure it is easy for your users to navigate around your website. Visitors should not find it difficult to search for content they are looking for in your site. Keep track of the bounce rate to have an understanding of whether or not users are having a good experience.

3. Create High Quality, Linkable And Shareable Content

The Domain Authority of your site will increase if other websites that are authoritative and highly trusted in the same niche link to your site. Because in the eyes of the search engines, that would be like a vote of confidence from those trusted sites.

This is possible only when you create well-researched, unique and original content. And if you can substantiate your claims, it would be great. This type of content is not only linked to by other websites but also shared on social media.

4. Work On On-Page SEO

Do not ignore On-Page SEO. Make sure your quality content is properly optimized for search engines. Each and every element of the page, from Title, H2 Tag, Image, etc. must be optimized properly. At the same time, avoid over-optimization. Read this article on best On-Page SEO practices and implement them.

5. Interlink Properly

Did you notice how Wikipedia pages pop up so frequently in SERP, that too in the top five? One of the reasons why it happens is because Wikipedia pages are so beautifully interlinked.

Make sure you interlink properly from each and every page, to the relevant pages and using proper anchor texts. This will help users go to the pages they are looking for easily, thereby, improving user experience.

Find Out The Technical SEO Checklist Here

6. Do Not Implement Black Hat SEO

Do not try to fool search engines or users. Yes, there are many loopholes in the way search engine algorithms work. But do not try to exploit them, do not take advantage of these gaps.

Stick to the webmaster guidelines. If you write ethically optimized, quality content, eventually you will see the results. Do not look for short-term gains.

Find Out The Black Hat SEO Practices To Be Avoided Here

7. Remove Bad Links

Check for bad links every once in a while, both inbound and outbound. While backlinks help in improving the domain authority, they should be from good, authoritative sites. Unlike the old days, search engines today are smarter and they do not consider all backlinks to your site to determine relevancy. In fact, if the linking sites have a bad reputation, it will hurt your Domain Authority. So, remove them. Also, remove the outbound links from your site which are linked to sites that are not trusted or authoritative.

8. Write Guest Blogs

Write quality guest blogs for sites that are popular and authoritative. This will help in link building and link equity will be passed from those sites to yours, thereby increasing Domain Authority of your site.

9. Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

With rising number of mobile and smartphone users, search engines now give preference to sites that are optimized for mobiles, smartphones and tablets. This means, your site should be displayed properly on mobile screen and users should be able to view and read your content without putting any effort. If you have a self-hosted WordPress site, all you have to do is choose a responsive theme.

10. Work On Technical SEO

Proper Technical SEO will ensure search engines crawl and index your site and its content better. Some of the important aspects of Technical SEO are creating a sitemap and submitting it to search engines, using SEO-friendly URL structure, migrating your site to https, optimizing robots.txt file, etc.

11. Decrease Your Load Time

People expect web pages to open within 2-3 seconds. Make sure your site’s loading time is less. If your site loads slowly, people are likely to go back, which will increase Bounce Rate. This, in turn, will imply bad user experience.

Some of the ways to increase page speed include – using Content Delivery Networks (CDN), compressing images, deleting unused plugins, updating existing plugins, adding caching plugin, etc.

12. Increase Social Signals

Make sure both you and your site are socially active. Create social media accounts for your site and share content. Also, respond to both positive and negative feedback. This will increase your followers and improve the way people react to your content on social media (like, share, retweet, comment, etc.). Also, make sure your articles have social sharing buttons. You just have to add a plugin for this.

13. Be Patient

Even after doing all the above-mentioned things, the Domain Authority of your site won’t increase overnight and that’s absolutely normal. It takes time to increase Domain Authority. So, be patient. Do not give up. You will see the results.

I hope you got a clear idea about how to increase Domain Authority. Drop your feedback and queries regarding how to increase Domain Authority in the comment section below and I will respond at the earliest.