The idea of ranking domains based on their authority emerged from PageRank<\/strong><\/a> that was introduced by Larry Page (one of Google\u2019s Founders) and it is used until today as a way to measure the importance of webpages and websites.<\/p>\n In this article we will cover the following topics:<\/p>\n The DA of a website is a score between 0 to 100 (the higher the better), that tries to predict how well a website will rank on search engines.<\/p>\n It is not the same as the ranking score used by Google (PageRank) which can actually influence your rankings.<\/p>\n Moz (and other da checker tools<\/strong><\/a>) are trying to simulate the Google ranking algorithm by taking into account all known factors that can possibly affect rankings and giving a score to domains that can be used for comparison purposes only.<\/p>\n In other words, the DA depends on the data Moz has about your website which is sometimes not as accurate as what Google knows about your website.<\/p>\n It\u2019s normal for a domain to have a low Domain Authority but rank high in Google.<\/p>\n Other things you should know about DA:<\/strong><\/p>\n According to Moz, they calculate Domain Authority by taking into account a number of signals (40 in total) including:<\/p>\n How to find out the DA of my website?<\/strong><\/p>\n To find out your domain authority score, go to Moz domain analysis SEO tool<\/strong><\/a>, type in your domain, and look at the result.<\/p>\n Page Authority (PA) is similar to DA but instead of taking into account domain-wide metrics, it uses signals that are specific to a particular page.<\/p>\n The given score is a prediction that indicates the strength of a page and how well it can rank on search engines.<\/p>\n A website that has a lot of high authority pages, will also have a higher DA (domain authority) score.<\/p>\n Now that it is clear what domain authority is and how it is calculated, let\u2019s see how you can improve your domain authority.<\/p>\n These are the steps to follow to practically increase your Domain Authority.<\/p>\n 1. Work on Your Off-Page SEO<\/a> Your link profile is the most important metric of all. Websites that have a strong, clean profile will have a higher DA score than websites with a not so good link profile.<\/p>\n What is a strong link profile?<\/strong><\/p>\n A website is said to have a strong link profile when:<\/p>\n How to improve your link profile?<\/strong><\/p>\n The process of improving your link profile is known as Off-Page SEO<\/strong><\/a> and it is related to techniques you can use to acquire good links that will eventually improve your rankings.<\/p>\n To make your link profile stronger, and among other things, improve your Domain authority you need to:<\/p>\n Remove bad links from your profile<\/strong><\/p>\n Get rid of bad links<\/strong><\/a>. This process involves using a tool like Moz Explorer or Semrush<\/strong><\/a> to find out the toxic links.<\/p>\n You can then contact the website owners and ask them to either remove the link or add the “nofollow tag<\/strong><\/a>” to devalue the link.<\/p>\n If this does not work, you can use the Google disavow tool<\/strong><\/a> to remove the links from your profile.<\/p>\n Make your link profile stronger<\/strong><\/p>\n Gain good links from other related websites. This is the tricky part and one of the most challenging parts of SEO.<\/p>\n Link building is a huge topic on its own and from experience, it is something that beginners find difficult to understand and execute.<\/p>\n If you are a beginner to SEO, I strongly recommend to read Lesson 5 of the Complete SEO Course<\/strong><\/a>, which explains step by step how to approach link building.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To give you an overview of the process, there are 2 major ways to gain good links.<\/p>\n #1 – Natural Link building<\/strong><\/p>\n To have great content on your website that will attract links from other websites.<\/p>\n This is known as \u2018natural link building<\/strong><\/a>\u2019 and the theory is that someone finds your website, reads your articles, like it, and link to it from one of their articles.<\/p>\n For this to work, it is necessary to have link-worthy content published on your website.<\/p>\n In other words, content that is insightful, useful, and easy to read so that other webmasters will be willing to reference it in their articles.<\/p>\n In practice, this process works and it is very beneficial but you need to be patient because it will take time to gain enough readership so that some of the readers will share your content in their blogs.<\/p>\n A good example of how natural link building works is the blog you are reading now.<\/p>\n My articles have been \u2018naturally\u2019 linked from websites like thenextweb, entrepreneur, marketingland, quicksprout and a bunch of other leading industry websites.<\/p>\n #2 – Blogger outreach<\/strong><\/p>\n The second way to get good links is to reach out to other webmasters and let them know that you exist.<\/p>\n By doing so, you increase your chances of linking to your website within their articles.<\/p>\n Take a look at my post, how to drive traffic to your blog<\/strong><\/a>, which includes email templates you can use for your email outreach and other techniques to follow and get those precious backlinks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The next step in improving your domain authority is to work on your on-page SEO.<\/p>\n On-Page SEO<\/strong><\/a> has to do with optimizing your page and content.<\/p>\n My comprehensive SEO tutorial<\/strong><\/a> explains in detail how to improve your on-page SEO, but the most important factors are:<\/p>\n It is necessary to mention again that the quality of the content<\/em> is the biggest ranking factor of all for both on-page and off-page SEO.<\/p>\n As stated by Google in one of its SEO guides, it is important to keep your content fresh and up to date.<\/p>\n Technical SEO<\/strong><\/a> is related to low-level SEO tasks and usually, once you get your technical SEO correct from the beginning, you don\u2019t have to deal with it again.<\/p>\n On the other hand, if the technical SEO aspect of your website is not correct, then this can have a huge impact on your Domain Authority and rankings.<\/p>\n The critical SEO settings you need to check to include:<\/p>\n Having a mobile-friendly website is no longer optional or nice to have but it\u2019s mandatory.<\/p>\n Here are a few reasons:<\/p>\n If your website is not mobile-friendly yet, the best way to start is to go to Google\u2019s Mobile-Friendly Test<\/a><\/strong> and run the test for your domain.<\/p>\n Google will give you a nice report with recommendations on how to make your website mobile-ready.<\/p>\n One of the known \u2018signals\u2019 of the Google ranking algorithm is page speed. Website\u2019s that load faster, have an additional advantage over slower websites.<\/p>\n Improving your page speed<\/strong><\/a> will not only improve your rankings and domain authority but it will make the user experience better and this translates to more sales, leads, and signups.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not always easy to tackle the page speed issue. There are a lot of technical elements involved and if you are not a developer or someone with technical knowledge, it can be very difficult.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, if you cannot afford to hire a developer to increase the loading speed of your website, you can check the following:<\/p>\n Although officially Google has many times stated that social signals are not part of the Google Ranking algorithm, there is a clear coloration between pages that rank high on Google and social signals.<\/p>\n Pages that are popular in Google tend to have many likes, shares, and tweets.<\/p>\n For the purpose of increasing your domain authority what you need to do is:<\/p>\n As mentioned in the introduction of this post, increasing your domain authority is not something that can be done overnight.<\/p>\n It will take time for Moz crawlers to read and evaluate your website after you make any of the above changes, so you need to be patient.<\/p>\n\n
What is the domain authority (DA) of a website?<\/h2>\n
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How is the domain authority calculated?<\/h2>\n
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![\"Domain](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/moz-domain-authority-tool.webp\")
What is page authority?<\/h2>\n
7 Practical Steps on How to Improve your Domain Authority<\/h2>\n
\n2. On-Page SEO Optimization<\/a>
\n3. Work on Your Technical\u00a0SEO<\/a>
\n4. Make Sure Your Website is Mobile Friendly<\/a>
\n5. Improve Your Page Speed<\/a>
\n6. Increase Your Social Signals<\/a>
\n7. Be Patient<\/a><\/p>\n1. Work on Your Off-Page SEO<\/h3>\n
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2. On-Page SEO Optimization<\/h3>\n
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![\"content](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/content-updates-seo-1024x195.png\")
3. Work on Your Technical\u00a0SEO<\/h3>\n
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4. Make Sure Your Website is Mobile Friendly<\/h3>\n
![\"mobile](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/mobile-usage-stats.png\")
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5. Improve Your Page Speed<\/h3>\n
![\"page](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/page-speed-importance.jpg\")
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6. Increase Your Social Signals<\/h3>\n
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7. Be Patient<\/h3>\n