Domain Authority – what it is and how to improve it

Some companies and brands use the Domain Authority (DA) factor to test and evaluate the performance of their SEO strategies. But what does this metric really mean? Should we be looking to improve it and will a high domain authority help us rank better on Google?

Domain Authority can be a very useful metric to know the status of a website in relation to similar competitors.

From this article you will learn:

What is domain authority?
What does the Domain Authority indicator consist of?
How to improve domain authority?

Domain Authority – definition

Before we can stweir whether Domain Authority is an element of Google’s ranking algorithm, we need to have a good understanding of what exactly domain authority is.

Domain authority describes how important a site is for a specific target topic area [i] in correlation to … search terms.

“The domain authority of a website describes how important the site is for a specific targeted subject area [and] relevance with respect to … search words.”
Dr. Ulrich Scholten in ^{Ventureskies1}

There is also another definition of Moz’s Domain Authority or referred to briefly as DA score, which defines the metric as “… a search engine ranking score compiled by Moz.com that predicts how likely a site is to rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs)”. It should be clear here that Moz is a research entity, but a commercial company that has defined and invented the term for marketing purposes. Other companies with a similar business profile to moz have other Domain Authority equivalents:

Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) is a metric that is used to assess the strength and quality of an entire domain. DR is calculated by analysing the number and quality of links leading to a page, including links from other strong domains. DR is an integer from 0 to 100, where a higher value indicates a stronger and more authoritative site.
Majestic Trust Flow (TF) and Citation Flow (CF) are two metrics that help determine the strength of a domain. TF measures the quality of links that lead to a site, while CF measures the quantity of those links. Majestic uses these metrics to generate an overall number, called Flow Metrics, which reflects the strength and quality of the domain as a whole.
The Semrush Authority Score (AS) is a metric that takes into account a variety of factors, including the number of links leading to a page, the quality of those links, the age of the domain, as well as other technical and usage factors. AS is calculated by analysing data from multiple sources and reflects the strength of the domain as a whole. AS is an integer from 0 to 100, where a higher value indicates a stronger and more authoritative site.

So the term Domain Authority is an indication of the status of a domain, but is not a direct ranking factor in itself used by Google. When asked if DA is a ranking factor, John Mueller said:

We don’t use Domain Authority. We usually try to make our metrics as specific as possible, sometimes it’s not that easy, in which case we look at things a bit more broadly (for example, we’ve talked about this in relation to some of the older quality updates).”
John Mueller via Twitter

For more information on how to understand and interpret Domain Authority, see the video below.

Elements of the Domain Authority indicator

Domain Authority consists of more than 40 different indicators, mostly defined, created and monitored by Moz.

The most commonly used indicators are:

Link Profile – Link profiling checks both external and internal links to and from a website. A site that receives links from reputable sites, as well as links to valuable sources, will rank well.
MozRank – Assesses the overall popularity of a site by calculating the number and quality of sites that link to it.
MozTrust – Evaluates the trustworthiness of sites linking to the site. Links from trustworthy sites, such as large companies, government sites or universities, result in a higher MozTrust score

For more information, see Moz’s paper on how Domain authority has evolved in recent years.

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Ways to improve Domain Authority

The DA indicator aggregates a lot of data, so direct impact can be difficult. This metric aims to predict how competitive a site will be in Google’s search results, and because Google considers so many ranking factors when determining its rankings, a metric that attempts to approximate its findings must take into account a similar number and complexity of factors. Nevertheless, it is possible to effectively influence a domain’s authority by implementing the following measures:

Quality before quantity. Prioritise relevant backlinks over thousands that are not significant.
Analyse your back links and make sure that all interesting backlink pages have a do-follow option, if there are some with nofollow attributes, try to contact the domain owners and ask them to change it
Create quality content that makes it easy for you to get natural backlinks from other sites and blogs, e.g. from the bibliography section or from your main content
Create content focused on your core audience that can appeal to them and become viral. Solve problems for your readers so they can appreciate it.
Update your older content. Review those pages with unindexed content or low ranking in search results and add new information that may be of interest to the user, reformat the content and ensure sxo (improved user experience) for such a page.
Identify your competitors and compare yourself with them. Analyse the things you do and don’t do that can help you increase your site’s visibility in search results
Analyse where your main competitors are getting backlinks from. Can you get similar ones too?
Distribute your content in original and unique ways through other channels such as social media or newsletters.

For more on this topic, see the video below.

Bilbliography

https://www.ventureskies.com/blog/what-is-domain-authority-and-how-do-i-build-it
https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1118028422901641222 John Mueller on Domain Authority in the context of using Domain Authority as a ranking factor