How to Boost your Domain Authority in 2022

If you have a website, you will have domain authority. Do you know what your domain authority currently is?

Let’s start by explaining what domain authority means, how it works, and then show you some some tools that will give you your domain score.

What is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority is a search engine score developed by Moz. The score is calculated from 1 to 100. The higher the score of your website, the more chance your website will rank higher on search engines; such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

The domain score is calculated by the number of backlinks to your website, from different types of websites.

Backlinks are links from a page on one website to another. If someone links to your site, then you have a backlink from them. If you link to another website, then they have a backlink from you.

It’s not just backlinks that affect your domain score, though. There is an element called “link profile”, which includes internal and external links from the webpage. For example, if your blog (or articles on your website) links to another high authority website, it will enhance the trustworthiness of your website visitors. This is because you’re backing up facts or opinions. This will potentially increase your domain authority over time.

How do I find my domain score?

There are plenty of tools to find your domain authority score, but the best place to find your score is using Moz; the creators of the authority algorithm. You can do this by using their domain analysis tool.

Once you know your score you know where you stand and if you need to improve. You can do this by following our tips and advice, which we will get onto, later.

Don’t feel disheartened if your domain score is low. Make it part of your SEO strategy and continue to work at it over a few months (rather than days or weeks). The more effort you put in, the more likely you are to reap the rewards in the future!

What’s a good Domain Authority Score?

A domain authority score is between 1–100.

So, what makes a good score?

• Scores between 40 and 50 are considered average
• Domain Authority between 50 and 60 is good
• Scores above 60 rate the Domain Authority as excellent

Are you running a small business? A score of 40 would be considered good for you. Why? Because you’re not a huge brand and most likely targeting local customers.

The more investment and work you put into Marketing & SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), the merely likely you are to see your domain authority score climb; generating more chances of ranking on Google.

One way of comparing if you’re doing well with your score is to check out your competitor’s scores (remember to use the domain analysis tool that we mentioned before). If your score is 8/100 and your competitors are on average 5/100, you’re doing well. Keep going.

How do I improve my Domain Authority Score?

Let’s look at some ways to improve your domain score.

Firstly, don’t think you will improve your score from 10 to 50 overnight. Manage your expectations. This is not a fast process, but it is 100% worthwhile. You are unlikely to see big improvements right away; but don’t let that get you down.

Follow our advice below and persevere.

• Conduct a link audit: To improve your domain authority, you first have to find who links to your website. There are a few tools that you can use to do this. We like Link Explorer (by Moz), or Back Link Checker from Ahrefs. There are plenty of other tools out there, but those are our favourites.

During your investigation, you will find spammy backlinks that you want to remove. To do this, you will need to contact the webmaster of that website. If that doesn’t work, as a last attempt you can create a ‘disavow file’* through Google Webmaster Tools.

*A disavow file is a text document. This document allows you to deactivate chosen links or domains that link to your website. Using this file will allow search engines such as Google to remove backlinks that affect your backlink profile.

• Create quality content: Sounds easy enough, right? Quality content increases your chances of others sharing it. This is turn improves your chances of someone linking back to your website/blog.
• Optimise your website structure: Improving your website structure is fundamental to improving your domain score. Make your website easy to navigate by creating internal & external links between pages. There are great tools available to help you with this. Screaming Frog SEO Spider in one, and it allows you to crawl your website for free (Up to 500 URLs). You will then see all of your internal and external links on your web pages.
• Share your website: Where appropriate, share your website on other platforms, such as social media (a huge ranking factor). This will create social signals and trustworthiness. Are you a member of a public website such as a forum? Add your website to your bio on your profile; this is a backlink.

If you are creating content such as blog articles, share them on Pinterest or Medium. These are fantastic platforms and have a great community where you can find lots of content. If you’re creating quality content, these platforms will bring it to the fore.

Summary

Boosting your domain authority isn’t an easy job. It takes time and patience and a fair bit of graft! But if you work at it, your domain score will improve over time and you will reap the rewards.

As your domain score increases, you will notice that you will rank higher on search engines. Although domain authority isn’t a ranking factor according to Google. It’s an important factor in gaining more website traffic organically, which is an important factor for them.

Let us know if you improve your domain score!