With fast-changing SEO dynamics and a highly competitive digital environment, website owners have their hands full. In order to stand out, there is a definitive need for websites to rank higher in search engine results. Ranking higher up in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing has become essential for any business to bring in newer and higher site visits. Higher site visits is very integral to increasing site popularity and business because it increases the chance of quality leads.
Domain authority plays a key role in ranking of a website and is essential to ensuring higher site visits.
What is Domain Authority?
As per Neil Patel, best-selling author and internet marketer, Domain Authority (DA) is the number of relevant backlinks a website has. DA is a critical metric which explains the quality of a website and how it could perform in the SEO rankings.
Domain Authority is a concept developed by Internet Market company Moz as a means to help increase website rankings through SEO. It ranks domain authority of a website on its logarithmic scale. Moz has used several factors that contribute to the domain authority of a website. So, there is no one single factor that contributes to the DA ranking on Moz scale.
How do we boost domain authority? Well, here are a few ways –
All in the name?
If you are new to the game and haven’t yet registered your domain name, get started with a good, catchy domain name. Up until 2012 at least, Google ranked websites on Domain Name Exact or DME which was all about having relevant keywords as a domain name. For example, one could come up with names such as – www.sellmycars.com or www.sellyourtoys.com . This is no longer the case now; a catchy and relevant domain name is what sells these days.
Remember, visitors and users should easily recollect the name – Amazon.com is a great example.
Optimize on-page content
Optimizing on-page content is the next thing to do if you wish to enhance your domain authority. Optimizing on-page content includes having the right key words, title, and sub-titles in place. Also, it’s important to optimize on-page code which would include – image alt tags, title tags and the overall content.
One thing many web creators forget is the use of right font and size. Sans-Serif, Arial and Helvetica are some of the more preferred fonts.
Quality backlinks
Building quality backlinks to your site is a great way to ensure higher domain authority. Quality backlinks aid in terms of both higher site visits and quality of visitors which is foundational to finding great leads for business.
Website owners must produce relevant content on partner websites and other platforms that offers a new or unique perspective to readers. This will establish a steady inflow of visitors to site and channelize the backlink efforts. One thing you cannot miss out on is to also have a good internal link process; helping visitors easily reach to different sections of website. Some website owners focus so much on external backlinks that they tend to forget about the internal backlink process.
Build authority
It’s very vital to build authority on your industry or area of service. The more authoritative you are on your niche, the higher the following and greater the engagement leading to higher SEO rankings. It all begins with producing relevant and quality content. Producing deeply researched or thought leadership content on your industry or area of service can help build reputation amongst your industry peers. Readers are more likely to visit and stick to those websites that produce useful content that either creates awareness or helps visitors make better choices.
Periodic blogs on the website will help build domain authority and help stay ahead of competition.
Utilize Social Media
Social media is a world in itself what with all the buzz and activity happening on a continual basis. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter have become synonymous with marketing and brand promotion and are perhaps, the most powerful of all promotional mediums. Having a good domain name and good content is not enough; good content should be spread across the digital world.
Creating social media content and spreading it across all platforms will ensure your brand and your domain are in the constant know of your audience. Furthermore, good content on social media can help backlink your audience to your website which enhances the DA of the website.
Ensure to have the various social media plug-ins on your website to help get an easy access to the platforms.
Mobile-friendly website
The world is going mobile as we speak, and anyone looking to have a strong digital presence must adapt to mobile user habits. Your website must be mobile friendly to facilitate an immediate access to the site. It also must sport a user-friendly look and feel; aesthetics matter, a lot.
We still have examples of good desktops sites that have gone wrong with their mobile strategy and end up losing a lot of visitors and customers. Many users leave a site immediately if it cannot be accessed via mobile and are unlikely to ever return.
To conclude, it goes without saying that higher the domain authority ranking on the Moz scale, greater are the chances for the website to be ranked higher in search engines. Domain Authority is important not just from the SEO ranking perspective but also from the brand image perspective. If a website is well-known from a particular industry or for a particular area of service then it is more likely an influencer for that industry or service and the brand image is automatically enhanced.
Netflix.com, is known for movies and is one example a strong domain authority and brand for the entertainment industry while imdb.com, is known for its movie ranking popularity service.
Domain Authority could at first seem a complex and daunting task since it has many factors contributing to it. But once you get a hold, things get easy to monitor and optimize on DA to improve website rankings. Remember, domain authority is not just about backlinks and popularity, it is also about developing the quality and health of your website.
