What is Domain Authority? – #Digital Literacy

Moz (an SEO Company) developed a metric to  predict how well a site can attain organic search results called Domain Authority.  

The prediction is logarithm based. And it depends upon the number of backlinks to the root domain of a website and to the internal pages of the website. 

Why Domain Authority matters?

Domain Authority isn’t the only direct factor for you to rank up on the search engine. But, the authority of the domain or the number of backlinks to a root domain is considered to be a major ranking factor on Google’s Search Engine.

According to an estimate, 20% of the ranking on the search engine is dependent upon the authority of the domain. Though, we don’t really work by the numbers, it is an indirect/passive advertising factor and it wouldn’t be wrong to use it to your brand’s advantage.   

Benefits of calculating Domain Authority:

To reap the benefits of domain authority, you’ll have to understand that it all depends on your digital agility. Predicting the domain authority allows you to attain internal hyper-awareness and make better informed decisions.

Internal hyper-awareness and making better Informed decisions:

Predicting Domain Authority provides you with an extra awareness factor. Thus, your brand attains better hyper-awareness. It allows determining the relevance of a brand’s pages and its content     based on the number of backlinks to the root domain. And  It, low-key, talks about the brand recall value across the internet as the root domain is usually the brand’s name.

For instance, with an increase in DA, you could expect to notice an increase in the SERP ranking. And, you could use it to make informed decisions in terms of attracting better advertisers and sponsors on your website.

And, if you don’t work with advertisers, you could work with major brands to sell their products via your website.

How to check your website’s Domain Authority

You can check it in two ways:

1.By using ahrefs website authority checker

2.By using Moz Domain Authority Checker Tool

What are the factors that affect Domain Authority?

The five main factors that affect the domain authority are Backlinks, Content, Context, Consistency and Quality. An interesting fact though is all of them are intertwined.

For instance, if you create quality content on a consistent scale and push it on a contextual basis, you’ll notice that the brands/websites will start backlinking content to your root domain. 

How to increase DA?

To increase it, on the baseline, we’d recommend to consistently push quality content based on the context. And, this would increase the probability of other websites backlinking to your root domain. 

Do note that if you just launched your website, you should prefer to not rely on the DA.  Otherwise, you could keep in mind the following pointers:

1. Define a niche around your brand:

Create a niche of content that defines the unique selling point of your brand’s product/service.

 For example, if you are an eCommerce books store, we’d recommend you to talk about the best moral values that a novel or a book provides.

2. Create an experience around the niche:

The content piece that you create is only powerful when an experience complements it. In simple terms, the words in your content need visuals and vocals that help the user to understand it better. 

Use illustrations and keep up with the latest design and user experience trends to make sure that people don’t just read your content. But, also experience it.

Once they experience it, they will spread the word around. And, the butterfly will increase your DA.

3. The finishing touch:

Your on-page SEO is the finishing touch to the process. Perfectly optimize your keywords and the visuals on your posts to match the SEO Guidelines.

Make sure to choose unique keywords in a proper manner where you use the keywords in a limit. And, use the alt texts feature in your images to describe them and inturn, increase your SEO.