The right way to boost your domain authority

For a modern business to succeed, it needs to rank as high as possible on the search engine results page (SERP) for relevant search terms. You need to get in Google’s good books in particular, as it holds a NZ search engine market share of 95%.

Google keeps its ranking algorithm a closely guarded secret to ensure no one can game the system. It does however offer up some broad search engine optimisation (SEO) guidelines, captured in the acronym E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. These are the ‘Quality Raters’ that Google uses to rank sites.

In this guide we’re going to focus on authoritativeness, or more specifically a metric called ‘domain authority’.

What is domain authority? How can you find your domain authority score? And most importantly, how do you increase domain authority? Read on to find out all this and more.

How do you measure such a nebulous concept as ‘authority’? It’s a challenge that the good folks at Moz, an SEO software company, decided to take on, and in the process they created what has become one of the most useful metrics in SEO.

Put simply, domain authority is a number, between 0-100, that predicts how well your website will rank on Google. The higher the number, the higher your Google ranking is likely to be, and the more organic traffic you’ll earn.

Moz designed the domain authority metric to replicate the Google PageRank algorithm that determines the rank on search results. This is quite the challenge, because as we mentioned above, Google keeps this information top secret.

Moz therefore had to make a few educated guesses, and doesn’t perfectly simulate the Google recipe – for example, domain authority takes around 40 factors into account, while it is estimated that Google considers 200 or so. This means that while domain authority is a good indicator of how well your site will rank, you can still rank high with a low domain authority score and vice versa.

A few other important notes about domain authority:

• Because it takes so many factors into account, moving your DA score isn’t a quick or easy job. It takes time. This makes domain authority a useful metric for tracking your SEO efforts over the long term.
• Backlinks are the most important factor in domain authority. This means that your off-page SEO efforts tend to be far more impactful than your on-page SEO efforts.
• Domain authority doesn’t factor in Google penalties. While Moz might give your site a high DA score, penalties relating to things like keyword stuffing, thin or duplicate content or black hat SEO practices could mean that the ‘true’ score is well below your stated DA score.
• Domain authority uses a logarithmic scale, sort of like the Richter scale used for earthquakes. The jump from 20 to 30 is far smaller, and far easier to make, than the jump from 70 to 80. The higher your score, the more difficult it is to improve it.

While the domain authority metric was created by Moz, a few different DA measurement tools are available to website owners. The following tools offer quick, free and easy ways to check your domain authority…

The original domain authority tool, the Moz DA checker is super simple and free to use. By typing in your domain and clicking “Check Authority”, you’ll get served a DA score of 0-100, as well as a number of other useful metrics, such as linking root domains, ranking keywords and spam score.

Moz serves up a wealth of other insights too, listing your website’s top performing pages, major competitors and featured snippet opportunities.

Ahrefs offers a complete suite of SEO tools, one of which is its “Website Authority Checker”, which works much the same as the Moz tool. Type in your URL and click “Check Authority”, and you’ll be served up three numbers: your domain rating (the Ahrefs version of domain authority), the number of backlinks your site has earned, and the number of different websites providing those backlinks.

To gain a more detailed rundown of your domain authority you’ll need to become a paid Ahrefs user.

Another popular SEO tool and resource provider, Semrush offers a free Backlink Analytics tool that delivers one of the more comprehensive looks at domain and web page authority. The number to look for is the “Authority Score”, but that is just one of a wealth of insights that this tool delivers – your website will be rated on everything from “referring domains” to “overall toxicity”.

You need to register with Semrush to gain access to this tool, at which point you’ll get 10 free requests. If you want more, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid Semrush subscription.

Your domain score is measured on a scale of 0-100, zero being the worst, 100 being the best. As mentioned above, this scale isn’t linear, but logarithmic, so the jump from 80 to 90 is far greater, and far harder to make, than the jump from 10 to 20.

A ‘good’ domain authority score will change depending on your business, your competitors and your level of investment. Tech giants like Google, Amazon and Apple have domain authority scores of 95 or more, but a small family business, like a restaurant, might aim for a DA score of 55-60.

Generally speaking, domain authority and page authority scores for your typical New Zealand company are as follows:

• <10: Poor
• 11-20: Below average
• 21-30: Average
• 31-50: Above average
• 51-70: Upper deciles
• >71: You are winning and likely have limited commercial intent

It should also be noted that the scores offered by Moz, Ahrefs and Semrush will vary from tool to tool, as each uses a slightly different formula to calculate domain authority. To avoid confusion, it’s wise to pick one of the tools and stick with it, working hard to increase your DA score according to that particular service, rather than switching between tools.

The best way to use domain authority is as a comparison metric. You should identify your main competitors, then work to improve your domain authority to the point that you have a higher DA than all of them.

Armed with an understanding of what domain authority is and how it works, how do you increase yours? The  seven strategies below are some of the most effective tactics and techniques.

Before we focus on off-page SEO, it’s important that you get all your ducks in a row in terms of on-page SEO. You want your site to be easy to navigate, quick to load, mobile-friendly and set up in a way that makes it easy for Google’s web crawlers to get the information they need.

We’ve created a basic list of what ‘good’ on-page SEO entails here, but in reality this is a task that is best handled by an expert, as there is a lot to learn, the rules are constantly changing, and doing on-page SEO half-heartedly can be as bad as not doing it at all!

Once your on-page SEO is doing its job, it’s time to turn your focus to off-page SEO.

Backlinks are the single most important factor in your DA score, and the only way to earn them is to create high quality content – the sort that authoritative websites will be eager to link to.

What does ‘great content’ mean? That will depend on your business, your industry and your expertise, but there are some general types of content that are particularly effective at earning backlinks:

• Thought leadership: Content that features unique ideas and concepts that the audience can’t find anywhere else.
• Analysis: Content that offers up insightful data from proprietary research or surveys that you have commissioned.
• Explainers: Content like the article you’re reading now, explaining often complex subjects to make them a little easier for your audience to understand and digest.
• Entertainment: If you have a talent for telling stories, you could produce content more focused on entertainment than education.

Not sure where to start with content ideation? Think about the questions that you hear over and over again from your target audience, and look to answer them in one of the styles mentioned above.

Online directories can be one of the most valuable sources of domain authority for your business. Your Google Business Profile is the most obvious example, as this is a Google property that can lead to your brand getting featured in rich results on the search engine results page (SERP). Claim and verify your Google Business Profile, fill it out completely, then regularly update it, making use of all the features that it offers, including:

• Selecting attributes to give customers and Google a clearer picture of your business
• Soliciting and replying to customer reviews
• Listing your services and in-store products
• Regularly adding photos and videos to keep your profile fresh and exciting

But Google Business Profile is far from the only online directory you should list your business on. Consider Yellow Pages, LinkedIn, Yelp, Bing Places, and any number of industry-specific directories, such as TripAdvisor and Builderscrack.

One of the simplest ways to earn inbound links – and arguably the most effective – is to simply ask for them. If you believe a recent piece of content has real relevance and offers real value to another website, consider telling that website about it.

Potential backlinkers might include people and organisations who you have mentioned in your content, who have previously mentioned you in their content, or who have written or linked to similar topics on their own website. The more authoritative the website – i.e. the higher its DA score – the better. Scoring a backlink from The New York Times is far more impactful than receiving one from the website of the small business next door.

Reaching out to potential backlinkers over email or LinkedIn doesn’t just help your domain authority, it also helps you to build a network of industry contacts that can prove invaluable as you continue to increase the authority of your domain.

Why leave the backlinking to someone else when you can do it yourself? By guest posting on another website, you can include backlinks to your own site in your article, which helps to push up your DA score.

When finding websites to guest post on, the relevant sites mentioned above – those that cover similar topics to you, or who you have linked with before – are a great place to start. Focus on websites with healthy readerships, and those who are considered thought leaders in your industry.

Be sure to check with the publishing website that they will post your article with ‘dofollow’ links. If it is posted with ‘nofollow’ links you won’t get any domain authority from the backlinks, as this tag instructs Google to disassociate the backlinked website from the linking website.

Some backlinks, like those from spammy, untrusted sites, can actually do harm to your DA score, as they hint at potential black hat (dodgy) SEO tactics. This can make removing low quality backlinks just as important as securing high quality backlinks.

How do you identify bad links? A link explorer, like the tool offered by Moz, is a great place to start. It will give you a complete view of all the links to, from and within your site, including the spam score of backlinks to your site. Once you’ve identified these bad links, attempt to get them removed wherever possible, although this is usually left in the hands of the linking site. Your other option is to disavow these backlinks through Google, which severs the connection between you and the offending site.

On the subject of low quality links, these also present an opportunity to replace something broken with something new, through a process called broken link building.

On top of spam, tools like the Moz Link Explorer are also capable of identifying broken backlinks. You can use these broken links as inspiration to create replacement content – an updated version of the article that the site originally linked to. After you’ve created the new content, get in touch with the site with the broken backlinks, and suggest that they link to your new piece of content instead.

Broken link building is a strategy that can see domain scores boosted significantly, as it removes a net negative and replaces it with a net positive.

One DA strategy that is entirely within your control is internal linking. Informational, educational content tends to earn you backlinks from third party sites – but it’s far harder to earn backlinks to the more salesy pages that you really want visitors directed to.

Internal linking can help you to direct website visitors to these more commercial pages and increase your authority. Consider using a strategy like the ‘middleman method’:

1. Create high quality informational content designed to earn backlinks from other sites.
2. Spread internal links to sales-focused web pages throughout the informational content.

This has the double effect of increasing your website authority and increasing your chances of converting visitors into customers.

Google keeps its algorithm a closely guarded secret, which makes domain authority a tricky thing to understand, let alone improve. This is why the most successful businesses bring in search engine optimisation experts to help them build authority and climb the rankings.

At Traction we’ve developed a reputation for helping Kiwi businesses do just that.

Our local team of domain authority experts deal with Google all day every day. We’ve built a deep understanding of domain authority through endless tests, trials and observations, and we’re ready to use this expertise to help your business rank higher on Google, earn more organic website visitors, and ultimately make more money.

What’s more, our expertise isn’t limited to SEO. We offer a full complement of online marketing services that get your business in front of the maximum number of relevant eyes: social media, web development, Google Ads, remarketing and more.

Domain authority is one of the foundations of your online presence; do it right and your web visitors, customers and revenue can skyrocket. If you’re ready to grow, we’re ready to help – get in touch with our ‘slightly’ nerdy team today.