In this post, I will explain domain & page authority & tell you how to increase domain authority for your website. I will explain four main points that will help increase your site’s domain authority which are content, sharing, links & SEO. I speak from my personal experience & share what has worked for my blog to increase my page & domain authorities to 46 & 39 respectively in my 14 months of blogging.
What is Domain Authority & Page Authority?
Domain authority (DA) is a measure of the power of a domain (website) name & has to do with the website’s age, popularity & size.
Page authority (PA) ranks the strength of the website’s individual pages & posts. The ranking tells us how often the website’s posts show up in Google searches.
Both DA & PA are developed by Moz as comparative metrics meaning that websites are ranked against each other like in Tots 100 or another competitive ranking system. For that reason, you could work really hard at building up your blog one month but not see your DA change.
It’s a long road with DA & PA so don’t stress about having a really great score right away!
What is a Good Score?
DA & PA are ranked on a scale of 0 – 100. Top scores to go sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Google. For example, Facebook has a DA of 100 & a PA of 97. You can find the DA & PA for your & other websites on Moz’s Open Site Explorer. There is a limit on how many sites you can check per day on Moz’s site so you can also find your score on other sites like SEO Review Tools.
Don’t panic when you see that your score is nowhere near 100! The ranking works in such a way that it gets harder to improve your score, the higher your ranking is. Therefore, it’d be easier to move from 10 to 20 than it would be to move from 40 to 50.
Hitting a DA of 20 is a milestone event for any blog. Pop open the prosecco because you have arrived on the scene! You are more likely to start getting approached by business & PR’s looking to work with you. Woohoo! The next big event occurs at 25. Some of the bigger brands look to work with bloggers that have a DA of 25 or higher.
Super bloggers such as the top 10 Tots 100 bloggers have a DA of 40 – 50 & a PA of 45 – 57. These are professional bloggers who have worked incredibly hard over a number of years building great content & a link base for their blogs.
Note that if your blog is on a platform like wordpress.com, such as www.blogname.wordpress.com, then your blog’s DA & PA reflect that of your platform & will be quite high. To start building your website’s own DA & PA you need to have your own domain name such as www.blogname.com. You can still be hosted by wordpress.com but have your own domain name.
What Factors Determine a Site’s Domain Authority?
Moz takes a lot of factors that are frankly quite confusing into account when ranking a site’s domain authority. The dozens of factors include Moz Rank, Moz Trust & external links. These factors boil down to quality links.
Links occur when other websites have a link to your site on their site. Normally that occurs when the site references your content or you personally & gives a link to your site when doing so. Links from higher ranking sites count more towards boosting your own ranking than links from lower ranking sites. So link quality is very important.
The age of a site has a big influence on DA so regardless of how many links you gain per month, it will take time to see your DA increase.
How to Increase Domain Authority
So we know that DA is a ranking system on the scale of 100, that age of the site is a factor along with quality links. So how do you get quality links to your site & boost your DA?
1. Content is King
Having great content that sites want to link to & that people want to share is critical.
Saying “write good content” can be an annoying point to hear sometimes because how do you know what’s going to be good content when you are writing? I think when it comes to blogging we have to stick with what we enjoy writing – that’s what it’s all about. But, posts that help people or give advice tend to do better in terms of shares & external linkbacks. Posts that talk about day to day life don’t get as much attention (for me anyway).
Please Note: I’m not advising to change the style or type of posts that you wrote or to just write how to posts but it’s no harm to have some in your mix. They might be recipes, DIY, renovation, or any type of how to, instructional, informational, advisory or review posts. That’s the type of content people tend to share & link to.
I’ll give you three examples of posts that have done well for Cuddle Fairy:
By far, the most linked to post on CuddleFairy.com is my Linky Guide. I really enjoy writing blogging tips. When I figure something out I love to share what I’ve learned. I wrote my linky guide as a reference for people who wanted to join my linkys but didn’t know how. If you type “linky guide” into Google, my post comes up number one. It’s my one claim to fame! lol It ranks so highly because there are so many links out there to my guide. A lot of linky posts contain a link to my guide to help new linkers join the party. And, the Linky Guide has been shared a lot. Those two factors have given the Linky Guide a great rank on Google.
My most popular post in terms of views from a Google search is my Cruise Norwegian Breakaway post. We paid for our cruise, thoroughly enjoyed & I was inspired to write about it when we got home. Before the crusie, I struggled to find sites that gave tips for the Breakaway so I thought it’d be helpful to share what I learned with future cruisers. Because it’s been viewed a lot, this post also comes up on page 1 of a Google search.
My most shared post of all time is my Toilet Training Tips which I had zero expectations for. It’s my advice after finishing training our third child. Again, I was inspired to share what was going on in my life.
I didn’t write any of these posts with the idea that they’d be highly shared or popular. But, people found them useful & continue to read & share them. That’s what is meant by content. Creating content that people want to read & share. Stick with what you know & what you enjoy writing about.
2. Share your Posts
You can write the most amazing post in the entire world about a given topic but if no one sees it then no one will read it & Google won’t be signaled that it is awesome.
Google judges the worthiness of a post according to how many shares & views it gets. The more shares & views, the better your post will show up in a Google search. Again, this relates back to the idea of writing informational posts or things that people will search for in Google.
Sharing your content is as important as writing your content. Share it across your social media, into any relevant Facebook groups & add it to blogger linky parties. Get your content out there to be read & shared!
3. Build your Links
Creating great content & sharing your content will naturally create backlinks without you doing anything else. People will want to share & link to your amazing work.
You can help grow your external links (other websites that link to your site) in a few additional ways including:
Writing guest posts for blogs or websites. The better the website’s own DA is, the better quality backlink you receive so keep that in mind. If you have bad backlinks to your blog, it’s recommended that you ask for them to be removed. I can’t speak on this point as I haven’t done this yet myself.
Commenting on other blogs & joining linkys. These may or may not be no-follow links but they are still important links to have.
I’ve read that having a good internal link structure is also very important. That means that you link to your own content within your blog, like I have done in this post. If you mention one of your posts, link to it. Add the link to words that are relevant to the post (such as the keywords or title) as much as possible, rather than linking to words like “here.” Linking the keywords helps Google understand your site & how your posts connect.
4. Improve your Site’s SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization. A site with good SEO will show up in a google search.
You can improve your SEO by doing the three tips above along with the following:
If you are self-hosted on WordPress, check out Yoast SEO plugin. It makes it very easy to optimize the SEO for each individual post.
Label your images with your keywords in the title, description & Alt text.
Place your keyword in headings.
There are a lot of really wonderful posts that explain SEO, including these from You Baby Me Mummy & HubSpot. So, I won’t get into it any further here. SEO really deserves a post for itself!
Final Thoughts
My biggest piece of advice is not to stress about your blog DA or any type of ranking for that matter. Focus on what you are doing – your content!
When I started blogging I was totally clueless about everything – hosting, SEO, social media, WordPress – you name it. I remember reading a post that kept referring to your DA & PA. I had no idea what these things stood for.
I’ve googled & asked fellow bloggers for advice along the way. Time is key to building a successful website. Focus on quality, building links both externally & internally, share your content & stick to your personal brand. You will see your DA grow naturally by doing these things!
I hope you found this helpful! Best of luck to you & your site!
I’m sharing with #AnythingGoes | #MG | #BloggerClubUK | #CoolMumClub | #FamilyFun | #bigpinklink | #BlogStorm
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