What is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that indicates the authority of your website. A Domain Authority score ranges from one to 100, the higher your domain authority is, the greater are your chances of ranking higher in search engine result pages (SERPs) and getting more organic traffic.

What is Page Authority?

Page Authority (PA) is a score developed by Moz that predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engine result pages (SERP). Page Authority scores range from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.  

As stated on the definition of Domain and Page authority, both are developed by Moz and not by Google. Now, the question is does Google uses these scores in its ranking algorithm and is it a good investment of time spent in SEO?

Does domain and page authority affect organic search rankings?

There has long been a debate as to whether or not domain and page authority affect organic search rankings on Google SERP. Based on an article published by Search Engine Roundtable , Gary Illyes from Google said that “we don’t really have overall domain authority.”

Should you improve your domain authority and is it worth it?

Yes. It should be an overarching part of any work you do as a publisher.

Even if Google said that they do not use Page and Domain authority as part of their ranking signal, the works you do in improving your Domain Authority, like publishing compelling contents, improving your On-page SEO and earning high-quality links, greatly affects your Organic Search Ranking on Google Search Engine Result Page.

So having a strong Domain and Page Authority will somehow help your site rank better in Google SERP. But then again, this doesn’t mean that Google uses Domain and page authority score as part of their ranking algorithm, its the work you did to obtain high authority score that Google also used to sort out which websites should rank first on the result page.

6 Practical Steps on How to Improve your Domain and Page Authority

Now that it is clear what a domain and Page authority is, let’s see how you can improve your them.
Domain authority and page authority have a mutually beneficial relationship; building more links to your individual pages will have the effect of raising your domain authority, and raising your domain authority, in general, will increase the page authority of your individual pages.

Here are 6 steps to follow to practically increase your Domain and Page Authority Score.

1. Fresh, Compelling Content

The first thing to do in order to increase Domain Authority is to create high-quality content to attract and engage a loyal audience.

As the SEO experts like to say, content is king. 

Compelling content will not only boost your website’s engagement but also attract the most organic backlinks from other websites in your industry.

2. Work on Your Off-Page SEO

Links on your websites continue to play a critical role in ranking. According to Moz’s 2015 Search Engine Ranking Factors report, inbound links are very crucial for boosting your domain authority and is the most essential element for achieving high ranks on Google SERP.

Including links from a trusted website to your page is a great way to ramp up your page authority. These links tell Google that your website is trustworthy, and when used properly can increase traffic to your page.

Another way you can earn high-quality links is by asking other websites that have a higher domain or page authority score to link to your website.

3. On-Page SEO Optimization

The next step in improving your domain authority is to work on your on-page SEO. On-Page SEO has to do with optimizing your page and content.

Here are the things you can do improve your On-Page SEO:

• Optimize your titles and Descriptions.
• Use Headings (H1 and H2) within your content.
• URL structure and SEO optimized permalinks.
• Optimize your images, videos and other media elements.
• Using keywords naturally in your content (no keyword stuffing).
• Add internal links to your content. This one one of the reason why wikipedia is number for most search results (this is a very powerful SEO technique indeed).
• Format your content is such a way so as to have more chances ranking in Google’s featured snippets.

It is necessary to mention again that the quality of the content is the biggest ranking factor of all for both on-page and off-page SEO.

4. Work on Your Technical SEO

Technical SEO is a very important step in the whole SEO process, these are the SEO tasks that once you get your technical SEO correct from the beginning, you don’t have to deal with it again.

If Technical SEO is not done properly, then this can have a huge impact on your Domain Authority and most likely will not generate the expected results.

The critical SEO settings you need to check include:

• Submit your website to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools. Read about how to optimize your website For Bing Search Engine in this article “ Optimize Your Website For Bing And Yahoo ”
• Create and optimize your xml sitemap and submit to Google
• Check your robots.txt settings and use Fetch as Google to ensure that Google and other search engine spiders can crawl your website without problems.
• Secure your website by installing SSL. Read this article “ 10 ESSENTIAL TIPS TO KEEP YOUR WEBSITE SECURED ”.
• Add structured data (schema) information to help search engines, especially Google, understand the content of the page.
• Make sure that you have a properly defined breadcrumb menu on all pages
• Make proper use of hreflang (in case you have a multilingual website)

5. Make Sure Your Website is Mobile Friendly

Having a mobile-friendly website is no longer optional or nice to have but a necessity.

Here are a few reasons:

• Mobile searches are now more than desktop (about 60%).
• Most users start their search on mobile and then continue on Desktop
• Mobile friendliness is a ranking factor (for showing in Google’s mobile results)
• Google is working on a mobile-first index and website’s that are not mobile friendly will simply not be included
• Not having a mobile-friendly version of your website (or responsive website), has a negative impact on your overall Domain Authority Score.

If your website is not mobile responsive yet, the best way to start is to go to Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and run the test for your domain.

6. Reduce Your Page Speed

One of the known ‘signals’ of the Google ranking algorithm is page speed. Website’s that load faster, have an additional advantage over slower websites.

Reducing your page speed will not only improve your Search Engine rankings and domain authority but it will make the user experience better and this translates to more sales, leads and signups.

Read this article to know more on how to Improve your page speed here: SEO: 9 EFFECTIVE WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE’S PERFORMANCE

It’s a wrap up!

Increasing your domain and Page authority is not something that can be done overnight. It requires continuous tedious SEO work so you need to be patient.

If you need professional help in Increasing your Domain and Page Authority, Go2designlab is the perfect team to work with. Contact us and let’s talk about your website. Email us at [email protected] or you call us at 0905-525-0851. You may also visit our office, click here for the address.

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