How important is Domain Authority?
Building a solid online presence involves hard work crafting original and optimised content; continued efforts addressing technical errors and issues; and the key ingredient of building an arsenal of quality SEO backlinks. Your website will struggle to rise up Google’s search result pages without any great website pointing (or back-linking) to it. That’s because Google gives priority to websites that are trusted and have authority within their industry sector, and an ‘association’ or ‘link’ with these websites will improve your own authority and trustworthiness.
Think of a backlink as a stamp of approval from other websites. It is what Google uses to determine whether to rank you higher or not. If you’re struggling to rise up the rankings, then maybe it’s time to consider addressing the missing SEO ingredient? – your website’s poor authority.
What is domain authority?
You may have already noticed that some websites easily rank higher on Google search engine results pages (SERPs). One of the main reasons will be down to their domain authority. A website with a higher domain authority has a much greater chances of dominating the higher positions in SERPs, and is a fundamental ranking factors Google considers to rank websites.
Domain Authority is a score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages. Scores range from 1 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to greater likelihood of ranking.
So, if domain authority is so important to the performance of a website on Google, how do you build it? The answer is quality backlinks. In other words, growing backlinks from other websites who already have achieved strong domain authority.
How to start building The authority OF YOUR DOMAIN?
Increasing your website’s domain authority is a long-term and ongoing process. The first thing to do is remove any unwanted or toxic backlinks to your website. In the same way that Google recognises a good quality backlink, it associates a bad backlink with negative authority and in most cases will have a detrimental impact on your score. To do this you need to get an audit completed on your website to identify these ‘bad’ links. If you need help with this, call our experts today.
An audit will identify any toxic links pointing to your website. Within Google Search Console you can then disavow those links, or contact your website developer to disavow them for you.
On a regular basis, you should run a Google search for your business. Naturally you will appear near or at the top of the ranking results, but look down the search pages to check for other sites, particularly directory websites which have no relevance to your business, because they may have added your website link to their listings. If you notice this then kindly request the link to be removed, or disavow the link within Google Search Console.
With a constant eye on bad links, you can now focus on building up good quality links from trusted sources. There are always opportunities to add backlinks to your website. Consider contacting websites with high authority in your sector and offering to guest blog. As long as your guest blog content is relevant to their business and their audiences, the owners of these websites will view your article as free, original and beneficial to them. Guest blogging gives you the opportunity to include a backlink in your article to your own website, and is an effective tactic of link building and increasing authority metrics. With continuous efforts, over time your domain authority will improve.
Blogger Outreach increases visibility and authority
SEO has evolved over the last 10 years, and with an emphasis on original content combined with trust, it isn’t surprising that SEO experts focus on publishing content around the internet to create high quality backlinks. At times, it helps to do this by utilising people who have influence to leverage your own opportunities. The rise in quantity and credibility of bloggers in recent years, and the growing influence they have over their own audiences presents a great link building opportunity.
Blogger outreach is actually quite simple. If you have a product or service that bloggers will love, you can contact them and ask them to write about it and include a link back to your site. If you choose relevant bloggers with a good following, this can form a valuable part of your link building strategy.
The content distribution revolution
Digital PR, or the practice of writing engaging and original content and then distributing it across the internet is a highly effective method of generating backlinks from credible and trust worthy media websites. PR distribution is no longer just about hoping a generous journalist will include your press release on their own website networks, it can be highly targeted and relevant to your business and your audience. You can target geographic markets, industry verticals, demographic audiences and subject-specific platforms important to your business strategy and goals.
A good digital PR strategy within an SEO campaign can be the key ingredient in transforming your domain authority score from poor to good, and good to dominant. But success can only be achieved by focusing on the bigger picture…
By establishing an ongoing process which initially focuses on the optimisation of the content, structure and performance of your website; followed by a backlink strategy which removes toxic backlinks and builds high quality backlinks, your domain authority will begin to out-perform your competitors. It isn’t an overnight story. This is about building trust, and generating momentum which will positively impact your online visibility and performance on Google – for the long term.
If you haven’t yet leveraged the opportunities of improving your website’s authority, now is the time to work with our SEO experts who can identify a strategy of building your domain authority, and subsequently improve your status with Google. Call our experts today on 0121 726 3861.
