How much does Domain Authority effect the keywords I can rank for?
-
I've been doing some keyword research and i've found a few gems. My site is currently sat at a 18 domain authority up from 12, so it's great to see the improvement. Although I was wondering, if my domain authority is sat a 18, can I compete with keywords that have a difficulty of 50-60?
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Sam
-
DA is a metric by Moz and not by Google. If you want to rank on Google, there are over 200 ranking signals (not disclosed by them even today) to rank for just one keyword on SERP and DA is not one of them. What you should be focusing on is the keyword's relevance and answering genuine user queries around your keyword.
The quality and comprehensiveness of your content along with other signals will determine the keyword ranking and in most cases, if you aim for long-tail keywords with good potential along with in-depth coverage of the topic, you will be able to surpass even higher DA sites without many backlinks on your target page.
Improving DA should be a focus but it should not be correlated to rankings on SERPs in any way.
-
I often hear the question - what is considered a good domain rating (authority)? Generally speaking, the higher the "authority" of your domain, the better. But it is important not to judge it in absolute terms. Because domain ranking is, by definition, a relative metric. You can't say that a good domain rating is 30, or 50, or 60, or 70. Everything is relative. It's important to remember that this score is an evaluation of a third-party service, not a search engine. When you use some DA validation tool, it is always developed by some company and data from different services may differ. I hope I didn't confuse you.
-
Hello sammecooper ,
The Domain Authority (DA) is important, but you should also consider other KPIs when analyzing the bigger picture. In the case of net linking, for example, you need to determine if the site is on the same domain if it receives natural traffic, and if it is ranking for relevant keywords. My recommendation is to never track only one metric
-
@sammecooper Bonjour,
Thanks for your question.
to rank well with keywords even if difficult you have to make back links on DA sites more than 50, you can position well on search engines (from my little experience). -
Of course Domain Authority (DA) is important but you also need to look at the bigger picture based on other KPIs. For example, if you do Netlinking, you need to look at whether the site is in the same field, whether it is getting natural visits and whether it is ranking on interesting keywords. Never watch only 1 metric, that's my point of view
-
Hi @sammecooper! As I'm sure you know, the higher the Keyword Difficulty Score, the harder the keyword will be to rank for. A higher DA does correlate with a higher likelihood to rank BUT when using DA, it's important that you are comparing your site to your true search competitors— sites w/in the same category and of the same caliber. We actually have a video that explains this in more detail if that helps. https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority
Personally, I'm a fan of going for low-hanging fruit first: keywords that have lower difficulty and still have decent value. Then, once you've tackled these, you can aim for those harder ones. We have a great resource all about keyword research, The SEO Keyword Research Master Guide that may help you in your quest for keyword gems.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
I understand it's been asked before, however moz staff is telling me keyword's capitalization is treated as a separate keyword.
So there I was looking through my rankings like every other day, when I see a lowercase and uppercase version of a keyword. Most times I see this, I see them with the same rankings, and even researched this about 5 months ago, when I came to the conclusion that google treats them the same way. However, this day I saw them as different ranks, same keyword, only capitalized 1st letter of the 2 word keyword. I asked moz staff about this, as I felt it was an error. But was met with the answer that google does indeed treat these keywords differently. My line of thought was that the rank checker didn't check both the lowercase and uppercase keyword at the same time, and SERPs happened to change when the second word was checked for rank, returning a different rank. So now, I am in doubt again, as to uppercase and lowercase keywords being different or the same in google's eyes? I honestly don't know why a uppercase keyword would have different motive from searcher than a lowercase when many time not, searchers can't even spell the keyword correctly.
Keyword Research | | Deacyde0 -
How do I find what keywords competitors are ranking for?
I am just starting out doing come SEO research. I seem to remember a tool that would tell me which words my competitors are ranking for and what kind of traffic they are getting. Thanks, Lisa
Keyword Research | | lisarein0 -
Rankings not working
It appears that my search rankings in my SEOMoz profile aren't working - either that or something really bad has happened to my rankings. I left it a few days thinking it was updating but nothing seems to have changed. Can anyone help?
Keyword Research | | rachelbuck0 -
How does Title keyword order, number and puctuation factor into rankings?
Hi, I am new at SEO and really trying to dive right in and do some thorough keyword research before I put my efforts into on-page optimization. In my research I have found a bunch of keywords that have low competition and decent search volume for my niche. I was thinking that I could be quite clever to combine a few of these phrases together in order to target them all. I realize that the first few positions for title tag placement hold extra value so I do not want to overdo it with my word choices and therefore not rank for my keywords. For example "pink girls room" has the highest (but not a ton) searches out of the keywords that I have found. "pink room decor" is also a decent and relevant keyword. So if my title is "Pink girls room decor" at the beginning of my title will I hurt myself instead of thinking that I am clever enough to get both keywords with one shot. Also, if I add more keywords in a natural way after this important beginning phrase, will it help me get more long tail search terms or will it just dilute my original keywords? Finally, how do search engines view punctuation? I have noticed that when I search for terms myself that Google appears to ignore punctuation.. Does that mean if I am strategic I can get more keyword terms in my title and still sound human by taking advantage of this? Thanks so much!
Keyword Research | | ColorfulConcepts0 -
Brandable domain names.
i am needing help deciding a domain name for a yelp like review site. the domains are listed below: mouthism.com guidies.com yellerz.com yellables.com yellism.com rateism.com yellers.net cryable.com talkbuds.com eritics.com (like epinions.com) gocraze.com iyeller.com venuers.com yeller.com.au (i wanted to start in australia first but find out yeller.com belongs to someone else so what can i do? If i start with yeller.com.au it will be hard to expand to worldwide as need to change the name to iyeller.com or yellerz.com instead of yeller.com.) thanks ray
Keyword Research | | usaccess6080 -
Tweet ranking affect 1 position keyword ?
Hi ! I just finish reading this post here and i want to know if it affect a page that already come to the first position ? If my actual keyword rank first and for example, i dont have any other keyword in my page title ect, how does it help the page ? Does it just gonna grab another frequent keyword who come back alot in the text or something ? ty
Keyword Research | | Promoteam0 -
Google Keyword tool data + No. 1 Serp rank =/= to taffic on landing page
So a keyword we are targeting "painted bedroom furniture" google keyword tool says gets 480 exact local searches (and 880 broad), and in the same local google we have ranked 1st for months (and currently we are 2nd and 3rd too), but looking at the google analytics that landing page has only gotten 78 unique page views from searches and only 21 from "painted bedroom furniture" . (the 2nd link gets 12 page views and the 3rd gets none, from that keyword) Now for me that does not make sense! For other keyword which we rank No.1 the keyword data and analytics generally match/make sense. Is there something I'm missing?
Keyword Research | | eunaneunan0 -
Rankings are changing all the time
Hi there! My client has a webpage http://www.finlotto.fi. It's a lottery in the Internet. We are trying to dominate keyword "lotto". It's a high volume keyword that has over 135 000 local searches (exact) per month. However, it seems that there aren't much competition out there. We have only one competitor - Veikkaus.fi The issue: We usually have first page ranking only for 2 days max, then we got dropped to third page. Two days later we have first page ranking again. Then we got dropped again to third page. This happens all the time. the odd thing: when we are in the first page, there are a date in the beginning of the META description. When we got dropped to third page, the date disappears. I know this has something to do with crawling. Can you give me some answers considering this issue? I'd be VERY VERY grateful 🙂 BR, Teemu Kinnunen
Keyword Research | | TeemuKinnunen0