Raising Domain Authority
-
Hi everyone, I'm looking to find out if there are any tried and tested ways to raise DA.
We have regular articles, a good backlink profile, we post regularly to social media, but we seem to be stuck at DA27.
One of our competitors who has no real backlinks, only backlinks from citations and no social media posts has a DA of 31 which we find quite confusing.
Thanks in advance!
-
First, let me say something that may sound strange coming from a Moz employee. Don't try to raise DA. DA is a proxy for your link authority, and if you get obsessed with trying to raise that score alone, you may find yourself link-building in artificial ways. This isn't unique to Moz -- I'd say the same thing about raising toolbar PR in the old days.
In a broader, conceptual sense, DA attempts to measure your overall authority. Ultimately, this is a product of PA and means getting high-quality links to a variety of pages (ideally). From a pure DA perspective, that means links from high-DA domains and a diversity of domains (not thousands of links from a handful of sites). From a broader perspective -- which DA doesn't measure -- pursuerelevant links that will drive traffic and produce value.
So "How do you raise domain authority?" really becomes "How do you build high-quality links?" and that's a tremendously difficult question to answer. Or, maybe better to say that the answer isn't one most people want to hear, because it's going to require a lot of time, energy, and probably money.
I will add this -- don't get tunnel-vision on links from super-high-DA sites. Not every link has to be from the New York Times. Links from low DA sites that are relevant and legitimate are perfectly fine. Plus, it's going to be much easier to approach these sites and build relationships with them, especially in your own industry. Find the sites that would naturally want to link to you, because you offer something of value to them. They don't have to be mega-sites that dominate the web.
-
Thanks for the replies! That all makes sense, and certainly Nikki we will work on getting links which are of a higher DA. A lot of our links have been from sites which have similar DAs to us, so getting links from higher authority websites is certainly something for us to try where possible.
-
If your current backlinks also average DA 20-30, that may be preventing your site to go any higher. Try obtaining links that are in the DA 40-50 range or higher. Having those quality sites consistently linking back to you should move the needle up.
-
DA is not just based on backlinks but the quality of backlinks. Also the longevity of the domain plays apart in authority. So if your competitor has been around awhile and has a few backlinks from high quality websites then he very well could have a higher DA then you. Maybe their backlink profile can shed some light on some backlinks you might try to obtain.
Thanks,
Don Silvernail
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 couldn't check Page authority or Domain Authority for any page, what can be reason?
I am trying to check DA and PA for page but not able to do this. Tried it before two days and it was working fine, problem occurring today. I want help regarding this issue, is anyone other facing this problem. Kindly help me out (provide some other way to check DA/PA).
Link Explorer | | JessicaThompson1 -
Why is my Domain Authority 1?
I own the site http://www.artofwar.cc/ I have a 301 redirect rule in place to direct all non-www traffic to www. The site is about 10 years old. We're ranked in the top 20 in Google for around 20-40 search terms that I know of. Google Webmasters lists us as having in excess of 10000 backlinks (though many are subdomained duplicates). Majestic reports 1269 external backlinks, with the best trust/citation flows being around 40/100. Majestic also reports 39 referring domains. I'm working through crawl errors at the moment. The main high priority ones are 4xx errors, due to the fact that I changed some URL redirect rules a month back and am slowly getting round to changing internal backlinks in the forums. There are no 5xx server errors, which I would think is the most likely reason Rogerbot might fall over crawling the site. Rogerbot has no issues crawling, I've set it up in the phpBB section of the site as a registered bot, and it logs in and crawls for long periods when I manually trigger a crawl. Can anyone explain why the site might still be at DA 1?
Link Explorer | | e_i_pi0 -
Difference between Domain Authorities on two different screens
My domain authority is showing 6 for my paid option but 15 on the Open Site Explorer. Which one is right and why are they different?
Link Explorer | | mstockbridge0 -
DA not working for a domain. Is 1 since June 2015.
Hello there, I have a problem with a domain. The Domain Authority is not changing, i think is it a BUG from Moz or something, that is because ahrefs.com was wrong indexing the domain too, cause of a server problem that I solved before. I am 100% is a technical problem, cannot be 1 for 6 month. How we can check if DA is wrong? Domain is : iuppy.ro With respect,
Link Explorer | | Shanaki
Shanaki0 -
Could Spam Analysis significantly lower domain authority?
I use Open Site Explorer to track my site's rankings weekly, and during the first week of June, we found that our domain authority had dropped 5 points after several months of being higher than that score. The only thing that was significantly different, in our business and in Moz, from the week before was the introduction of the new Spam Analysis tool. Am I right to possibly attribute the drop in domain authority to an update on Moz's end? And anyone has troubleshooting advice otherwise, I'd be all ears. Thanks!
Link Explorer | | MattCommonBond0 -
Open Site Explorer metrics report says we have 9 linking root domains, but way more than 7 are listen. What gives?
When I run a report on my website in OSE (SelectAccount" metrics tells me we have 7 "established" root domains and 9 total links. But the detailed report below has many dozens of links. What is metrics telling me?
Link Explorer | | SelectAccount0 -
Which is more valuable domain authority or page authority?
Which is more valuable when looking at Open Site Explorer, domain authority or page authority?
Link Explorer | | vkpolar1