How to improve domain authority

[chill986]

I'm having a terrible time with one of my sites - it's a new (less than 1 year) business, and I have accounts
in a number of social media sites including Houzz, but Moz acts like there's only one link to the site.  DA is 1.
Ugh.  She has pretty good traffic for a small local business, but I'm tearing my hair out over this.  
Any suggestions?

[MattRoney]

Got it! There are a few possible explanations for what's going on, but the most likely is simply that the links you've gathered—primarily through social network accounts—aren't being seen by the Mozscape index, and so aren't showing up in OSE.

Mozscape's crawler focuses on breadth rather than depth. What that means is that it'll only follow links on any given site so deeply. That allows us to index more sites, but it means that some very deep pages aren't going to be crawled.

In the case of social networks and business directories, just about any outbound links to individual sites are going to be too deep for Mozscape to index. There are just too many listings, and there's a whole lot more internet out there! This generally works out, since there's little if any ranking value in those links—they're not earned—and since the purpose of them tends to be for traffic or for local SEO, rather than for building link count.

To build DA, you'll need to focus on building links from high quality, high authority, relevant sites.

Does that make sense?

[chill986]

Thanks Patrick!  Hey Matt, I've been working on this site for about 6 months, and really haven't worried too much about the Domain Authority as I was seeing the selected key phrases percolating up.  But I'm not seeing things moving as quickly as I would have expected, and have been putting more time into it.  I understand this takes time - the one thing I HAVEN'T been doing is putting a lot of effort into backlinks.  I have, however, set her up with a variety of social media accounts as well as Houzz (as I indicated in my first message), and Moz shows zero links - which I don't really understand.  I believe the users are getting a good experience from the website as the number of visitors increase each week - although the conversions are sporadic, I believe she's getting phone calls from the site.

I believe I'm doing all the right stuff, but something is missing so I must not be.

Thanks for your responses!

[MattRoney]

Hi Cindy!

Patrick has you pretty solidly covered on how to raise DA. Just wondering, though, how long have you been checking this client's DA? More than a month or so?

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi Cindy

There are countless opportunities to improve DA. It's not an overnight endeavor or quick win however. It takes quite a bit of time and effort. Moz actually provides a lot of great resources to help get you started.

Here are some of my favorites:
On-Site Factors - Basic, fundamental items to help get your SEO on solid ground and off to a great start. Local SEO Ranking Factors - Helps get your local SEO off to a great start and also has items you'd probably never think to check.
Moz Academy - Just an overall great educational experience - from local and basic SEO, to content and social media - it's all here.
Moz Local - This is a great managed listings tool to help you better take care of your listings and also update them quickly if need be.
Beginner's Guide to Linkbuilding - Gives you a solid foundation to link building along with types of link building and best practices for each.
How to do a Content Audit - This is a great resource to help you go through the content on your site and help you assess your current issues and pain points. 
Internal Linking - This is a great piece to have in your back pocket to help you better utilize your internal linking. Pass your link and search equity in a smart way!
External Linking - Like internal linking, this is a great piece to have as well. Think of who you link to as an endorsement: if crawlers see you're linking to shady sites, they will associate you with those sites. But, if you are linking to high quality, authoritative, and relevant to your content sites, then search engines will value your site more. If you care, they will care.
Information Architecture for SEO - This will help you lay your site out in an easy to understand fashion for both your users and search engines.
The Massive Ranking Factor Too Many SEOs are Ignoring - SUCH a great Whiteboard Friday piece - this helps you understand direct and indirect ranking factors in an easy to digest fashion. While there are no "hard tactics" to take from this, it will help you better connect your SEO and marketing efforts, and why you do things the way you do.

I know there is a LOT here, but really, there is a lot that goes into your Domain Authority. It will take a lot of the information above (and more honestly) and moving them together in a way that best fits your client's site and industry. Please the user first and worry about search engines second - they will catch up and your domain authority will reflect that. Hope this helps! Good luck!