When seeking information online, it’s customary to go to Google or another search engine, type in some keywords, and scroll through the results to find a site that has what you’re looking for.
As much as 92 percent of website traffic from search engine results goes to sites on the first page of results, which is why businesses need their website to show up early. In order to do this, websites must have a strong domain authority (DA). To boost your website traffic through Google, you need to know what DA is and how to earn a high DA score.
Good domain authority
Moz created domain authority as a way to predict how high a website will rank on search engines. Every website has a DA number that falls between one and 100, with higher numbers indicating a higher chance that you’ll show up early on results pages. Although you might assume that a score of 100 is a perfect DA, the score isn’t the only factor that you should consider when determining if your site has a good DA.
What is most important is comparative rankings — your DA score only needs to be higher than your direct competitors’ scores. If a hardware store, for example, wants to rank higher than their competitors, their first objective is to determine their competitors’ DA scores. A reliable bulk DA checker can be used to determine a site’s DA number.
In this example, if the local competitors have DA scores ranging from 20 to 40, any score over 40 would be a great score, because it means their business will show up higher in search results when people Google hardware stores in their city.
Building a good DA
A site’s DA score is directly linked to their search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). One of the fastest ways for sites to boost their search engine results is to have external links from reliable sources that direct traffic to their website. Sites with high DA scores that provide links to your site will do the most effective job of improving your DA score.
It’s also important to incorporate keywords throughout your site that relate to your business. Update the information on your site regularly to maintain a strong DA and generate traffic to your site.
Things to avoid
A site’s DA can be hurt by specific content. One problem area stems from overuse of keywords. When a site has too many keywords, then it can actually be penalized by DA ranking systems. In some cases, it may not even appear in search engine results.
Sites with excessive amounts of keywords are often considered spam sites and they do not receive good DA scores when classified that way. It’s important to choose a reasonable number of keywords and stick to them, instead of trying to include too many.
There are also other types of content that do not help a site’s DA. This includes Flash — there is no data that can be included in content like Flash, which means that it won’t bolster a site’s DA ranking at all. Flash consumes memory, can slow down a website, and is also a cybersecurity risk.
Getting professional help
Many business owners are not experts in online marketing and have a limited understanding of website development, content options, keyword strategies, SEO, and SEM. This is fine, but as a result, you may not be in the best position to achieve the kind of results that you hope for with your site’s DA.
Improving your DA can be done effectively, however, with resources from link building sites and cost-effective SEM that focuses on targeting link building through content both on and off your website. For those without the marketing background needed to tackle effective internet promotion, SEM professionals can provide the information and material needed to raise your site’s profile.
Moz created domain authority as a way to predict how high a website will rank on search engines. Every website has a DA number that falls between one and 100, with higher numbers indicating a higher chance that you’ll show up early on results pages. You can see the numbers through Google Authority Entity Stack, for instance. Although you might assume that a score of 100 is a perfect DA, the score isn’t the only factor that you should consider when determining if your site has a good DA.Â