Should I be Improving Domain Authority?
-
Hello
I work for a company that deals in Collectibles and runs a collectibles news service. In the UK our site ranks on the first page for the keyword "collectibles". We wish to strengthen this position and increase our rank on the US Google.
I'm going to be working on Keyword Optimisation for the site, to hopefully make many of our pages more relevant and improve the rank. However I feel we may be held back by our Domain Authority score. Our Google PageRank and MozRank are both low due to the fact we don't have a huge amount of external links to the site.
Is this something that will potentially hold us back? Should I be working on improving this as before the site optimisation?
We are well set up for a content based strategy due to "News" nature of the site. My ownly concern with link building is i've heard that it could potentially negatively effect us.
Or is the risk of link building only really associated with black hat methods?
One last thing. I've been using the Google keyword Tool to judge competition for specific search terms. Is this useful for organic search? Or is it only relevant for PPC?
Sorry to be a pain with all these question!
Thanks
-
No problem...
Installing a blog to your main site shouldn't be a problem really msot of the CMS out there tag on pretty easily.
This site is a great resource so come back often - Since my recent joining I think I have doubled my knowledge levels and still so much to learn,....
Best of luck with it -
Kieran
-
Thanks for the advice Kieran. I'll see what I can do about moving the blog onto the main site.
I just wish the site was more flexible!
-
_For link building, I was thinking along the lines of researching relevant sites, asking to be a guest blogger, or providing them with some unique content. _
This is a good tactci and looking at your site I am sure that you can provide this. It takes time and you have to put the miles in I think.
Currently i'm looking at improving the rank of our Investment Newsletter page. SEOMoz gives it a grade A in the on page optimisation tool. But we are only on page 3, where as two of our competitors are on page 1 with equal or lower grading.
So do you believe the main reason for this to be our lack of links?
The page grading tool is a Get the basics sorted out tool and I think personally it helps you focus on the message of the page. The next leve is to look at what is on the page. I often go back to pages (and do this nearly every day) and ask mysef was I drinking when I did a certain page.
I would seriously work at getting the blog back in the mains page as when you click away you are well... away..
-
Hello to both of you.
Thanks for your responses.
I'll make sure I now set Google Keywords Tool to Exact match, as I was previously using broad it is clear to see how far away the too statistics are.
In terms of generating our own news and information. We do try and do that as much as possible, we manage to get interviews, such as an interview with Tammy Allen, and Depeche Modes Alan Wilder. On certain occasions this is not possible, we can't visit all auctions etc. So we rely on other sources to get the best information possible.
We do have an investments page, with plenty of resources created by the company to help people make the best choices when it comes to their investments. But in some ways this may be slightly buried. We also started the blog as a new way of generating traffic, adding in more opinion, hopefully giving making things a bit more readbility.
For link building, I was thinking along the lines of researching relevant sites, asking to be a guest blogger, or providing them with some unique content. Or in some situations asking for a link if its appropriate. (We get plenty of link requests, so I know how not to do it!)
Currently i'm looking at improving the rank of our Investment Newsletter page. SEOMoz gives it a grade A in the on page optimisation tool. But we are only on page 3, where as two of our competitors are on page 1 with equal or lower grading.
So do you believe the main reason for this to be our lack of links?
If so how would you suggest encouraging links to an obscure page like "Investment Newsletter"?
Thanks Again
-
Hi Adrian
Well done on ranking for Collectibles in the UK it is a competitive space with lots of search – I didn’t see you at number one however so I would suggest you check with personalized search turned off.
**However I feel we may be held back by our Domain Authority score. **
Now you mention Domain Authority. Your domain authority is currently 32 so growth is of course Welcome. A lot of that comes with linking from high authority sites. Your site looks like is a powerful source of information on collectibles on first glance but on closer inspection it also looks like that a lot of it is curated news. I would think about developing your own news and information.
Your blog also is on the WordPress.com platform and is not self hosted. I would work to correct this and bring the blog back onto your local site as you are moving traffic off of your main site.
We are well set up for a content based strategy due to "News" nature of the site. My ownly concern with link building is i've heard that it could potentially negatively effect us.
I am not sure what you mean here. Lnk building is something you should be thinking of even through organically spreading good news and articles that people link to and share on the Net. If you produce an excellent article with an interesting slant on a collectible then it may get added juice and get links.
Or is the risk of link building only really associated with black hat methods?
Link building done well and professionally (as I with the ethics of a professional as opposed to paid) should be part of your marketing plan. Many companies now employ full time Internet marketing experts doing just this as part of their brief. Link building is not equal to black hat.
One last thing. I've been using the Google keyword Tool to judge competition for specific search terms. Is this useful for organic search? Or is it only relevant for PPC?
On accuracy of the Keyword tool irldonalb is right and the tool is inaccurate and should be used along with Insights and some of the tools here on SEOMOZ if you are a member. But it is still a good indicator and shows the level of activity.
It is relevant to both search and PPC. Google never claims for it to be 100% accurate either but it is used by most people these days as on of their go to tools for their keyword research.
Finally it IS worth while reading though here a bit (if you havent done so already for more ideas and tips for your SEO campaign. I visit it regularly and it is one of the best references.
-
Gear your website up onsite correctly first then begin link building so the site can absorb the link equity freely and correctly.
Blackhat methods are your only main concern and Blackhat methods and what to avoid are all over the web, if you just search on Google.
The keyword tool is pretty inaccurate, it can be an indication though, when using it make sure that "Exact" is ticked on the left hand side and not "Broad". I would recommend looking at Google Insights and Trends as well.
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
-
Buy domain, redirect, get all the good links (+link juice) and disavow the spammy ones?
There is a domain for sale that has a quite nice profile and a lot of good backlinks, but also quite a few spammy ones. This domain has a Spam Score of 14% acc. to Moz Link explorer, ours has only 2%. My questions: 1. The domain and the good backlinks are related to or close to our content/keywords. But we are worried whether the "spammy" ones will hurt us. Does anyone has experience with this? 2. Would it help if we disavow the spammy backlinks afterwards? And if so, how do we do that? Add new domain to search console, disavow the bad links and then redirect the entire domain to our domain or redirect the domain first and then disavow from our property? Many thanks for your help!
Link Building | | pissuptours0 -
Does domain authority to pass between countries?
When building dofollow links if the two websites are in different countries is the main authority still passed from the linking site to the destination?
Link Building | | seoman100 -
Transferring inbound links to new domains
Hi, I've recently changed domains and have redirected all traffic from the old site to the new one. The problem is that none of my built links for the old domain are showing up for the new domain (I use moz.com/researchtools/ose/) I've read a few articles saying it's best practice to get in touch with the people that are linking to your old website to let them know the address has changed. When I search for my old domain using moz.com/researchtools/ose/ it says there is 0 established links. I know this isn't the case as I've visited one of the sites that does still list this domain. Is there a way of getting a list of my old domain's backlinks so I can contact them? I didn't make a list before redirecting. Thank you.
Link Building | | charliedavi0 -
.Org domain authority
When it comes to .org domain authority is it more important to be getting the link from a .org regardless of DA, or does their domain authority still have a big impact here? Thanks!
Link Building | | TicketCity0 -
What Domain should I use? - Domain authority question
Hi all, I created a website www.bruadair.com approximately 2 months ago, the website is for a luxury villa. Prior to creating this site the villa website was www.bruadair.co.uk , this website had been live for around 4 years. Now after developing the site and creating optimised content etc, I started my link building strategy to try and increase both the page and domain authority of the site. I used MOZ's open site explorer tool to examine my site and compared it with the old domain (www.bruadair.co.uk), this is was where my question arose. The old site has a domain authority of 16/100 and the home page has a page authority of 26/100. The old domain also had 468 inbound links ( the quality of these are most likely questionable, nofollows etc ). The new site in comparison has 1/100 domain authority and 1/100 page authority with no apparent inbound links. Before I noticed this I had generated a few inbound links to the new site, but Moz had not indexed websites since I had done this therefore it probably wouldn't have shown it in the open site explorer. Basically I have cloned the new site to the old web address and am thinking of using the .co.uk version just due to its existing domain and page authority. Would it be beneficial to swap over to the old site to benefit from the domain authority?? Thanks for any help given! 🙂
Link Building | | Tmgale0 -
External Followed Links in the Competitive Domain Analysis Report
In the Competitive Domain Analysis report, why does the number of my external followed links vary over time. Some weeks its high some weeks it's low. Doesn't seem to be a pattern.
Link Building | | PGD20110 -
What value do external broken links give to a domain?
I ask, as I've just used opensite explorer to look at external links a competitor has, and I've found the high value ones at the top of the list go to a page that no longer exists on their site. Are these stiill of value in the SERP's, or have they messed up by not putting a 301 redirect on them?
Link Building | | xposurecreative0 -
How do I best leverage second EMD domain with same keyword as an important page on my other site?
(Fictional domain names and keywords follow) Let's say I have an Adense site called Diets.com And on that site I've got 10 pages for the ten most popular diets, and each of those pages is optimized for the diet name. Let's imagine one of these pages is called, "The low-carb diet." Then I went out and purchased the domain name LowCarbDiet.com. How do I best use this new domain name? My options seem to be: 1. Build an adsense site on LowCarbDiet.com. But isn't it a problem when the the same owner of LowCardDiet.com and Diets.com are trying to rank for the same keyword? The new site would be trying to rank for "low carb diet" and so would the appropriate page on Diets.com. I think Google doesn't like this. True? 2. Make a one-page introductory informational site with no ads on the new LowCarbDiet.com. Have a prominent link from that site to the appropriate page on Diets.com for the reader to get "further information." This link with the proper anchor text should help boost the page in Diets.com in the SERPs. IF Google doesn't dislike that. SO...is one idea better than the other? Are neither a good idea? Is there a better way to utilize this new domain? It's important because this second domain name's keyword is about to get a huge amount of search traffic. The new, parked domain name is currently registered in the same name as the existing site's name. I could change the registration or privacy it, but I assume Google maintains records of all past registered owners, and if so, I can't really hide ownership.
Link Building | | bizzer0