What are the best ways of improving our domain authority?
-
My site's domain authority has gone down by a few points recently. What the best ways of increasing it? It's currently 29 out of 100. What is a good domain authority number?
-
I'll chime in on the '**what is a good domain number authority'. **
I hope this is an obvious point... There's no magic number. I would suggest that it depends on your vertical, and the keywords for which you are trying to rank. Quick tip - use the SEOmoz SERP overlay tool . When you're doing searches for your target keywords, you can get a quick/rough idea of the type of domain authority/number of linking root domains that will be necessary to be in the conversation for page 1 rankings.
-
It is likely that your domain authority went down because the size of the index used by OSE shrank significantly. Last month they indexed about 72 billion URLs, compared to 150 billion the month before. This month they indexed even less, something like 68 billion URLs.
If some of your backlinks weren't indexed this time, you'll lose domain authority. There's not a lot you can do about the index shrinking, unless you can provide a few million dollars worth of Hardware for SEOmoz to use.
-
Links from other authoritative sites that are relavent and/or entertaining to your audience will help you gain authority. As long as the users that get to your site and like what they see, share what they see (give you an endorsement) and or bookmark it, you gain authority. Think of it from a user perspective, if you entertain them, educate them, or offer them something of interest they will naturally link to your site.
The anchors to your site must look natural as well. be sure that your inbound links are built mostly of your URL or brand name.
-
Agree with Greg. Also, links from well linked sites typically help the most (as I'm sure everyone knows).
-
The more linking Root Domains you have, the higher the authority grows.
Obtaining 100 links from the same websites is no were near as valuable as 100 links from 100 different websites. This will improve your Domain Authority.
Greg
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
-
Do we lose Backlinks and Domain Authority of URL when we change domain Name?
Have 1 performing domain (Monthly - 4M visitor ) now we want to change domain name ( Brand name like SEOMOZ to Moz ). I have general knowledge about domain changing prevention tips like 301 redirection and other thing. My concern is about backlinks and DA. How can I prevent any lose from SEO Point of view. (backlink lose) Do I need to change all backlink form source or redirection is enough to get all reference traffic from that backlinks?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Buying domains for the backlink profile: Still a white hat strategy?
There's a DR 51 domain we'd like to buy, with a quality backlink profile. We'd like to 301 redirect this domain to our DR 46 domain, and possibly setup something to make the user experience smooth for people expecting the old domain. Is this still a white hat strategy? How would you calculate the value/what kind of offer to make?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | catbur0 -
Keyword + Location domains
Hi All, Just wanted to get everyones opinions on this, I see it more and more now where businesses own multiple domains for [keyword] + [location], they have multiple domains for different locations and setup individual sites on them. I see these types of domains rank very easily for medium competition keywords, as long as the on page is good and there are a handful of back links, they rank. just to clarify, for example - iphonerepairmanchester.co.uk (purely an example not sure how this site ranks!!) What are Googles views on this? I've always insisted its better to build a strong brand with the "real" business rather than creating extra websites named by keywords. But I've recently had a client want to pursue this and it seems it currently works, but is there a danger down the line Google will penalise it? The short term traffic increase is undeniable but like anything in the world of Google at the moment, I'd rather persuade clients not to go this route if it will protect future interests.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gamnaking10 -
Buying a domain vs. renting a domain
I am considering buying and redirecting a domain that has a pretty strong, relevant link profile. However, it's very expensive. There is another option to rent the domain on a month-to-month basis. I am interested in doing this for at least a month just to see what SEO benefits are to be had and if it would ultimately be worth buying or not. Can renting a domain have any negative impacts on my primary site? Would the search engines know if I did this? Is there any harm in having those redirects appear and then disappear?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jampaper0 -
Keyword Rich Domains on Same IP
In addition to my main website, I want to create two new sites for the upcoming football and basketball seasons. By starting now, I'm thinking I have enough time to get them ranked decently. I have purchased www.collegefootballpredictions.net for the upcoming football seasons. The intent here is two fold. First, I'd like to rank in the top 3 for "College Football Predictions." Second, and this is why I'm thinking that Google won't hate me for the approach, is that someone looking for that search term is much more likely to convert on a landing page geared for them then on my main website. If the goal of a separate website is truly to compliment the main website, then is it considered white hat? I'm thinking that, as long as my intentions are pure, they should go on the same IP. Placing them on separate IPs could be a good way of letting the big G know that I'm trying to cheat the system and get away with it.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PatrickGriffith0 -
Merging four sites into one... Best way to combine content?
First of all, thank you in advance for taking the time to look at this. The law firm I work for once took a "more is better" approach and had multiple websites, with keyword rich domains. We are a family law firm, but we have a specific site for "Arizona Child Custody" as one example. We have four sites. All four of our sites rank well, although I don't know why. Only one site is in my control, the other three are managed by FindLaw. I have no idea why the FindLaw sites do well, other than being in the FindLaw directory. They have terrible spammy page titles, and using Copyscape, I realize that most of the content that FindLaw provides for it's attorneys are "spun articles." So I have a major task and I don't know how to begin. First of all, since all four sites rank well for all of the desired phrases-- will combining all of that power into one site rocket us to stardom? The sites all rank very well now, even though they are all technically terrible. Literally. I would hope that if I redirect the child custody site (as one example) to the child custody overview page on the final merged site, we would still maintain our current SERP for "arizona child custody lawyer." I have strongly encouraged my boss to merge our sites for many reasons. One of those being that it's playing havoc with our local places. On the other hand, if I take down the child custody site, redirect it, and we lose that ranking, I might be out of a job. Finally, that brings me down to my last question. As I mentioned, the child custody site is "done" very poorly. Should I actually keep the spun content and redirect each and every page to a duplicate on our "final" domain, or should I redirect each page to a better article? This is the part that I fear the most. I am considering subdomains. Like, redirecting the child custody site to childcustody.ourdomain.com-- I know, for a fact, that will work flawlessly. I've done that many times for other clients that have multiple domains. However, we have seven areas of practice and we don't have 7 nice sites. So child custody would be the only legal practice area that has it's own subdomain. Also, I wouldn't really be doing anything then, would I? We all know 301 redirects work. What I want is to harness all of this individual power to one mega-site. Between the four sites, I have 800 pages of content. I need to formulate a plan of action now, and then begin acting on it. I don't want to make the decision alone. Anybody care to chime in? Thank you in advance for your help. I really appreciate the time it took you to read this.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SDSLaw0 -
Retail Site and Internal Linking Best Practices
I am in the process of recreating my company's website and, in addition to the normal retail pages, we are adding a "learn" section with user manuals, reviews, manufacturer info, etc. etc. It's going to be a lot of content and there will be linking to these "learn" pages from both products and other "learn" pages. I read on a SEOmoz blog post that too much internal linking with optimized anchor text can trigger down-rankings from Google as a penalty. Well, we're talking about having 6-8 links to "learn" pages from product pages and interlinking many times within the "learn" pages like Wikipedia does. And I figured they would all have optimized text because I think that is usually best for the end user (I personally like to know that I am clicking on "A Review of the Samsung XRK1234" rather than just "A Review of Televisions"). What is best practice for this? Is there a suggested limit to the number of links or how many of them should have optimized text for a retail site with thousands of products? Any help is greatly appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Marketing.SCG0 -
Possibly a dumb question - 301 from a banned domain to new domain with NEW content
I was wondering if banned domains pass any page rank, link love, etc. My domain got banned and I AM working to get it unbanned, but in the mean time, would buying a new domain, and creating NEW content that DOES adhere to the google quality guidelines, help at all? Would this force an 'auto-evaluation' or 're-evaluation' of the site by google? or would the new domain simply have ZERO effect from the 301 unless that old domain got into google's good graces again.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ilyaelbert0