Domain Authority is one of the critical aspects of SEO nowadays. So, what exactly is it, and how is it calculated?
Many people worry about their website’s domain authority score, and they should. It’s one of the critical aspects of SEO today, and it allows the website owner to analyze their website’s quality and the likelihood of ranking higher in search engines.
But what exactly is domain authority? How does it work, and how can you check it? These are all good questions that many people look for in search engines. SO, let’s try to answer them in Layman’s terms and understand a few key aspects of domain authority.
What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority is a ranking metric from Moz that measures the quality of a website. It is based on various factors, such as how many high-quality sites link to your site. And, how many other high-quality sites link to the sites you’re using as backlinks.
Now, it’s important to note that Domain Authority can change over time. Hence, it’s essential to monitor it on an ongoing basis. While Google may not consider it directly as a measurement, it’s employed by SEO experts as a means to understand a website’s likelihood to get features on the first few results of SERP.
That’s why many SEO experts treat it as a measurement tool – as it’s meant to be. It helps them analyze the quality of the website, backlinks, absence of spam, scores, etc. In other words, it’s a tool to recognize the quality of a website.
How is Domain Authority Calculated?
We know that domain authority is a score that Moz developed to scan a website for its trustworthiness. The score is calculated using the number of backlinks a website has and the quality of those backlinks.
The score is calculated by adding the number of links and the quality factor, which is determined by how many other sites link to it. This number can range from 0 to 100. However, it’s calculated based on three major elements:
• Backlink Quality
Backlinks are a huge factor in SEO and DA score. Google has been using backlinks for ranking websites for years. It is crucial to have a good DA score and a large number of backlinks to get your website ranked well.
This is what Moz understood and kept as one of the leading pillars of their algorithms—which analyzes a website.
• Spam Score
The spam score is another critical aspect of DA Scores. It measures how suspicious a domain or IP address might be.
It is calculated by analyzing a few factors, such as the number of spammy links to the domain from other domains. Or how many spammy links connect to the domain from IP addresses. And lastly, the number of spammy words on the page.
• Moz Rank
Nowadays, it’s common for SEO experts to figure out the Moz Rank of a website to analyze the backlinking quality. Moz Rank is a metric used to measure a website’s quality.
Moz Rank is determined by analyzing a site’s Domain Authority (DA), Page Authority (PA), and link profile. It also takes into account factors like social media shares, mentions, and popularity. What’s a simple way to remember all this? The higher the Moz Rank score, the better it is for SEO purposes.
How To Check Your Website’s Domain Authority?
Analyzing and understanding DA scores are one thing, but checking them is another. While the latter is undoubtedly easier, it’s an essential part of the process of checking it. So, how exactly do you go about checking your DA scores?
Each of the tools you can use to analyze DA scores will employ a different algorithm. However, you must ensure it features the elements we’ve mentioned before. Such as Spam Score and Moz Rank. So, let’s find out how to check your website’s DR:
• Use A DA PA Checker
The first step is to find a dependable DA PA checker. Preferably something that allows you to check more than one page/domain at a time, so you can analyze scores quickly.
So, once you open a DA checker like this, make sure you paste or write the URL you want to check. Then, once the captcha check is done, check your desired website’s authority.
• Analyze The Score
Once you use the tool, analyze the score that the DA score shows you. It would look like this:
As you can see, Wikipedia has a domain authority of 78, which is surely on the higher spectrum. While there’s a 0 spam score, which is one of the reasons it stands out on the search engine results page.
How Do You Increase DA Score?
Now that you know the DA score of your website, let’s say it’s something around 50-60; how do you increase it? There are three leading practices that SEO experts employ to gain a higher DA score. Here they are:
• Acquire Quality Backlinks
Backlinks are one of the most important aspects of SEO, not only DA scores. They allow search engine crawlers to analyze how well a website is suited for specific results.
Therefore, the first step you will take is to find and acquire quality backlinks from other high-rated domains. Then, you also need to interlink your content within the domain.
• Reduce Page-Loading Speeds
Page-loading speeds are one of the essential aspects of user experience, but they also play a vital role in DA scores. The quicker a search engine crawler goes through your website, the easier it will be to index it. That’s why your website needs to be optimized for various devices and higher page-loading speeds.
• Remove Orphaned Pages
Orphaned pages are the ones that aren’t connected to other pages on a website. These pages can often cause the spam score to go higher, reducing your DA scores. Therefore, removing them should also be one of your priorities.
Conclusion
Here’s hoping all these aspects of domain authority answer any questions you have regarding it. Follow the approach mentioned later, and you’ll see that your domain is counted among those with higher ranks.
