Are you a seasoned blogger or social influencer? Or perhaps you're just starting out? Either way, you will probably come across the phrase "domain authority" and before long have the desire to increase your domain authority...But why?
What is a Domain Authority?
In a nutshell, your domain authority represents your "influence" across the internet. In layman's terms, it's a way of ranking how useful your site is to others.
It helps with your Google rankings and often, it'll be attractive to brands or businesses who may want to work with you.
It's a ranking on a scale of 1-100, with 100 being the best! FYI - a good solid DA is between 30-40 (not many sites near the 100 so don't worry!).
It's largely based on linking and how many good external links you have back to your site. It's not something that can be influenced directly by you necessarily.
You may have been approached or seen opportunities from brands, advertised as "only apply if your DA is 25 or above" or something along those lines- which basically means they want to work with bloggers who are deemed more influential across the web and it's one way of defining this (not the only way, I hasten to add!).
How can I find my Domain Authority Ranking?
Your Domain Authority, or 'DA' can be found using online tools such as this one. It'll give you a few other useful anaytics too.
IT'S WORTH MENTIONING HERE, THAT YOU CAN ONLY HAVE A DOMAIN AUTHORITY IF YOU OWN YOUR DOMAIN NAME (IE. YOU HAVE PURCHASED YOUR URL).
It's worth purchasing a good, relevant domain name too, as that'll help your DA.
How to increase your Domain Authority:
Here are just a few ways to increase your domain authority and are really, good practice anyway when writing your blog posts:
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Write awesome content!
This by far, should be your number 1 goal anyway! It helps in all aspects of blogging and social rankings. Just write awesome sh*t that people want to read and it'll naturally get shared loads and linked back-to from other sites. The more links you have back from external sites, the higher your DA is going to be.
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Get sh*t how with SEO!
Again, this should eventually come naturally. Concentrate on your key words, meta tags, alt tags, headers, word count etc. and make sure they are as good as they can be! This, combined with awesome content, will seriously improve your DA score.
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Link internally!
It's not just awesome back-links from external sources you need to think about. Link to your own content too! Seems silly to have written that awesome article a year ago, destined never to be read again doesn't it? Well write an update on that post and link back to the original one. Or if you're writing about a healthy diet and you posted a recipe a few months ago, link to it from your post. Internal linking is really important.
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Ensure your site is mobile-friendly!
I don't need to explain why, it just makes sense to do it! Not sure if your site is mobile-friendly? You can test it here.
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Share, share and share again!
Why create fabulous blog posts, if no-one reads them? You should want to share your content across your social anyway, but it helps your DA too! Think about adding "social share buttons" to the bottom of your posts or on your website, to encourage and make it easy for others to share your content. Link back to your blog posts from your social posts too and encourage those that share, to include these links.
In case you need a bit of quick-reference help, I've created this infographic check-list to help you increase your domain authority score:
If you like it, share it!
