In today's business world, there is exponential growth in the number of web pages available on the internet, and it's no surprise that many of these are the result of budding entrepreneurs having a go at an e-commerce site. You are most likely reading this because you are one of those 10's of thousands of people with a dream to succeed online.
You've probably seen an ad or two on social media talking about making money via e-commerce, or you came across some e-commerce terms or phrases like "dropshipping" in your online travels.
We all start this journey thinking it will be as simple as building a website, and the sales will come. What we aren't told though is that to compete with all the existing businesses, and the new ones coming online every day, we need to work hard, real hard.
It’s no secret that every business in the world is trying its hardest to get ahead of its competitors, both in bricks and mortar stores, and online in search engine results. Oh, to be that business that ranks position number #1 on google search results, it's a dream come true.
One of the primary ways to measure our performance against our competitors, and improve our chances of ranking number one for our niche, is to look at a key useful metric called Domain Authority.
What Is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority, abbreviated to DA for short, is essentially a measure of a website’s relevance or quality with respect to the niche it represents. The higher a website's domain authority, the better the chances of the website finding its way up the rankings for keywords related to its niche.
The term was initially developed by MOZ, and it uses a series of algorithms to predict an overall score for the ability of a website to perform competitively against other websites in your niche in search engine results pages (SERP's).
Domain Authority of a website by MOZ uses a score range from 1 to 100 with a higher DA indicating a higher chance of ranking in search engine results. A website with a good domain authority score will, in almost all cases, ranking higher than a website with a low DA.
Industry "standards" consider a DA between 40 and 50 to be considered average, 50 and 60 is considered good domain authority, while anything over 60 is considered excellent, however, MOZ states "Because the Domain Authority metric is relative, there is no such thing as a good, average, or bad score, there are only results that are good, average, or bad when compared to other entities in a particular competitive landscape."
What is Page Authority?
When it comes to calculating a Page Authority (PA) score, Moz utilizes over forty different ranking factors. These ranking factors include things like the number of quality backlinks pointing to the page and the overall quality and relevance of the content that has been written.
There are other contributing factors, like keyword density, traffic, and user behavior that are also considered.
Using the Moz custom algorithm, each page is given a Page Authority score that is generated using a 100 point system, just like Domain Authority.
Pages with a PA score of 90 or better are consider A+ ranking, while a low PA score would signify the need for additional SEO work on that specific page, both in on-page areas like content quality and off-page aspects such as link building for that page.
Why DA Is Important?
Your website's Domain Authority is important to you because it is a good measuring tool to show how the work you are putting in with SEO is helping you rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).
It is a measure of your website's credibility when it comes to search engines. Remember, search engines are businesses too, and the primary purpose of search engines is to provide the best search engine results pages (SERPs) to their customers to keep them coming back, and so its important for search engines to understand which are the best websites to put at the top of the results lists, using the Google ranking factor, and which ones to put further down the list.
By being able to see how you compare to your competition with a simple score, you can work on how to improve your website. This can be done using a number of SEO strategies, including building a backlink profile by getting high quality backlinks from websites with high domain authority or search engine credibility, writing excellent and relevant content on your own website, writing articles for other websites that have links back to your website, and a range of other SEO strategies.
A link from a website with high Domain Authority is always going to be more valuable (better "link juice") than a link from a site with a low Domain Authority, and understanding where your website sits with respect to Domain Authority in your industry will help you determine where you should be searching for backlink and guest post opportunities.
How Is Your DA Score Calculated?
According to MOZ:
"The calculation of a domain's DA score comes from a machine learning algorithm’s predictions about how often Google is using a particular domain in its search results. If domain A is more likely to appear in a Google SERP than domain B is, then we would expect domain A's DA to be higher than domain B's DA." (Source: MOZ.com)
As a result of these machine learning calculations, your DA score will regularly change, as variations and quantities of data points will create differences in the result. For example, if a large organisation like Facebook was to acquire a significant number of new links, every other website's Domain Authority would drop. This is because the more established and authoritative domains like Facebook will have much larger link profiles, and they take up more of the higher Domain Authority positions, leaving fewer opportunities at the top end of the scale for other sites with smaller and/or less robust link profiles. As a result, it is important to only use the Domain Authority score as a comparative value rather than an absolute one."
MOZ uses lots of different factors to calculate your score, with the following list being some of the more important factors MOZ will suggest you consider:
Linking Root Domains - The total number of unique backlinks to your website. Note: Two or more links from the same external website will only be counted as one linking root domain.
MozRank - A metric used to calculate a score of the strength of your websites external links to other sites.
MozTrust - A metric used to determine the overall quality of your websites external links.
Quality Content - Great content is king, so the quality of your website’s content is a factor in determining your websites DA.
Social Signals - Just like Google and other search engines, MOZ uses social signals to identify good quality web content.
Search Engine Friendliness - This includes the use of Search Engine Optimisation, as well as the overall structure and user friendliness of your website.
MOZ Tools You Can Use
Domain Authority scores are available in the following MOZ tools and features:
Domain Analysis - a website authority checker
Link Explorer - a backlink analysis tool
MozBar - a free chrome extension to install
Keyword Explorer - in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) analysis section
How To Improve Your Domain Authority
Listed below are a few different ways you can increase your Domain Authority.
Choose A Good Domain Name
If you are just starting out, consider that it's important to choose a good, easy to remember domain name that is not only relevant to your website, but short, and easy for your customers to read and remember.
Optimize Your Website Content For SEO Using Keyword Research
Optimising your website isn’t just for Google search engine ranking, or for your Domain Authority, its also about making content on your website relevant, interesting and readable for your customers. Do lots of keyword research to understand how you can write high-quality content that will be found and clicked on. Each page of content you write will be assessed by its Page Authority. The more pages you have with good page authority, the better your DA will be.
Do this, and you will improve your website's Domain Authority, and find yourself higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Maximise your chances of improving your DA by making sure that your entire website content is fully optimised including your title tags, meta descriptions, and image alt tags.
Ensure Your Pages Are Indexed On Google
If Google cant see your website's pages, then Google doesn't know your website exists. Google uses your sitemap to understand what pages are on your site, kind of like a list of content. You need to make sure your sitemap has been created and uploaded to Google.
Shopify automatically creates a sitemap for you, and it can be found at www.yourwebsitesname.com/sitemap.xml
To upload your sitemap to Google, you can do this through Google Search Console.
This will give Google the start of your website map, but as you add, update or remove content, this map will change, and as such so too will the pages Google needs to see. The best way to add your new pages is to use the URL inspection section of Google Search Console, to check whether a page has been indexed. If not, you can request it to be indexed, and this will generally mean it is indexed faster than waiting for Google to come around to your site again and check your sitemap.
We can step you through this, or do this for you if required, just contact us for a quote.
Improve Your Internal Links
Internal links are just about as important as external links. Internal links help to redirect your website visitors to different areas of your website, and by having an easily accessible and relevant internal link, it will help with their experience on your site. Internal links also help keep visitors on-site and engaged for a longer time, so they are more likely to convert from just visitors to actual customers.
Create Linkable Content Outside Your Website
If you are out in the market place creating brand awareness for your business, you will be posting in forums, contributing guest posts on similar sites and responding to queries and comments on social media. By creating good content that shows you as an authority on the subject in these situations, and you can use links in this content back to your website to demonstrate a point, refer to an article you have in your blog, or pitch a product to sell. These inbound links form part of your link profile and help build organic traffic to your site. The more good quality content you can produce, the better the chances that others will link to your content too. So too, by increasing your presence and demonstrating your knowledge within your industry, you will build your reputation as an authority. Not only does this help increase traffic, but it also helps increase the number of external links coming to your site.
Remove Toxic and Bad Backlinks
Occasionally someone is going to link to you from a poor quality website. Some of these sites already have Googles attention as spammy sites, so its best to remove them. Bad or toxic backlinks can have the opposite effect of good backlinks, and actually hurt your Domain Authority and your Google rankings.
This can be done by using the disavow tool in Google Search Console, but must be used with caution, as you dont want to accidentally disavow good backlinks.
Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile Optimised And Friendly
More people are now using mobile devices to browse the internet. If your site isn't mobile friendly, you are definitely missing out, and this is only going to get worse for you the longer you leave it.
Improve Your Website Speed
People wont sit around and wait for your website to load. If they think its slow, they are gone, increasing your bounce rate. This may require employing a web developer to investigate how to improve your page, as many of the improvements will be behind the scenes in the the code.
Consider Using Some Professional SEO Tools
There is a lot to do when it comes to SEO and domain authority. A lot can be done using the Google tools available, however if you want to maximise your efficiency and have as much of the tools required in one place, then a professional software package like semrush or ahrefs would be the go.
These can be quite expensive, so I would suggest spending the time doing it the long way as you start your business, but as it grows and you can afford to splash out on some good SEO tools, these are the way to go.
Conclusion
Don’t neglect your Domain Authority or your Page Authority, because is an important comparison tool to measure your performance against your competitors, and helps you track your business growth and development.
Comments