What is a good domain authority?
Every small business owner is committed to improving its search ranking online. When it comes to doing this there are three tactics you need to explore: local SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO. Each of these tactics will increase your website’s domain authority, therefore increasing your rankings on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. So that begs the question, what is a good domain authority?
While there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to your domain authority, there are some common best practices that you can follow to not only improve your domain authority but where it should be as well.
In this blog, we will answer the question, what is a good domain authority, and offer you 5 tips for how to increase it as well. If you need professional help improving your domain authority score, contact MarketKeep today! After all we are the digital marketing agency for small businesses.
So what is a good domain authority?
The biggest question you have to ask yourself when increasing your search rankings online is what is my domain authority currently, and where does it need to be? In truth, the answer differs for each business owner.
Take for instance Moz’s Domain Authority Scale. Using a grading system from 1 to 100 with 1 being the worst and 100 being the best, you might assume that the closer you are to 100 the better.
In reality, though there is no perfect number because your domain authority ranking is really a comparative metric. Here is what Moz has to say about domain authority.
“A good domain authority score depends on your direct online competition. This competition includes companies that rank in search results for the same keywords as your business. They also have similar business sizes and scales to yours.”
Let’s use this in a real-life example. Let’s say for instance that you own a baby clothing store. You are not going to compare your domain authority to someone like Target right? Target is in a league of its own competing against the likes of Amazon, Walmart, and more. By comparing your domain authority to Target is setting yourself up for failure. By the way here is the domain authority ranking for Target.
See even Target does not have a perfect domain authority ranking!
Instead, you want to be comparing your domain authority to similar baby clothing stores like yourself. That is the same size and is in the same region. A great way to do this is by trying to find the businesses that are ranking for the same keywords as you are.
So in reality, a good domain authority score is based solely on your competition. You want to make sure that you have the highest domain authority score out of your competitors.
If your direct competitors have a score between 40 to 50, a good domain score for your business should be between 55 to 65. It will help ensure that you rank higher than your competitors, and drive more traffic to your website.
How is a domain authority ranking measured?
While each company like Google, Moz and Ahrefs have a different version of a domain ranking and each is secret there are some commonalities between them. There are a few known signals that will boost a website’s domain authority such as
- Link root domains
- Social Signals
- MozRank, Ahrefs Ranking
- Quality Content
- Trust Score
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) friendliness.
5 Tips for improving your domain authority
So now that you know the answer to the question, what is a good domain authority, it is time to start improving on yours!
Keep in mind that when improving your domain authority it is much easier to go from a 20 to a 30 than it is to go from a 70 to 80. In each case though it does take time to optimize your website and get a higher domain ranking.
Follow the best SEO practice – Sounds easy but it is true. If you want to have a good domain authority start by following the best SEO practices. This will help you to improve your rankings in search results while at the same time improve your domain score. Focus on improving your on-page SEO content by optimizing elements such as:
- Title Tags
- Image Alt Tags
- Meta Descriptions
- Focus Keywords
Create linkable content
If you want to increase your domain authority start by creating linkable content. Creating content is an essential role in improving your domain authority score. You will want to invest time and effort into creating great content that people will want to share.
To get started select keywords that are relevant to your business and helps to drive traffic back to your website. From there try to earn links from industry leaders and websites that have a higher domain authority than you do.
Remember when creating content for your website focus on quality over quantity. High-quality content will always perform better than quantity content.
Remove bad link profiles
When trying to earn credible links to your website, you may also start to find links from not so great websites as well. These low domain authority sites will actually hurt your domain authority score.
Use a backlink checker tool such as Ahrefs to see which sites link to your content and start trying to remove these links from your sites. By removing bad and broken links from your website you will start to improve your domain ranking.
Improve Your Internal Linking Process
While many companies focus on external linking (links from other websites back to yours) internal linking is just as important. Internal links keep visitors on your website longer and also improves your overall SEO ranking.
Make your website mobile-friendly
Considering that close to 70% of searches on the internet are from a mobile device, it is no surprise that mobile-friendly websites rank higher. Websites that are mobile-friendly and responsive to different devices have higher domain authority scores and offer a better user experience.
Start Improving Your Domain Authority Today
Well, we hope we answered your question, what is a good domain authority score, and provided you with some tips on how to do so. As you can see while your domain authority is not a direct SEO ranking factor is does serve as a great predictor for how you will rank in search results. By having a good domain authority score you will help your site to rank in better search results.
If you are looking to improve your domain authority score, the team at MarketKeep can help. As the digital marketing agency for small businesses, we offer SEO services that increase your rankings in search results and boost your domain authority at the same time.
To learn more about how we can help boost your domain authority score, contact us online or call us at 410-600-3156 to speak with a team member about our SEO services for small businesses.