What is domain authority?
Domain authority (DA) is a 1 to 100 score created by the SEO software company Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank, based mostly on the links pointing to it.
Moz calculates DA mainly from the number and quality of other websites that link to yours. Your content quality and social media shares are not direct inputs.
Websites with high DA scores tend to rank well, because the strong links that raise DA also help Google find and trust a site. A high DA does not cause higher rankings on its own, and no single score is a shortcut to more traffic.
(Image Credit: Digital Third Coast)
Do search engines use domain authority to rank websites?
No, Google does not use Moz’s domain authority score to rank websites.
Google’s own guide to how Search works says it shows the results it believes are the highest quality and most relevant to each search, judged by hundreds of factors. DA is a third-party estimate of a site’s ranking strength, so a higher DA does not guarantee a higher spot in search results.
How does domain authority affect SEO?
Domain authority does not change your search engine optimization (SEO) results directly, but it is a useful way to compare your site’s link strength with competitors.
A high DA score usually means many reputable sites already link to a website, and those links are what actually help in search.
Why does domain authority matter?
Domain authority matters because it gives you a quick benchmark for whether your site’s backlinks are keeping up with competitors.
Search engines don’t use DA, but they do pay attention to the links behind it. Tracking DA over time shows whether your site is earning links from reputable websites. Domain authority also helps you decide if you should focus on improving your site’s content, backlinks, or both.
Treat DA as a progress gauge, not a goal in itself.
Does a higher domain authority mean higher rankings?
A higher domain authority often goes along with higher rankings, but DA does not cause them.
There has been a lot of controversy within the SEO world regarding DA, how it affects rankings, and whether or not it is a reliable source. One main issue is that many people treat DA as a Google score, when DA is actually a prediction made by Moz.
To understand how domain authority works, you need to know how rankings are determined on Google search results pages. When you search on Google, Google uses various factors, such as keywords and links, to decide which sites should rank in the top spots of search results. Links from other websites are one of those factors and have been part of Google’s approach since its early days. Google does not publish how much weight links carry compared with content and relevance.
Does domain authority affect how easily Google crawls your site?
No, Google does not look at DA when crawling, but the links that raise DA also help Google discover your pages.
Google finds new pages in two main ways: by following links from pages it already knows, and by reading the sitemaps that site owners submit, as its Search guide explains. A site with few links pointing to it can still be crawled well if it has an up-to-date sitemap and clear links between its own pages.
If Google cannot crawl a page, Google cannot judge how relevant that page is, and the page is unlikely to rank. Fixing crawl problems, such as broken links or pages blocked by mistake, does more for crawling than chasing a higher DA.
How do you increase your domain authority?
You increase domain authority by earning links from relevant, reputable websites, which usually starts with publishing content worth linking to.
There are many methods of increasing domain authority scores, but it is essential to remember that there is no one way that will work for every site. It is important to try more than one approach and experiment with different tactics until you find the ones that work best for your site.
To increase your domain authority, you must ensure that every page on your website has unique content and is well optimized. Using the same content across multiple pages could cause search engine spiders to see all your pages as duplicates.
Duplicate pages make it harder for search engines to tell which page is relevant for a search, and they give other sites less reason to link to you. It is also essential to ensure that every page has relevant keywords and long-tail phrases throughout its content, especially if you are trying to rank for specific keyword groups.
If you create reliable content that is well optimized, it will be easier for search engines to crawl your site. Websites with high-quality, well-optimized content tend to earn more links over time, and those links are what raise DA.
What are 11 ways to increase domain authority?
The 11 ways below focus on better content, a healthier website and links you earn honestly, plus tracking DA so you can see what works.
Increasing domain authority and learning how to reduce spam score doesn’t have to be complicated. We’ve compiled a list of our top 11 tips for increasing domain authority and your overall website health:
1. Use Diverse Anchor Text
If you are linking to different pages on your site and other sites, you should use different anchor texts instead of a long string of the same ones.
2. Incorporate Keyword-Optimized Content
The content that you are writing should be keyword optimized so that the keywords appear throughout your content. Keyword optimization covers the title tags and descriptions of each page and the textual content of each page. If you are ranking well on Google, it is essential to ensure that your site’s rankings are not negatively affected by the wrong keywords used throughout your site. There are many keyword research tools to help with this process, for instance:
(Image Credit: Semrush)
3. Incorporate Sections
If you are creating different pages for different topics that are all relevant, then it will be easier for search engines to crawl your site with ease. It is also essential to ensure each section has an appropriate title tag and summary.
4. Build a Strong Website
Your efforts to increase DA won’t be nearly as successful if you don’t have a robust website. A high-quality website that is updated regularly with fresh content and good, quality links pointing to it will help increase your DA. Using a website health checker can give you vital information about your website.
5. Support Your DA With On-Site Optimization
On-site optimization does not raise DA directly, because DA is based on links. Good on-page SEO, such as clear page titles, image alt text and meta descriptions, helps search engines understand your pages and makes those pages more useful for other sites to link to.
6. List Your Business in Reputable Directories
Listings in relevant, well-run directories, such as your local chamber of commerce or a trusted industry association, can send visitors and links to your site. Older directories like the Yahoo Directory and DMOZ (the Open Directory) have closed, and Google’s spam policies list links from low-quality directory or bookmark sites as link spam. Skip any directory that exists only to hand out links.
7. Pitch Real Stories to News Outlets
Local newspapers, trade publications and community news sites often link to the businesses they cover. Pitch a genuine story, such as a new location, a local event or useful data from your industry, rather than simply asking for a link.
8. Write Guest Articles for Relevant Sites
Writing helpful articles for respected sites in your industry can earn links and new readers. Google’s spam policies count guest posts and press releases with keyword-optimized links as link spam, so use natural link text and don’t pay for a placement unless the link is marked as sponsored.
9. Take Part in Industry Forums
Answering questions in forums and online communities where your customers spend time can build trust and send visitors to your site. Google’s spam policies treat forum posts or signatures packed with optimized links as spam, so share a link only when it genuinely answers the question. Most forum links don’t raise DA, so treat forums as a way to reach people rather than a link source.
10. Track Your DA
Moz’s Link Explorer and other SEO tools show your site’s DA. Checking DA regularly shows whether your content and outreach are earning new links. Make sure you learn how to reduce spam scores or use a website health checker to track your spam score for you. For example:
(Image Credit: Hubspot Blog)
11. Ongoing Evaluation
Monitor your DA regularly so you spot changes early. If your site is doing well, keep using these strategies and test new ones. A website health checker can do the bulk of this monitoring for you.
Is domain authority a Google ranking factor?
No, domain authority is a Moz metric, and Google does not use it as a ranking factor.
DA is a way for SEO tools to estimate whether one website is likely to outrank another. Google uses its own systems to judge quality and relevance, and no DA number decides where a site ranks.
What other SEO scores should you know?
Besides domain authority, the scores you’ll see most often are Majestic’s Trust Flow and Citation Flow, Moz’s Page Authority and Moz’s Spam Score.
What is a good spam score? How to increase my domain authority? What is topical trust flow and how to monitor mine? The scores below can help answer those questions, and every one of them comes from an SEO tool company, not from Google:
Topical Trust Flow
Topical Trust Flow is a score from the SEO tool company Majestic that rates how trustworthy a site’s links are within a particular topic, such as health or sports. Trust Flow looks at the quality of the sites linking to you, while DA looks at the overall strength of your link profile. Neither score is based on keywords.
Citation Flow
Citation Flow is Majestic’s measure of how much link influence a site has, based on the number of links pointing to it rather than their quality. Comparing Citation Flow with Trust Flow helps show whether a site has many links but few trustworthy ones.
Domain Authority
Domain authority is Moz’s 1 to 100 prediction of how well a whole website is likely to rank, based mainly on the links pointing to it. DA does not directly affect your rankings on any search engine.
Page Authority
Page Authority is Moz’s 1 to 100 score that predicts how well a single page, rather than a whole site, is likely to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). Page Authority works like DA but scores one page at a time.
What is Spam Score?
Spam Score is a Moz metric that estimates the share of sites with similar features that Google has penalized or banned, and search engines do not use it to rank sites.
Learning how to reduce spam score is vital for the health of any website. A high Spam Score is a warning sign to check your links and content, not a penalty in itself. Moz bases the score on features it found to be common among sites that Google penalized.
Spammers are people that create websites that don’t provide any value for users. Spammers try to convince users to click on their websites through deceptive methods and fake advertising. Some of the most popular ways are fake affiliate links and pop-up ads.
Google runs its own spam detection and publishes spam policies that describe tactics, such as buying links or excessive link exchanges, that can push a site lower in results or out of them entirely. Moz’s Spam Score is an outside estimate, not part of Google’s system.
(Image Credit: Reputio)
How to Reduce Spam Score Rating
Learning how to reduce a spam score can seem overwhelming. However, it is essential to do everything you can to minimize the spam content on your website. The easiest ways to do so are highlighted below:
- Unique Content: The main thing you can do to help lower your score is to ensure that every page on your website has unique content. Using duplicate content across multiple pages can cause your site to be flagged as spam, resulting in a higher spam score.
- Link Building: Earn links from relevant, reputable sites to the pages that matter most. Quality links help your site in search, but Spam Score is based on signals about your own site, not on the sites linking to you.
- Optimize Your Website: Another way to help lower your score is to ensure that each page on your website is well optimized. Every page should have relevant keywords and content throughout the entire page. Clear, well-optimized pages make it easier for search engines to determine what each page is about and whether the page is relevant to users.
- Limit Pop-ups: Avoid pop-ups that cover your content. Google says intrusive pop-ups and interstitials make it hard for search engines to understand your content and may lead to poor search performance.
- Ensure All Pages are Crawlable: Keep a clean robots.txt file so you don’t accidentally block pages you want found. Search engines can’t crawl pages your robots.txt file blocks, so they can’t read what’s on those pages.
- Remove Bot Comments: Ensure there are no bot comments on your website. Spammy comments stuffed with links make a site look neglected, and Google treats them as user-generated spam.
- Update Sitemap Regularly: Keep your XML sitemap up to date and submit it in Google Search Console or list it in your robots.txt file, as Google’s sitemap guide explains. A sitemap helps Google find your pages, though Google treats a sitemap as a hint rather than a guarantee.
- Increasing Domain Authority: The links that raise DA, from relevant and reputable sites, are the same kind that keep your link profile healthy. DA and Spam Score are separate Moz metrics, so improving one does not automatically fix the other.
Moz updates Spam Score quarterly, and the score only changes when Moz detects changes to the 27 signals it measures, so no single change guarantees a lower score, higher domain authority or more traffic. Below you’ll find how Moz rates Spam Score, followed by tools that can help you track both scores.
What is a good spam score? Moz groups Spam Score into three ranges:
- A score of 1%-30% is considered a Low Spam Score.
- A score of 31%-60% is considered a Medium Spam Score.
- A score of 61%-100% is considered a High Spam Score.
A high Spam Score for your site, or a site you’re looking at, doesn’t mean the site is necessarily spammy.
Which SEO tools can track domain authority and spam score?
Moz, Semrush, Ahrefs and SpyFu all show link data, and each tool uses its own authority score, so compare numbers only within the same tool.
You can use several effective SEO tools to maximize your search engine optimization. Each tool helps you research keywords and links, but none of them can guarantee rankings or traffic.
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Semrush
Semrush lets you see what keywords your competitors rank for, how many backlinks your website has, the estimated traffic each page gets, and much more. Semrush also provides a visual report to help you determine the quality of content on your website.
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Ahrefs
Ahrefs shows how many backlinks you and your competitors have, which sites link to you, and much more. Ahrefs scores sites with its own Domain Rating instead of DA.
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Moz
Moz created domain authority, so Moz’s Link Explorer is where you’ll find the official DA and Spam Score for any site, along with keyword competition data.
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SpyFu
SpyFu shows what keywords your competitors rank for and buy ads on, plus estimated traffic for their pages, which makes SpyFu handy for comparing paid search and SEO.
How can diib help you increase domain authority?
diib tracks your backlinks, keywords and technical health in one dashboard and tells you in plain English what to fix next.
So, what is a good spam score and how do you go about increasing domain authority? We hope we’ve given you some good information to answer these and many more questions. Good SEO is not only about getting your site to rank higher in a search engine. Good SEO is about making sure that your website provides relevant content for users. SEO is constantly changing because search engines are continually improving their relevancy algorithms. diib keeps track of the latest algorithm changes and Google updates for you.
The diib dashboard shows current information about your website, flags search algorithm changes that may affect you and suggests how to respond. Here are a few of the features that you’re sure to appreciate:
- Bounce rate monitoring
- Facebook and Instagram Insights, plus YouTube video performance
- Broken pages where you have backlinks (404 checker)
- Keyword (including snippets), backlink, and indexing monitoring and tracking tools
- Core Web Vitals monitoring
- Technical SEO monitoring
Click here for your free 60 second site scan.
