One of the most frequent questions we get asked here at Diib® is “how to increase my domain authority?” Our short answer is backlinks. Backlinks are a powerful aspect of off-page SEO (search engine optimization) that boosts your website in search engine rankings. However, what sites you link to can make a huge difference concerning how much “link juice” you get; some can even harm your website’s ranking. You will also need to be mindful of the toxicity and spam scores of the website you’re linking from. These are just a few of the factors that play a part in determining what US domain authority you should be backlinking to.

While off-page SEO is more complex these days, it’s actually for the better. The strategy of spamming hundreds of backlinks to your site is dead, and a more strategic approach is needed. Ultimately, this change means working smarter, not harder, when it comes to off-page SEO. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at what SEO is and how it works so that you can get a clear picture of what domain authority you should backlink to in order to boost your rankings.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a method used to boost the ranking of websites and web pages in search engines like Google, Bing, and others. The purpose of this strategy is to increase “organic traffic,” which is traffic that consists of people actively searching for whatever your website is about. For example, if you have a website selling mufflers, you want people searching for mufflers to land on your site and make a purchase.

The significant benefit of organic traffic is that many of these people are already in a buying mindset. This means that conversions will be higher once they land on your website. As you can imagine, sites and pages that rank higher in the search engine results get a larger portion of this valuable “buyer-ready” traffic and can profit greatly from it.

Many factors determine how your website and its pages are ranked in the search engine results. Here is a quick list of the most critical factors that you should be aware of:

• Mobile friendly design
• Load speed
• Keyword density
• Internal linking structure
• External links
• Backlinks
• Intuitive navigation
• High-quality content
• Website security

Some of these factors, such as how fast your web pages load, fall under the category of “on-page” SEO. Others, such as backlinks, fall under the “off-page” SEO category. To develop an effective SEO strategy, it’s essential to understand the difference between the two and how they play their part in boosting your website’s rankings.

On-Page SEO vs. Off-Page SEO

(Image Credit: WordStream)

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is anything that you do on your site that affects your search engine ranking. This applies to keyword density, navigation, and making sure your site is mobile-friendly. On-page SEO is time-consuming but very easy to control and optimize. There is no reason any business owner should avoid optimizing their website for on-page SEO.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO consists of factors that affect your search engine rankings from external sources. The most well-known form of off-page SEO is backlinks. This is when another site links to your own site and, in doing so, affects your search engine ranking. Brick-and-mortar businesses make heavy use of this by listing their business in various business directories online and with services like Google Maps.

So, which is more powerful, on-page or off-page SEO? The answer is complicated. On-page SEO is essential for any SEO strategy. Without it, your campaign will be sunk before it even begins. On the other hand, off-page SEO has the potential to be more powerful. This is especially true when geo-targeting SEO is needed for businesses with physical locations. Linking to the correct website with a good backlink domain authority while avoiding backlinks that increase your toxicity and spam scores is very important. Done wrong, off-page SEO can do more harm than good.

Why Backlinking is so Powerful

To understand why backlinking is such a powerful off-page SEO tactic to improve your US domain authority, it’s vital to first grasp what the concept of “authority” means. When another website links to yours, you can think of it as an endorsement. For example, if your next-door neighbor told you that you’re a good basketball player, that’s a nice compliment. However, if Michael Jordan or Lebron James told you that you’re a good basketball player, their opinion would carry much more weight or “authority.”

It’s the same with backlinking. Getting a link from a high-authority website will give your site much more link juice than one from an obscure website with little to no authority. In fact, one high-authority backlink can be worth hundreds of low-authority backlinks. This means that off-page SEO strategies now focus more heavily on the quality of their backlinks rather than the quantity. As a result, the backlink farms of the 2000s are dead, and attempting to boost your site with hundreds or thousands of low-quality backlinks will eventually harm your search engine rankings.

***Did you know??

• An Ahrefs study found that 43.7% of top ranking pages in Google contain reciprocal links (Ahrefs)
• Companies who engage in blogging receive 97% more backlinks to their site (Hubspot)

Domain Authority

Domain authority, or the backlink domain authority, is the most crucial factor in developing an effective backlinking strategy. Each backlink should first and foremost be looked at regarding the authority of the website you’ll be linking from. The greater the website’s authority, the more of a boost your site will receive in the search engine rankings.

A website’s US domain authority score can be checked using various tools online. Generally speaking, a score between 40 to 50 is considered average, while a score of over 60 is excellent. Does this mean you should always aim to get backlinks from sites with domain authority scores over 60? You should try, but it isn’t always possible. There is nothing wrong with getting backlinks from sites with average domain authority scores. Backlinking from sites with scores below 40 might be a waste of time unless your link is driving decent amounts of traffic directly from that site to yours.

(Image Credit: Digital Third Coast)

Toxic Score & Spam Score

The algorithms that analyze backlinks and determine their power have become more sophisticated in recent years. Not only do they check the domain authority of the site you’re linking from, but they also check to see whether or not that site is considered “toxic” or “spammy.” In other words, sites that are judged negatively by the algorithms can hurt your rankings if you backlink from them. Let’s go over what this means and what you can do to avoid damaging your rankings.

Toxic Score

When you hear the word toxic, you may think that it applies to the site’s content. However, that isn’t the case when it comes to backlinks. Instead, the algorithms take into account other factors that they consider unwanted when ranking websites and pages. Here is a quick list of toxic elements that the search engine algorithms look for:

• Link networks/farms
• Sites containing malware/viruses
• Sites not indexed by Google
• Spam sites

As you can see, attempting to game the system by using a link farm, or creating spam sites with the sole intention of using them for backlinks are no viable strategies anymore. Sites that Google doesn’t index or those that contain malware/viruses are also destructive for rankings for apparent reasons.

Sometimes you can get toxic backlinks without realizing it when sites link to yours without you knowing about it. If this happens, you may notice a dip in organic traffic related to toxic backlinks harming your rankings. If you’re using the Google Webmasters tool, it may also send you a warning.

In any case, you can use Google Webmaster Tools to view a list of all links to your website, and then use a backlink checking tool to determine which ones are harming your website. Once this is done, you can begin getting rid of toxic backlinks. If you are getting toxic links from sites without your permission, you need to contact those sites’ web admins and tell them to take down the links. Any toxic links that can’t be removed can be disavowed. However, this will not undo the damage that has already been done, so use this as your last resort.

(Image Credit: Grow Hack Scale)

Spam Score

When it comes to backlinks, spam score doesn’t have anything to do with the actual content of a website. Instead, it refers to backlinks from sources considered spam, such as link farms and dummy sites created for backlinking purposes. Like your toxic score, a high spam score will also harm your rankings in search engine results.

A backlink’s spam score can be calculated using Moz, which analyzes 17 different factors. The final score is a rating between 0 and 17. 0 through 4 is considered safe, while 5 through 7 is questionable. Anything over seven should be avoided.

As with toxic backlinks, you want to identify spammy backlinks and eliminate them as soon as possible. You should also try and avoid building spammy links in the first place by analyzing the sites you plan on backlinking from. This can save you the trouble of removing bad links later.

What Content to Write for Backlinks

There are many ways to get backlinks, but one of the most powerful is guest posting. Guest posting is when you write a blog post or article and allow another site to post it for free. In return, they give you a link back to your website. There are many benefits to this, such as:

• Build brand awareness
• Reach out to a new audience
• Build trust and authority
• Generate qualified leads
• Expand your backlinking profile
• Get targeted traffic
• Boost your SEO

The key to successful guest posting is knowing what kind of content to write and what sites to approach. In most cases, you want to guest post for websites that are in the same niche/industry as you. It also helps if they have a higher domain authority than your website. That said, posting on sites in your niche with a lower US domain authority isn’t always a bad idea since you still get other benefits, such as targeted traffic and qualified leads.

Regardless, the best content to write for this strategy is content that presents you as an authority in your niche/industry and showcases your expertise. Remember that the post’s author doesn’t need to be you specifically, but rather whoever is serving as the “face” of your brand. It doesn’t even need to be a real person. However, you do want to avoid coming across as a faceless corporate entity, so making the author as human as possible is vital whether they exist or not.

The content should also be helpful to the reader and focus on engagement. In the end, it should leave the reader wanting more. This will lead directly into the CTA (call to action) that will prompt the reader to click your link and visit your website. From there, you can market to this new traffic source however you want. You will get link juice from the backlink itself, especially if the website you’re linking from is a high authority domain.

***Key Stats on Content Development:

• 61% of companies outsource content marketing efforts (Source)
• 57% of marketing executives view content development as the most effective SEO strategy (Source)

Different SEO Tools to Use

While backlinking may be more complicated these days, there are plenty of different SEO tools to use that can make it easier for you. Let’s take a look at some of the most powerful SEO tools available today, what they’re used for, and why you should be using them.

Google Webmaster

Google Webmaster is a collection of tools that primarily help with your website’s SEO. If you’re not using this, you should be since it can help you drastically improve your search engine rankings. Here is a list of its main features:

• Google Search Console
• Search Analytics
• Links to Your Site
• Testing Tools
• Security Issues
• HTML Improvements
• Crawl Errors

Particularly relevant here is the “Links to Your Site” feature. This will help you keep track of your backlinks and how much direct traffic each one generates. It also allows you to keep track of your anchor text, which is the text used for the link itself. For example:

(Image Credit: Google Developers)

Toxic Backlink Checkers

There are many toxic backlink checking tools online, and most of them are a paid service. Even so, it can be worth it since they will help you to weed out your toxic backlinks and bypass the penalties that come with them. These checkers are used best in combination with Google Webmaster’s backlink list.

Spam Backlink Checker

In addition to toxic backlink checkers, some tools specifically focus on identifying spam backlinks, such as Moz. In many cases, they can also provide you with more information, such as complete link metric data.

On-Page SEO Analysis

Many tools can analyze your on-page SEO factors in one go, and give you advice on what actions you need to take to fully optimize your website. These tools are invaluable for ensuring your website is up to par in categories such as navigation, load speeds, keyword density, and more.

Specialized Tools

There are different SEO tools to use that specialize in helping you improve one specific aspect of SEO. One example would be the plugins that help your website’s pages load faster on WordPress. Some tools can give you keyword advice when typing blog posts and articles. These specialized tools should be used as needed to shore up SEO deficiencies on your website.

Off-Page SEO Done Right

While you should always be aiming for high US domain authority when doing backlinks, other factors do come into play, such as how closely the site you’re linking from relates to your own and whether or not it is a toxic or spammy site. The power of a high backlink domain authority site linking to yours can give you a significant boost in the search engine rankings, but a toxic or spammy link can do more harm than good.

To get the best backlinks possible, use the tools to research the domain you want to link from first. This can save you time in having to remove toxic backlinks later. Also, be aware that just because a site isn’t considered “toxic” now doesn’t mean it can’t become toxic later. Always keep track of your backlinks and how they affect your website’s search rankings. Occasionally pruning bad links is an excellent way to keep your link profile healthy.

Diib® Digital: Your Backlink Domain Authority Experts!

Mastering off-page SEO and backlinking aren’t as straightforward as they used to be. However, this SEO strategy will reward you with high volumes of targeted buyer-ready search traffic once you get the hang of it. Diib® Digital can help you master your backlink domain authority game with our comprehensive user dashboard. We offer easy to understand and straightforward tasks to improve your on and off page SEO efforts and your overall US domain authority score. Here are a few of the features of our service you’re sure to appreciate:

• Bounce rate monitoring and repair
• Social media integration and performance
• Broken pages where you have backlinks (404 checker)
• Keyword (including snippets), backlink, and indexing monitoring and tracking tools
• User experience and mobile speed optimization
• Technical SEO monitoring

Click here for your free 60 second site scan or simply call 800-303-3510 to speak to one of our growth experts.