What is Domain Authority and Its Effect on Search Engine Ranking

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5 min read

What is Domain Authority and Its Effect on Search Engine Ranking

Domain Authority is one of the important elements that has an important influence on the ranking of a website in search engines. However, what exactly is Domain Authority?

For those of you who are learning about SEO , of course, you should know a little about what domain authority is. Because Domain Authority is a ranking metric for websites.

So the better the ranking, of course it can be predicted that its performance on the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) will also get better.

More curious about Domain Authority and want to know more about it? Take a look at the explanation that Ayiko has prepared below.

What is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz to predict how well a website will rank in the SERPs.

The score range from Domain Authority itself is from 1 to 100. So, the higher the score you get, the easier it is to get on the first page of search engines.

Every SEO practitioner certainly has one goal, namely so that their website can always appear on the first page of Google.

According to Neil Patel , being able to get to the first page of a search engine is a very great thing.

However, being in the top position will certainly be a very valuable experience.

The reason is, when you get the top position on the first page, the CTR will be up to 200% higher than the website in the second rank.

Actually there is still a lot of debate about the Domain Authority developed by Moz.

There are many experts who still use this one metric, but there are also those who are starting to abandon it.

Reporting from the Search Engine Journal , the reason why Domain Authority is no longer used as a guide is because it doesn't come from Google.

In the past, Google had created PageRank , which is an algorithm for analyzing website rankings by assigning a value from 0 to 10.

The higher the value, the website will be called the more "important" and has quality content. Unfortunately, now PageRank has been discontinued by Google since 2016.

Understanding Domain Authority

After figuring out what Domain Authority is, you also need to understand what the important elements of this metric are.

Indeed there are many pros and cons regarding the importance of Domain Authority. However, there is a relationship between website quality and good performance in search engines.

What does good Domain Authority look like?

According to Moz, a website with high quality external links and in large numbers will definitely have good Domain Authority.

Meanwhile, small businesses and new websites will have lower Domain Authority scores.

The reason is, building Domain Authority is something that doesn't take a short time. In addition, the website must also have a lot of quality links as well.

Neil Patel said that Moz had a secret algorithm that they formulated themselves to determine Domain Authority.

Previously, Moz mentioned that there are several important factors, for example, MozRank, MozTrust, and link profiles.

It can be seen that 2 of the 3 factors above are based on the system from Moz. In addition, there are more than 40 other factors used by Moz to determine Domain Authority.

How to check Domain Authority

To find out the Domain Authority of the website you have, the method is also very easy.

Moz, which makes Domain Authority, has also prepared a free tool called Open Site Explorer .

You can easily use this tool to find out how good the Domain Authority of the website is.

After opening the tool, you only need to enter the URL in the search bar, then select Search. You will then see the results under the Authority heading.

Generally, websites that have been used for a long time, have good backlinks, and high traffic are ranked around 40-60.

However, for a website that is relatively new, it will be very reasonable if the Domain Authority it has is still low.

Moz also explained that increasing the Domain Authority rank would be easier in the range of 20 to 30, rather than from 70 to 80.

So, when the website already has a high Domain Authority for example at number 75, raising it to a rank of 76 or higher is a difficult thing.

However, if your website's ranking is still around 23, it will be easier to move up the rankings to 24 or higher.

How to Increase Domain Authority?

After knowing what Domain Authority is and understanding its good criteria, of course you are curious about how to improve it, right?

Reporting from HubSpot , here are some ways that can be done to increase Domain Authority, among others.

When a website has a quality link profile, Google will assume that the website is more credible and trustworthy.

There are several tools that you can use to find out the quality of the link profile of our website, for example, SEMrush Backlink Checker and Link Explorer from Moz.

In addition, you can use the Disavow Tool from Google to help strengthen your link profile and remove unqualified links on the website.

2. Create interesting content

Content also plays an important role in increasing Domain Authority. In fact, you could say that without quality content, the website will be difficult to look credible.

Besides being able to increase high traffic, quality content will also make your website have loyal visitors.

You can try to find out how to create quality content from Ayiko to help increase your website traffic.

As mentioned above, backlinks are also an important factor in Domain Authority.

One of the advantages of having a good domain authority is that the website will look more credible.

Apart from content, the backlinks that are built must also be of high quality. There are several things to consider in building backlinks.

This is for example with the distribution of anchor text for backlinks correctly so that the links listed must be relevant to the content.

That's an explanation of what Domain Authority is and how to increase it.

Of course, now you understand a little that Domain Authority is one of the references that can be used to predict website rankings in the SERP.

Learnmore: 4 Ways to Build Quality Backlinks for Free