HOW TO FIND YOUR WEBSITES DOMAIN AUTHORITY (DA) SCORE
Have you heard of Domain Authority (DA) and are wondering how to find the score for your website? And whether it's an important score to keep track of and improve?
In this blog post, I'll cover everything you need to know about finding your website's DA score, including how it's calculated by different SEO tools, how to improve it, and whether it affects your search engine rankings.
Finding Your Domain Authority (DA)
Domain Authority as a concept was invented by Moz as a way to measure the authority of a website based on its backlink profile, and it is now widely used as the industry standard for comparing one site to another.
So in order to check you're DA, you'll need to head over to Moz Domain Analysis tool:
- Go to Moz Domain Analysis tool
- Enter your website URL in the search bar and click “Search”
- In the “Domain Authority” section, you'll see your website's DA score
What is Domain Authority (DA) anyway?
Moz has a Link Explorer web index, which essentially is their own index of the web. They have a crawler called Dotbot that gather link data starting with the links with highest value.
The purpose of the DA is to compare website's with each other so Moz tool is designed to predict how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages (SERP) by evaluating multiple factors, including linking root domains and total number of links.
The result of this evaluation is shown using a score from one to 100, where a higher score means that the website is more likely to rank.
It's Not The Only Authority Score On The Market
But it's not the only authority score – in fact, most major SEO players have their own way of calculating a websites authority (and they also have their own names for it). We're talking about companies like SEMRush, Ahrefs, and Majestic, and here's a breakdown of how each of these companies calculates DA:
SEMRush calls it Authority Score (AS)
SEMrush's Authority Score is calculated using a proprietary algorithm that takes into account factors such as the number and quality of referring domains, the estimated monthly average of organic search traffic, and indicators of a spammy vs. natural link profile.
The Authority Score is shown on a scale from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating greater authority and influence compared to other domains in the same or similar niches.
In order to check your websites AS, you'll need to sign up for a free account with SEMRush. Once signed up, you can check the score in your SEO Dashboard, under Domain Analytics.
Ahrefs calls it Domain Rating (DR)
Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) is a metric that measures the strength and authority of a website's backlink profile.
It's based on the number and quality of backlinks pointing to a domain, and it ranges from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating stronger and more authoritative websites.
Ahrefs DR is calculated using a proprietary algorithm that takes into account factors such as the number of referring domains, the quality of those domains, and the number of backlinks pointing to a domain. They make it clear that things like search traffic and the age of a domain is not taken into account when calculating the domain rating. Only links.
You can check your Domain Rating via Ahref's Website Authority Checker. And similar to the other tools, they too have a score scale from 0 to 100, with 100 being the strongest.
Majestic calls it Trust Flow (TF) and Citation Flow (CF)
Majestic has something called Trust Flow (TF) and Citation Flow (CF), are machine-generated estimates of the quality of backlinks.
Where Majestic's ratings differs from the Moz, SEMRush and Ahref is that their score is calculated on a domain level. The score (which is a scale from 0 to 100 with 100 being highest) is displayed at a domain level based on aggregation of values calculated at page level.
The scores for TF and CF are measured on a scale from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating greater authority.
You can check your Majestic Trust Flow and Citation Flow for free, via their website checker.
Does Domain Authority Affect Ranking?
In short, the answer is no.
Although Domain Authority (DA) is a helpful tool for evaluating the strength of your website's backlink profile, search engines like Google don't use DA as a ranking factor.
Instead, they use their own algorithms that consider hundreds of factors like content quality, user experience, relevance, and backlinks.
While having a high DA score can indicate a stronger backlink profile and increase the likelihood of ranking well in search engines, it's not a guarantee. Ultimately, the most effective way to improve your website's search engine rankings is by focusing on creating high-quality content that provides value to your audience while adhering to Google's guidelines.
How to Improve Your Websites Domain Authority (DA)
While there's no one-size-fits-all answer on how to improve your website's authority score, there are several steps you can take to increase your domain authority score.
As you've probably noticed, all these authority scores focus on backlinks, so that's what you need to increase in order to score higher in these tools. Here are a few tips for earning more external links:
Create Shareable content
The best way to earn backlinks is by creating high-quality, informative content that people want to share. This can include how-to post, ultimate guides, videos, and more. Make sure your content is relevant to your target audience and provides value to them.
HARO
Sign up for Help A Reporter Out (HARO) and respond to relevant media queries. This is a great way to get your website mentioned in news articles and earn valuable backlinks.
Guest Posting
Share your expertise by writing and publishing guest posts on high-authority websites in your niche. This is an excellent way to earn backlinks and attract traffic to your website.
Infographics
Create high-quality, informative infographics that people want to share. This is a great way to earn valuable backlinks from other websites. Make sure to include an embed code for the infographic so that others can easily share it on their own websites.
Social Media
Promote your content on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. By sharing your content, you can attract backlinks from other websites and increase your website's visibility.
Skyscraper Technique
Create high-quality content that's better than what's already out there and then reach out to other websites to promote it. This is an effective way to earn backlinks from high-authority websites.
These are a few things you can do to increase backlinks. And when it comes to the type of backlinks, it’s important to focus on earning high-quality, relevant backlinks from authoritative websites in your niche. This will not only help improve your website's Domain Authority but also drive targeted traffic to your website.
And that’s all. Hope this helped you find your websites domain authority and get started with improving your authority score.
Until next time,
