Understanding and Improving SEO Domain Authority Metrics, Part 1

If you’ve spent time dealing with search engine optimization (SEO) approaches and strategies in the past, even just at the surface level, chances are you’ve heard plenty about the term “authority.” Something of a nebulous term, but still considered important by industry professionals, authority refers to the quality and trustworthiness of various areas of content on your site within the lens of your industry as a whole.

At SEO Werkz, our SEO and web design professionals are happy to detail the ways our comprehensive internet marketing services approach the realm of authority, particularly an industry metric known as Domain Authority (DA), developed by Moz, that helps track this area through predicting how well a website will rank on various search pages. In part one of this two-part blog, we’ll go over what Domain Authority should mean to you as you investigate it, plus what Google has to say on the matter. In part two, we’ll dig into several specific strategies for improving your DA score – and, therefore, for almost certainly improving your overall site quality.

Domain Authority as a Tracker, Not a Driver

Domain Authority is a metric that uses several inputs, including total link numbers, linking root domains and multiple others. Through these, it synthesizes your site down into a single DA score that represents an idea of how well you should show up on various SERPs (search engine result pages). Scores range from 1 to 100, the higher the better.

It’s very important to note that while this metric can be a good indicator of your general authority and site quality, it is not a driver of your site’s success on its own. Having a high DA is still generally preferable to having a low one, but it does not guarantee success. Rather, utilizing the context of your DA number and that of your competitors, then using this information to target the kinds of keywords or queries, is the right way to go.

Google’s Approach

In the past, Google has made it clear that they don’t use this metric (or any similar ones) for their rankings. And based on all available evidence, this appears to be true, though Google is shrouded in enough secrecy that technically it’s always possible they incorporate some small part of it.

Even if we decide to fully trust Google on this one, we can’t assume DA simply has no value. It’s derived from many of the same general qualities that Google’s algorithms use to track site quality, for starters, and also can be used for new pages that have yet to be ranked or assessed by Google to help you gauge your ability to succeed within certain terms. This is one of several areas where Google can be a bit cagey at times, and why having experienced SEO professionals like ours is so valuable.

To learn more about Domain Authority or any of the other important factors in SEO success, or for information on our PPC, web design or social media services, speak to the staff at SEO Werkz today.