Domain Authority: What is it And How Does it Work?

Do you know what the domain authority of a website is and how it works?

Or even, what is its influence on the organic positioning of websites on Google and on SEO strategies?

Domain authority is one of the most relevant factors to be considered by those who want to achieve the best positions in Google and position a website as a reference for a certain topic.

Do you want to know more about domain authority, understand how it affects your site, and how you can improve this indicator?

If your answer was yes, continue with us and follow this content until the end.

Table of Contents

What is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority is a metric (0 to 100 points) used to rank a domain‘s authority and relevance to Google’s SERPs (search results).

According to Moz.com, the company that developed the metric, the higher the authority of a domain, the greater the chances of positioning your content and publications on the first page of search engines.

As we will see below, there are several factors that influence the domain authority of a website.

How does Domain Authority Affect Your Website?

Despite the fact that Google denies that its algorithm makes use of domain authority as one of the factors to define the positioning of pages in search results, SEO experts do not abandon the metric.

Although Google denies it, in practical experience it is possible to observe that the sites with the highest “Domain Authority” are the ones that naturally appear more times and organically in the first results of the SERPs.

By the way, have you ever thought about the volume of visits that a website can receive when it is positioned on the first page of Google? In turn, the greater the number of visits, the greater the ability of the site to generate income for its creator.

In addition, various surveys and studies have already concluded that more than 70% of the pages that users access after performing a search on search engines (such as Google, for example) are on the first page.

So make no mistake: domain authority can greatly affect your website, both positively and negatively.

What Influences Domain Authority?

Now that you know what domain authority is, you should be wondering about the factors that influence this metric.

You already know that with a high Domain Authority, your site is more likely to appear in search results, and, as a result, you will get more visits.

But after all, what influences domain authority?

According to SEO experts, creating a relevant domain authority is based on several factors, including:

Website Reputation
Domain age
Number of referring sites (sites that point to your site)
Relevance of reference sites
Temporary pattern
Distributive analysis

In practice, the metric under analysis uses a mathematical combination of the above parameters to determine the size of a domain’s authority and its relevance to search engines.

How to Improve Domain Authority?

Improving domain authority is not an easy task.

Therefore, you will need good strategies and a bit of patience to pick up the results, since they cannot be perceived immediately.

Among the strategies that you can use to improve the authority score of your domain, we can highlight:

Post content frequently – To build authority, try to post content frequently to your site, but not just any type of content. The materials must be complete, they must follow the best SEO practices for the content, and have some type of relevance to your target audience.
Invest in referral links: Look for partnerships with other sites that point to external links that may refer to your content. Third-party sites pointing to yours are synonymous with credibility and the fastest way to increase your authority.
Work on your site’s SEO – There are hundreds of SEO metrics and it’s not just about Domain Authority. Therefore, study and try to invest in the best strategies to increase the chances of placing your website on the first page of Google.

Tools to Verify Domain Authority

Not sure what your website’s domain authority is?

There are a few tools that can help you visualize this important metric.

Best of all, tools that measure domain authority also allow you to assess your competitors’ scores.

Fantastic, isn’t it?

Consult the best-known options used by analysts and SEO specialists.

Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer is a tool made available by Moz (the same company that created the domain authority metric).

Through this tool, it is possible to view the authority of a domain, and analyze and compare third-party sites, based on a series of useful information.

Therefore, in addition to presenting the authority of the domains consulted, the tool serves as an instrument to implement improvements that contribute to the growth of the authority of the domain under analysis.

MOZ

Another very interesting tool developed to allow an easy and objective view of a website’s domain authority and competitors is MozBar.

MozBar is a free extension available for Chrome and Firefox browsers that shows the real-time authority of sites that appear in Google search results.

With MozBar, you can:

Have access to instant metrics while viewing any page or SERP.
Quickly assess the page authority and domain authority of any website.
Access and compare link metrics between pages while viewing any SERP.
Export search engine results page (SERP) analysis details to a CSV file.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an SEO tool that collects a number of metrics for SEO and domain analysis, including domain authority.

Site optimization experts for search engines in different parts of the world use Ahrefs resources and metrics to improve their SEO strategies.

However, despite being a very complete and interesting tool, Ahrefs ends up not being an accessible option for small companies, since its use license is charged in dollars.

SEMrush

Finally, we have SEMrush, one of the most widely used and reputable tools worldwide for analyzing SEO metrics and strategies.

As with the other options presented here, through SemRush, it is also possible to assess the authority of a site, among other factors.

However, we must point out that the use license is also charged in dollars.

The good news is that through this tool it is possible to consult the domain authority and some other information with a free license that makes some resources available in a limited way.

Finally, now that you know what Domain Authority is, start considering this metric in your analysis and implement strategies to improve your site’s ranking in Google search results (SERPs).

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