As soon as you start to learn about search engine optimization (SEO), you’ll hear about website domain authority. Usually right after you learn about keywords. And for good reasons. It is one of the big factors of how well you will rank for anything on your entire site. Let’s look at what you can do to increase your website’s domain authority.
What Are Backlinks?
The most basic sign of authority is the one that was first implemented in the early days of Google. The idea was that as people find high-quality and helpful content and link to it, the best websites would be considered the highest quality and would be featured more prominently. These are called internal links and when a site links back to your site it’s called a backlink. High quality links back to your site let the search engines know you’re legit and it can give your site a boost.
It’s a little like a blind date. If you see someone that catches your eye at the supermarket you may think twice about going out on a date with them if they just approach you out of the blue. If your best friend says they know the same guy and can vouch for them as being a nice person, you may be less apprehensive to get to know them. That’s a litte like backlinks. A link to another site with a reputable domain score shows search engines that you can be trusted and your domain score may increase.
While things have changed since then and a lot of safety measures are in place so you can’t scam or buy your way to the top by buying incoming links, your website’s domain authority is still in large part determined by the quality of natural, high quality incoming links.
So how do you get internal links? By sharing great content and sharing your content with your target audience. How do you do that?
Email marketing is a great way to draw attention to your content, and so is sharing your content on social media. Social media is a great option if you want to spread your content out far beyond your current subscribers, which also brings us to my next point.
Helpful information like infographics and thorough articles are great for getting people to link back to your site. Try creating branded infographics in a software like Canva. they have a ton of templates that you can use to create a graphic that people will want to share with their readers.
Social Signals
Once you start to gain momentum on social media sites, others will start to share your content. That gives you incoming links and it sends what are called “social signals”. As you post your latest content with things like blog posts or articles, your content and with it your site gain authority. This will build over time, as will the last thing we’ll talk about.
Website Age
Age will also help you as time goes on. The best time to have registered a domain was years ago. But don’t worry because the next best time is today. Launch your website, add high quality content up, start sharing it with the right audience, and your website’s domain authority will start to grow as time goes by.
Don’t obsess or worry over the age factor. It is what it is. Building search engine traffic takes time and not just because of the age factor. Instead, continue to work on your site, knowing that ranking will become easier as time goes by.
This is in part because of your website’s age and authority, but also because you have more content on your site that will rank for a variety of keywords, and as you grow your audience they will help you spread the word, creating more social signals and incoming links for you.
This is not an extensive list of what improves site authority. There are lots of different factors involved in it in addition to this. Search engines are deliberately vague about what moves the needle at any given time. That said, these are the ones that are most in your control and what I have found to help most.