What is Domain Authority (DA) in Digital Marketing?


Companies are embracing the digital world, and as a result, the four Ps of marketing are becoming digital. The Place of the 4 Ps of Marketing is now no longer a physical marketplace where the sellers and the buyers come together and negotiate upon the selling agreements; it has turned into a website. Companies today are fighting with their teeth to develop a good website and fight the competition. For consumers, the website of the brand matters as much as the products and services it offers. Good websites not only ensure that websites are visible to consumers but also build an unspeakable bond of trust and genuineness.

With this thought in mind, it has become critical for us to now understand how we can check the ranking of our website or the Domain Authority (DA) of a website and how we can improve the ranking of our website compared to the competitor’s website.

How to Calculate Your Domain Authority?

It is a very simple process. All you have to do is go to the MOZ.COM website, where you will find it in the MOZ bar, or you can use the link to calculate your DA for the website at https://moz.com/domain-analysis. When you click on the link, add the web address or link of your website, and then you will see the results appear.

The Concept of Domain Authority (DA)

Domain authority (DA) refers to how well the website is performing in comparison with the other websites fighting with it on the search engine results page (SERP). With a strong DA, a company can ensure ranking at the top of the SERP, resulting in higher website traffic and a higher conversion ratio for the company. For example, if a certain keyword is entered into the search bar of Google and Site A appears on top of Site B in Google’s SERP, it means that Site A has a stronger DA than Site B.

DA gives the website a ranking score. The score is in the range of 1–100, where being on the higher side of the scale means better performance. DA was created by the company MOZ to understand the performance of a website on the SERP. While calculating the DA of a particular website, MOZ takes 40 critical factors into account. These 40 factors each have their own weight and aid the AI in understanding the website's performance. Some of these factors for calculating DA could be −

  • The quality of your website content

  • The number of backlinks the website has

  • The number of links that the website supports that are going to enrich the customer experience

  • Other SEO tools will also help the company rank higher.

  • The market demand for the search and others

It is easy for you to jump from 20 to 30, but it is difficult for you to jump from 70 to 80. It means that the number of efforts you took to increase your DA from 20 to 30 will not be the same for you to increase your DA from 70 to 80. This happens because DA works on percentile systems, and it is difficult when you work on the higher side of the scale.

DA is calculated not only on the internal factors or the controllable factors of the website but also on the external factors. It is kind of a percentile system. To put it another way, your website's performance will be compared to the performance of the top website in the keyword search. Generally, they are big giants like Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and others. So, if today Facebook does something to improve its page, then your ranking in the DA will automatically see a downward trend, irrespective of your efforts.

The companies will always share their best practices and what steps they should avoid for better rankings, but in reality, they will never reveal the factors that they are considering to decide upon the ranking of a page. One valid reason for this non-transparency of data could be that we are all aware of how there are imposters trying to find the shortcut and hampering others. It is kind of a safety measure adopted by MOZ or Google to be fair with others.

Best Practices That Will Help You Rank Better on the SERP or Have a Stronger DA

  • Write quality content − One of the things that are given the most weight while deciding upon the ranking of the page or the website is quality content. People get lost when we talk about quality content, and all they can think about is keywords and backlinks, but that is not the case. Create quality content for your website that will help the users and ensure that they leave satisfied with the page. Even Google has humans deployed to check the content quality of pages and miss out on links ignored by AI. Write content for your website with a minimum of 2000 words that is rich in SEO as well. As a website, you can also add blogs or articles to your website on certain tips and tricks related to your firm, which will make it easier for them and then subtly advertise your product in the end.

  • Importance of backlinks − backlinks, in simple terms, mean that other websites that are selling complementary products are attaching your website’s link to help the consumer navigate between the different brands and make the consumer journey easy. Many academic pages can also add your website’s link as a reference. Your DA drastically increases if you have good websites using your website’s link as the backlink. You can keep a check on that through different tools available on Google.

  • Search engine friendliness − you should have a customer-friendly website structure that is easy to navigate for the users. This will not only boost your DA but will also ensure that you do not lose customers in the middle of their purchasing journeys.

  • Avoid spammy links and also add relevant links on your website − You should also act like a website that is helping other websites grow by adding their link to your website. You can do these for the complimentary products. The agenda here is to create an ecosystem in which all are growing together. This will not only bring traffic to your website but also add credibility to your account and improve your customers' user journey.

The aim out here should not be to have a very high DA because the external factors are not in our control and we are competing with very large websites. Instead,  the aim should be to be on par with or better than your competitors. If you are a medium-sized or small firm, then it is more than enough for you, and you can focus your energy on the other parameters. However, if you are the leader of the industry, you can devote more of your time here to get better results. It is time that we weigh the pros and cons of every action of ours and the goal that we are setting for ourselves instead of blindly running in the race.

Updated on: 30-Mar-2023

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