Thomas Griffin — November 5, 2018 — November 5, 2018
One of the most important factors that determine the success of a website is the domain authority.
Before we can dive in and explain how to boost your domain authority, it’s important that we explain what it is and how it affects your web page. Essentially, your rank when measuring authority is put between 0 and 100. Most new websites start out at 0 or 1, while the most popular sites are ranked closer to 100.
There are three factors that determine your domain authority that includes: website age, size, and popularity. The higher your ranking, the higher you’ll appear in search results and the more traffic that will come your way.
Your domain authority goes hand in hand with your SEO, making it a vital tool for continued growth. As you can see, this factor is crucial to every single person who owns a website.
We are going to help you boost your authority with these 5 tips.
Have a Social Media Marketing Plan
“Social signals,” or how often links from your website are liked and shared on social media, play a role in determining your domain authority. It’s wise to develop a social media marketing plan so you can gain traction with traffic to your site, as well as boost your overall domain ranking.
Facebook and Twitter both have their own ad programs used to draw in customers. Boosting some of your blog posts is a great way to get more traffic to your site while increasing your social media followers.
Besides running ads, you can increase your “social signal” by engaging with your audience, writing multiple posts a day, and sharing your blog content as it is released.
Deliver Quality Content that Provides Value
Every good website has a blog. Have you ever wondered why? It’s because when a site has great content, it draws in loads of organic traffic.
Building excellent content is easier than you might think. It does, however, take time, patience, and knowledge. The first thing you have to ask yourself is, “Who am I am writing for, and what is the intent of the post?”
Consider your audience and that will dictate your writing style. It’s advised that people tend to write on a 6th-7th-grade reading level so everyone can enjoy and understand your content.
Once you have your audience figured out, it’s time to think deeply about the point of your post. Avoid filler content that doesn’t:
- Answer a question
- Solve a problem
- Contain new/relevant information
When you’re writing your post, you have to decide what kind of problem you’re going to solve for the reader. For example, are you going to give them a tutorial on how to add a plugin to their website? Perhaps teach them how to change the spark plugs on their car? You need to have a clear purpose in your writing and make it meaningful.
If your content is well written and informative, you get points with Google and you will pull in a steady audience of loyal, consistent readers.
Focus on SEO Keywords
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is another important factor in determining your domain authority. When you’re creating your business, you should think about which SEO keywords you want to target.
When deciding on SEO keywords, Google Keyword Planner is an excellent tool for researching words and developing a list. The Planner allows you to see the search volume of keywords as well as the competition when compared to others using the same word or phrase.
There are multiple ways to track down quality keywords for your site. For example, you could start by finding your competitor’s keywords using a tool like Ahrefs and try to outrank them by writing better content.
Long-tail keywords are another way you can boost your domain authority. When you’re on the Google Keyword Planner expand on the words the base words that you’re using. Instead of just looking for “great shoes” look for “High-Quality Men’s Converse Shoes,” or “Women’s Converse Shoes Size 7.” Pairing short keywords with long-tail keywords can help increase your domain authority.
SEO requires patience, but if you’re consistent and have the right tools to implement them on your website, you can improve your audience and domain authority.
Generate Backlinks
Another way to boost domain authority is by using backlinks. Generating backlinks requires you to link your content to reputable, trusted, highly cited sources.
When you build backlinks with strong sources, it makes your website appear more reputable, which in turn raises the authority of your domain. In the age of information, sifting through sources may seem like a challenge — that’s not always the case.
There are websites like Help a Reporter Out (HARO) that make it easy to get backlinks to your site. They email you a few times a day with inquiries from reporters looking for quotes from business owners just like you. All you have to do is look for a question that’s a good fit, answer it, and sign it with your name and business website. Don’t forget to link to your site in the signature!
Think of backlinks as a pillar that’s holding up your metaphorical house. The more strong pillars you have, the sturdier the house. In this sense, the more strong, fact-based sources you have, the more stable your website will become over time.
Improve Your Website Speed
Finally, improving your website speed help increase your authority. When people go to a slow website, they are likely to leave if the page doesn’t load in 3-5 seconds. If people are quickly leaving your website, it is going to affect your bounce rate — which can kill your ranking and authority.
The first way you can improve your website speed is by cutting down on your HTTP requests. Essentially, HTTP requests are put out for every single thing on your homepage including images and scripts.
Once you’re on your website, use Google Chrome, right click on the page, and click Inspect. The developer tools menu will open on the screen. Click the Network tab on the developer tools menu and all of your HTTP requests will appear on the screen. You’ll be able to see the Name and Size of each request. If you see something that’s exceptionally large in size, unnecessary, or repeating, you can slim down on your requests and boost your website speed.
Picking the correct server type for your needs is another way to boost your website speed. You can choose between shared, VPS, and dedicated. Shared is the cheapest option, but you may sacrifice some of your website speed in the process — which may cause customers to leave early and have an impact on your domain authority. Your best option is to buy a dedicated server. You’ll increase your speed, customers will stick around longer, and your domain authority will improve.
Once you find pages that need work, this plugin will give you options to speed up your web page by clearing out the cache or removing cells that cause your site to slow down to a crawl.
Conclusion
Following these tips may seem overwhelming at first, but this is something you’re going to have to do over a period of time. Slowly integrate these methods into your website and keep track of your page views and unique visitors.
You can’t control the age of your website, but you can control the size and popularity. Fill your site with rich, meaningful content sprinkled with SEO and based on good sources. Check the speed of your website pages a couple times. Build a strong, consistent social media marketing plan.
Websites don’t get a high domain authority overnight, but if you put in the work and practice patience, you’ll eventually have an excellent, reputable website.
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