Domain authority is very important when building an online business especially when you want to generate organic traffic. For those of you NOT aware “domain authority” refers to the entire value of your domain as established over the years looking at such elements like size, age and link building patterns. It’s hard to manipulate simply because you are looking at so many factors which all have been combined, and make sense at the same time. I’m surprised at the amount of bloggers who don’t pay close attention to domain authority, and suffer in the long run. A high domain authority is a cool way to increase your worth quickly within the search engines increasing your organic traffic.
Today, we’ll be exploring domain authority, and what I’ve learned over the years regarding the importance it plays. I’ll like to discuss some practical ways to increase your authority so you start increasing your rankings within the SERP’s.
Let’s get started, and your feedback will be greatly appreciated.
On-Page SEO
All great websites start with a solid on-page SEO portfolio. Without it, you’re going to have a hard time getting noticed within the SERP’s, and even indexed by Google. The good news is that doing your on-page SEO is very easy because you have to focus around a few solid keywords. If you do a quick Google search, then you’ll be able to find enormous resources on how to do this correctly, however I’ll explain a bit right now so you can get started.
First, it’s important you have a handful of solid relevant keywords to work with. This will allow you to guide your on-page SEO better. Next, you have to worry about “3” areas of your on-page SEO:
- Title
- Description
- Keywords
When writing out your title it’s important you follow the character limitation. This number is usually around 60-65 characters, and must be relevant. It’s also very important because the text here gets displayed within search engine results so the more accurate, the higher chance of getting a click-through.
Secondly, the description also gets displayed within the search results, so it’s important this is as relevant as possible. I like to include relevant keywords which are popular because this increases the likelihood of a conversion. The keywords section is NOT that important, however it is optional to add some relevant keywords around 3-4.
Next,
Make sure you have switched your permalinks to “post name” if you are using WordPress. What does this do? It will show the title of your content within the URL, and this is extremely important when your site is getting indexed. The good news is you have added relevant keywords into your title so your URL should be relevant automatically.
Remove Poor Links to Your Site
This is very important especially after Google introduced algorithm updates which target poor links to your website. Many people tried to manipulate search results by bulk linking from poor quality sites to their pages, however this is NO longer something which helps with rankings. Google has become smarter, and knows high quality content always attracts high quality links. If you have an enormous amount of low quality backlinks to your site, then it’s time to remove them from your profile. Google has provided you with a tool to streamline this process, and it’s called the Disavow Tool. How does this work? Simple…
You go through your link profile using GWT (Google Webmaster Tools), and make a list of external backlinks which you feel are hurting your rankings. It’ll take some researching, but the end result can definitely help increase your overall domain authority. Once you have a collection of links you feel are hurting your domain authority, you can submit them to the Google Disavow tool using a .txt editor. Head over to Google search and do a quick search on this tool, and you’ll be able to find enormous tutorials which will guide you through the entire process.
Remember,
- Visit GWT to find the sites linking to your domain
- Use org to research these sites looking for quality score. If they are poor sites, then you know they’ll be hurting your domain authority.
- Do this every 2-3 months to ensure your link profile is as clean as possible
- Submit them to the Google Disavow Tool using your .txt editor
- For more information, search “Google Disavow”, and you’ll find a handful of tutorials which will help you get started.
Internal Linking Strategy
This is very important to help build the overall strength of your domain because you are pushing the authority of internal pages. Google has gotten smarter, and now ranks site which have a high overall score, and NOT just those with popular single pages. Why have they switched to this approach?
They switched because bloggers would build links to only one of their pages, and forget the rest of the website. They would write awesome content, publish it, then hope to rank that page to increase ROI. Google, over the years, because their very familiar with this approach now require a solid internal linking strategy, and external links to every page. This will ultimately increase the entire domain authority of the website. It’s a great way to ensure you don’t get penalized going forward, and continue to be an authority blog in the future. Here are some things to pay close attention to going forward:
First, make sure you write valuable content every time because this will increase the amount of linkable content on your site. The more value you provide the higher chance others will link to your blog. Secondly, each time you write it’s important you link out to some external sources because they get pinged whenever they have a new external link. They’ll MOST likely check out your website when they get alerted, and if they like your content they’ll link right back. The fact you linked out to an authority source means you’ll get an authority link back if they decide to do it.
Third, you want to make sure if you are building external links to your website that you build from authority sources. One of the best ways to get the right type of links from influential sites is to guest blog. This gives you an opportunity to write content on a relevant website, and link back to yours at the same time.
It’s an awesome strategy which I have been using for years.
Social Signals
Over the years, Google is finding new ways to rank content, and build domain authority. This means new marketing methods are becoming more dominant. For example, one of the best ways for Google to determine what domain is valuable is by looking at the social signals. The more people share a specific content the more value it obviously provides. Next, Google will give those with higher social signals privilege within the search results because it ultimately increases the user experience.
Next,
It’s important you target the right social networks because some might do harm rather than provide a benefit. For example, by targeting a poor social network you’ll find people who are simply trying to build a profile of followers to sell advertising space to. This means your content will be shared on poor quality sites which can lead to low quality links being sent to your page. Instead of helping your domain authority, it can cause it to decrease which is why Google now gives you an efficient way to remove toxic links. Here’s what I recommend you do going forward:
- Join the MOST popular social networks, and start building your profile. For example, add your company details, contact information, and some awesome posts. This way when people check out your profile they’ll see a business profile.
- Start adding people who are relevant to your niche because these are the type of people you want to get your content in front of…right?
- Don’t keep sharing just any type of content you publish, make sure it’s the best online. This increases the likelihood of some serious engagement.
- Keep building your profile, and you can sue some tools to help you tweet or share content so your profile stays active.
Social media has become very important, and Google knows this which is why they give enormous ranking authority to them. When you share content it’s a great way for other authority bloggers to find your content which encourages them to link back adding value to your domain authority.
Give It Time
After you have implemented the strategies above, it’s important you give the entire process time. Google will never rank your new website within a few weeks because you haven’t built your credibility yet. It takes around 3 months for your new links to get indexed and another few months to start building authority. It’s important you stick to the game plan because if you DON’T then you might give up right before you were going to see an enormous boost in your rankings.
Here are a few pointers:
- Post content frequently because Google uses freshness as a ranking factor
- Spread out your link building because this makes things look natural
- Always pay close attention to relevance
- Never use software or link-farms because these will destroy your domain authority.
- Stay focus on your end goal so you don’t lose sight of what’s important.
Final Thoughts
In the end, it’s important you have a solid domain authority because this adds value in all aspects. For example, when you have a high DA, bloggers want to link to your content, purchase from your website, and will trust your content as a valuable source of information. I’ll admit it does take time when you are first starting off to build this, but any serious blogger will tell you: If your serious about blogging, and passionate about your niche, then you have nothing to worry about. Here are a few things to do right now to get started:
First, read over this content and write out the elements you haven’t started to implement into your blog. Secondly, you need a way to track data so install Google analytics because they’ll provide everything you need to find out like what content is popular, where your audience is and the search queries.
Next,
You have to implement the strategies which are missing within your blogging or website because they’ll help increase your domain authority. Start by implementing the ones you can and keep track of how they improve your overall DA. It’s important to keep writing high quality content which is linkable because the more links you can get the higher chance of having your website indexed quicker. As mentioned, writing content more frequently is a great way for Google to index your content so keep a solid content writing schedule going.
You can log into GWT to look over your current link profile. After, use the Google Disavow tool to start removing links which are harmful so you can build a solid high quality profile. From inside GWT, head over to search, then internal links to find your complete profile.
Here are some final tips:
- Stay focused
- Write high quality content
- Always link to and from value sources
- Check authority before linking from source
- Remember to use Google Disavow to remove bad links.
Click Here To Download John Chow’s New eBook, The Ultimate Online Profit Model!
