Blog Domain Authority Score: What It Is? And How To Improve It

If you’re a blogger, chances are you’ve heard of a blog domain authority score before. And if you haven’t and don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, stick with me. Your domain authority is another metric that your blog acquires when you get your own domain. All websites with their own domain have an authority ranking. But why is it important? And why do you need to improve it?

All valid points and questions. Learning about domain authority can seem like a minefield at times. So in this post, we’re going to look at what it is, why it’s a useful metric and how you can improve your own blog domain authority:

So, what is a blog domain authority score?

DA stands for Domain Authority. Developed by a website called Moz, it’s a handy tool to see where your blog will be ranking in search engines. The Moz scoring system goes from 1-100 and it’s important to remember that only blogs with their own domain will have an accurate DA score.

So that means if your blog has .wordpress or .blogspot at the end of the URL, a DA won’t apply to you.

Websites such as Google will have the highest ranking DA scores and most blogs fluctuate between 1-50. Of course there will be some higher than this but that’s the general ballpark.

The higher your DA, the higher your blog will rank on search engines and your domain authority can determine how trustworthy your site is for potential users and readers – according to Google.

Where can I check my blog domain authority?

You can check your own DA score directly on the Moz website. It’s incredibly easy and totally free. You’ll have to create an account, which involves entering your email, a display name and password the you sign in, enter your blog URL and find out your DA from there.

You can use Moz 10 times a month to check your DA before you have to pay for premium features. But you shouldn’t ever have to check it that many times anyway. It’ll rarely fluctuate that much within just one month.

Why is my blog domain authority score important?

Well, it’s only important if you need it to be important. So if you blog as a hobby and have no interested in working with brands, building your own brand or progressing your blog to anything more than your hobby, then I really wouldn’t worry about your DA much (if at all).

But if you’re a blogger who wants to work with brands or started to work with brands and want to progress in that direction, then a DA can be important for you.

You’ll often see PR’s or brands looking for bloggers with a certain DA, usually +20 or +30. Or websites like Get Blogged work in this way too.

Related reads:

• Getting Your First Collab As a Blogger: 8 Things To Do

Obviously this means that they’re looking for bloggers who’s blogs will rank higher in search engines, therefore their clients or products they’re promoting through your blog, are more likely to get seen.

From a PR stand point, it’s quite straightforward and logical. Although it may seen unfair on the surface, it really is just how the industry works.

So if you’ve got this far and realised that actually, you don’t need to worry about your DA because you blog as a hobby, you have no intention of working with brands and are just peachy as you are, that’s absolutely gravy. Don’t waste your time reading any more.

If you are in a position where your DA score matters, let’s move on to how you can improve your blog DA:

How can I improve my blog domain authority score?

So you want the chance to apply for more blogging opportunities but your DA just isn’t quite high enough. It can be incredibly frustrating, I know but there are plenty of – relatively simple – ways you can improve it.

These aren’t super quick fixes. You won’t see your DA shoot up over night. But with good practice and regular care taken on your DA, you will see an improvement over time.

Time is of the essence – sometimes

This one is important to mention first as it’s one of the elements of calculating a DA score that Moz have changed in their past updates. So stick with me…

So, as long as you have your own domain name, you’ll have a DA score. But if you’re a super new blogger, your DA won’t be very high. You can’t expect to buy your domain, wake up tomorrow with a DA score of 47. It just doesn’t work like that. YOU need to work at it.

HOWEVER, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the longer you’ve been blogger, the better your DA score is either.

For example, there could be a 7 year old blog which doesn’t focus on SEO, has 0 quality back links from other sites, a ton of broken links and generally not a very user-friendly blog.

And then there could be a 8 month old blog which nails their SEO on every posts, gets quality back links etc etc. Basically what I’m saying is the second blog will likely have a higher DA despite the fact it’s a newer blog. 

Fix broken links

This is an important one and for full transparency, my DA would be a lot higher had I known about broken links sooner.

I’ve been blogging for almost 10 years and have built up thousands of broken links in that time. Which I’m slowly working through (and also paid someone to help me with) but it’s an incredibly daunting task.

Basically, get on those broken links sooner so you don’t end up in the same pickle!

A broken link is what it says on the tin. A link that is broken. Say a year ago, you wrote a blog post featuring a product from a small business you were enjoying. But since then, that business has shut down and closed their website.

Any readers who click through to their website from your blog will end up at a dead end, a 404 or an error page. Because their website doesn’t exist anymore.

There’s free broken link checkers you can use which are a good place to start with this one and you can check out my beginners guide to broken links for more information on this pointer.

Internal linking

This is one of the simplest ways to boost your DA over time and that’s by internally linking your own content within your own content. 

Like how I’m linking to other posts that I’ve written within this post – posts that are relevant to the topic in question and that will provide the reader extra additional helpful content and information.

Make sure you’re only linking relevant posts and try and avoid using anchor texts like “click here” or “read this post”. Make sure your anchor text is a relevant keyword too.

Related read: Why You Should Be Internally Linking In Your Blog Posts

Backlinks from other websites boost your blog DA score

This may be easier said than done but getting backlinks from other high DA websites to your blog will end up helping your own DA. Because it shows Google that your site and content is relevant. There’s a few ways you can get quality backlinks:

• Guest posting: Guest posting on other high DA blogs and linking back to your own content within those guest posts.
• Comment on other blogs: This will help by leaving your URL at the end of your comment. If you’re going to do this, it’s worth noting that it doesn’t always help to leave your comment on every single post you comment on. Especially those which are irrelevant to what you write about. And note that Google considers comments of 9 words or under spam. So make sure your comments are genuine and not just the old, “great post!” that we all know and love.

Advertise with other bloggers

Technically this is another method for getting backlinks to your site from other sites but I wanted to include this as it’s own point because it can be really helpful.

Advertising with other bloggers can be a really useful and effective way to boost your DA and get those backlinks. There are some things you’re going to want to consider though, before you book an advertising package with another blogger.

First of all, do they offer advertising packages?

Lots of bloggers do – myself included. They will often tweet about them if they do and should have a dedicate page on their blog with all the information about the packages they offer. Here is my advertising for bloggers page, where I provide the information you need.

And secondly, you’re going to want to advertise with bloggers who have a blog domain authority score which is higher than yours.

Although it’s nice to be nice and you might want to advertise with bloggers who are friends to support them, that’s fine. But you’re going to get the most benefit for your blog (and your money) if you advertise with those higher DA sites.

This is because backlinks from higher authority blogs will show Google that your blog is reliable and worthy to be a higher authority blog too.

Here is a full blog post about advertising for bloggers, if you want to know more before you commit. Make sure the blogger you’re thinking of advertising with includes PERMANENT backlinks within their advertising package.

SEO optimize your blog posts

SEO and DA can go hand in hand and a lot of things apply to both.

I find the Yoast plugin absolutely invaluable when it comes to the SEO of my posts. So if you can download plugins, I’d highly recommend that one and watching the tutorials for it.

For the sake of this post however, I’m just going to highlight some basic elements of SEO that are worth incorporating into most of your blog content. PSA, I’m far from an expert on SEO, so I’d highly recommend doing your own research as well:

• Make your blog posts longer than 300 words: Content rich blog posts show search engines it’s professional and more useful to the reader
• Key words: High search volume and low competition makes the best keyword. You’re going to want to do some keyword research or sign up for Keysearch to help with this
• Use headings where possible: This breaks the text up and makes it more reader friendly (H2 tags!) Also a great place to add your keywords
• Start your posts with text, not an image: As this is an important place to have your key word and gives you the chance to create a catchy introduction
• Make your posts as shareable as possible: Not only will easy sharing options encourage people to share your content more, the more it’s shared, the more search engines will recognize it as useful content
• Name your images and add alt text: Rename your images – even your stock images – with your keywords and add your keywords to your image alt text and description

This has been a bit of a mammoth blog post but I hope it has helped you understand what a domain authority score is, why it’s important (or not important) and what you can implement to help improve yours – if you want to.

It’s also important to note that Moz and Google often do updates which might affect your DA score. I urge you not to panic – although it is really annoying – and just keep on top of the things mentioned in this post.

It’s good to have a routine when it comes to ensuring your DA score stays high (or increases) rather than panicking and doing everything at once!

I hope you found this helpful about how to increase your blog domain authority score! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

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