July 5, 2023
The Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score that indicates how likely the domain is to rank in the search engine results page (SERP). With this metric, you have a better understanding of the relevance of your domain and its authority relative to your online competitors. The prefix was introduced by Moz and is calculated on a scale of 1 to 100. The higher the score, the higher the Domain Authority. In many cases, higher authority results in higher search positions in Google.
Domain authority: measurements and monitoring
There are several ways to measure the Domain Authority of your website. Via Moz Link Explorer and SmallSEOtools you can measure and check the Domain Authority. In the next paragraph, are the pros and cons shown of both SEO tools.
The publisher of this statistic, Moz, gives you a free 30-day subscription to check your website’s Domain Authority. The great thing about the tool is, it allows you to check the authority of a particular page. The authority of a particular page (www.domein.nl/pagina) sometimes differs from the Domain Authority.
Moz offers other options besides checking the authority. You can use the tool to analyze different domains/pages in terms of Domain and Page Authority. Because of this, you can easily compare the authority of your own domain with the authority of your biggest competitors.
SmallSEOtools
To figure out the DA score, in addition to Moz’s tool, you can use SmallSEOtools’ tool as well. If you only want to gain insight into Domain or Page Authority, we recommend using SmallSEOtools. Because this is a free tool, where you can see the values without any registration.
The big plus of this site is that it’s free and there is no need to create an account to use it. This saves you both time and money. As a test, we used the Domain Authority of several websites with the DA checker from SmallSEOtools and Moz. The results are identical in all cases.
It is even possible with this tool to make bulk exports of multiple domains. This way, you can also check out your competitor’s domain. The disadvantage of this tool is that it does not offer in-depth info on how this Domain Authority was created.
In a nutshell: if you subscribe to Moz, it must have added value. Just checking the Domain Authority is no added value and a waste of money! However, for in-depth competitive research, we do recommend this tool!
Increase domain authority
You can only boost the Domain Authority by performing link building. Here, it’s very important that you gather a backlink from a (relevant) website with a high Domain Authority. The website from which you get the referral provides value to your website.
Manipulated domain authority
There have been plenty of studies in the world of link building about the ways in which Domain Authority can be manipulated.
Right now, there are still many companies that ”boost” your website’s Domain Authority for a low fee within a month or two. They will increase the Domain Authority in very unnatural ways. Like, for instance, an increase from 1 to 34.
The referring domains you get in many cases are from Google, but are certainly not earned, and are mostly placed manually. For the purpose of sustainable link building, Google will eventually give penalties for this, causing your domain to rank lower for keywords in Google or even not rank at all.
SEO Specialist
Tiemen de Jonge is a seasoned SEO Specialist at Seeders Zwolle. With a keen eye for detail and a passion for optimizing online presence, Tiemen helps clients improve their search engine rankings and drive organic traffic to their websites. With years of experience in the digital marketing industry, Tiemen is dedicated to staying up-to-date on the latest SEO trends and techniques to deliver top-notch results for Seeders' clients.
