Your website’s up and running – great! But have you checked your domain authority? If you’re wondering, domain authority predicts how high your website can rank in the search engine results.

A higher score means it’s likely that your website will be visible in the first few search results or pages, giving it an advantage in gaining visitors (how many of us truly get to page 3 or 4 of our search results?).

If you’ve put effort into your website but aren’t seeing the traffic results desired, not to worry, there are ways you can increase your domain authority! Let’s get to it.

1) Increase Time Spent on the Website

More time spent on your website will produce better domain authority. The reason is search engines rank websites higher when people spend more time on them. To increase the time spent on your website, try creating full-length posts that engage your readers. This will keep visitors interested in your content, and they’ll stay on your website longer.

2) Build a Backlink Profile

A backlink profile is all other web pages that “link back” to your site. It’s very important to have high-quality backlinks and ensure other sites linking to yours are trusted sources, with quality content and high domain authority themselves. Think of backlinks as a referral to your website from other sites, and quality referrals demonstrate your website has great content worth sharing. Here are some ideas to build quality backlinks:

• Write Guest Blog Posts: Posting on someone else’s high-quality website can help when linking back to yours.
• Pinning your Posts on Pinterest: Many sites and large online publications constantly look for quality content across sites like Pinterest. So, if others find your pins engaging, they may include your blog post in a roundup, and you’ll get that valuable link back to your website along with the social proof that Pinterest carries.

3) Remove Toxic Backlinks

On the flip side, toxic backlinks are bad referral sources that hurt your website’s domain authority. These are sites with poor domain authority or sites with questionable practices. For example, websites that are clearly set up to spam users, or manipulate rankings by mass linking without any real content. These types of low authority sites will lower your domain authority ranking. You’ll want to remove toxic backlinks, and if you find any, contact the site owner and ask them to remove your link, or use Google’s disavow tool.

4) Have a User-Friendly Website

This is a simple, but effective way to improve your domain’s authority. With a user-friendly website, you’ll encourage visitors to click on more pages, spend more time on your website, and share it with others. An eye-catching, clean, and intuitive website will garner more attention, which will help develop organic traffic and improve your rankings. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Make all pages easy to navigate
2. Highlight keywords that appeal to your target audience
3. Enable a search function

Summary

A strong domain authority goes a long way to achieving better rankings on search engines. With better rankings, you’ll have more website visitors and greater visibility. For all the hard work you put into your website, follow these tips so your domain authority reaches its full potential! If you need help building your site’s authority ranking, contact us today to come up with a plan that works for you.