How to increase your website authority

Google continues to insist that website authority is not a ranking factor for deciding how high websites appear in search engine results pages (SERPs).

However, Google’s John Mueller let slip that there is still a website-wide score that “maps to similar things.”

What is website authority?

Website authority is a metric that measures how well a website will rank on a search engine using primarily link data.

It was developed by Moz in 2006 and is often referred to as domain authority (DA).

Website authority assigns a score from 1-100 and is mainly calculated based on the number of links and the quality of links.

Moz describes its domain authority score calculation as “…the calculation of a domain’s DA score comes from a machine learning algorithm’s predictions about how often Google is using that domain in its search results. If domain A is more likely to appear in a Google SERP than domain B is, then we would expect domain A’s DA to be higher than domain B’s DA.”

The higher the score the greater chance the domain has of ranking.

For example, the New York Times has a DA score of 95.

It’s important to note that website authority or domain authority is not a Google-approved metric.

Multiple tools on the market provide a website authority score similar to Moz’s DA.

These include Domain Rating provided by Ahrefs, Authority Score by SEMRush and Trust Flow created by Majestic.

What is a good website authority score?

To get a true sense of your website’s authority in your industry, you need to compare it to your competitors.

For example, if your website has an authority score of 15 but other websites in your space only have a score of 10 then your website should rank well.

How to increase your website authority

Backlinks are the main indicator behind your domain authority and are also one of Google’s most important ranking factors.

A recent study found that 90% of websites on the internet don’t get any organic traffic, as they don’t have any backlinks.

Build backlinks from high-authority domains

Concentrate on getting organic links from reputable and high-authority websites that have a higher DA than you.

You can do this by creating content that other websites would want to link to, such as case studies, detailed guides, original research, and infographics.

Create an internal linking strategy

Internal links can also improve the authority of pages on your site as they pass authority.

One easy way to create internal backlinks is through ‘topic clustering’.

Topic clusters are groups of pages that target a topic in-depth and show E-E-A-T in a subject area.

A topic cluster includes one pillar page that explores the primary topic followed by multiple pages that go deeper into specific subtopics.

For example, a pillar page for the primary topic entitled ‘A complete guide to building muscle’ could have the following supporting content:

How much protein do I need to build muscle?
How long does it take to build muscle?
Does swimming build muscle?
What are the best muscle-building supplements?

TRAFCK SEO agency can do all of the heavy lifting for you and create a strategy to increase your website authority.