If you have a website to manage and maintain, you’re probably familiar with the concept of domain authority. The higher your website’s domain authority, the more likely it is to show up on the first page of search engine results, leading to greater traffic to your page. Raising your website’s domain authority is a great way to get more eyes on your content, increase your ad revenue, and help you and your website stand out from the competitors.
Coaching clients through the process of improving their domain authority is one of the specialties of the brand management experts at BRANDefenders. Keep reading for ten of our best tips to improve domain authority.
1. Choose the Best Domain Name
Before launching a brand-new website, make sure your domain name is relevant to your content and easy to remember. Having at least one of your major keywords in your domain name is a good way to ensure its relevancy. You want your name to be memorable so that visitors will have an easy time returning to your site later.
Depending on your content and the type of website you want to put together, it may be prudent to buy an old domain rather than create a new one. This will give you access to the clout that the domain has already established. It often offers an advantage when it comes to your domain authority.
2. Prioritize User Experience
Remember, you’re building this website so that visitors will read and share your content. You need to make it a place that users will want to return to and show to their friends and family. Your posts should be informative and nourishing at the same time, educating your visitors and providing them with the information they’re searching for.
3. Optimize Your Content
SEO best practices are your best friend for improving your domain authority. Learning to integrate keywords into your content, code seamlessly, and image tags will go a long way toward increasing your website’s rankings in the major search engines.
You will also succeed in boosting your domain authority by creating long-form content that covers your subject from every angle. One of the best ways to do this is to research people’s questions when searching for information relevant to your subject. Include these questions within your own content, and then answer them, remembering to weave in your main keywords and related keywords.
For further assistance in mastering the skills and techniques involved with SEO, contact the branding and content management experts at BRANDefenders.
4. Increase Your Loading Speed
In this era marked by instant gratification and the abundance of readily available information, loading speed can make or break a website. Studies suggest that 40% of people will abandon your site if your website takes longer than three seconds to load. Those losses will wreck your conversion rate, tanking your hopes of improving your domain authority.
Running regular speed checks on your website is very important to make sure you’re maintaining that ‘3 seconds or less loading time. If you find your website is loading too slowly, check-in with BRANDefenders for input on how to speed things up. One common mistake is not using a small enough size for images, causing the website to get bogged down while it tries to load them.
5. Optimize your Website for Mobile
One of the most important ways to improve users’ experience on your website and increase the odds of having return visitors is to make sure your website functions perfectly on smartphones and tablets.
According to a 2018 study on computer and internet use by the United States Census Bureau, 84% of households had at least one smartphone, surpassing the 78% of households with at least one laptop or desktop computer. Visitors are likely to use your site on their mobile devices, so you want to make sure your website works as intended on all devices.
6. Get Rid of Bad Links
Once your website is up and running, it’s prudent to get into the habit of going back and checking your old backlinks to make sure they all still function. If any links are broken or lead to toxic sites, get rid of them or replace them with better ones. Having bad links on your webpage could negatively impact your domain authority, so check them every now and again or have your webpage examined by brand management experts like the pros at BRANDefenders.
7. Optimize Your Internal Links
Of course, getting too hung up on your external links could make you forget the importance of internal links. Links that direct visitors to other pages on your website are a key part of optimizing your structure and user-friendliness. Internal links help visitors find what they’re looking for, and they also make it easier for search engines to index your site.
One example of utilizing internal links to increase your domain authority is providing a list of related blog posts your readers might enjoy. If a user is interested in learning more about a particular topic, they can choose another of your articles without searching further.
8. Earn High-Quality External Links
Publishing top-notch content frequently is the best way to win links from other authority sites. You want to make your content informative, relevant, and impeccably written. Studies suggest quality and narrative style are important factors in determining the shareability of a piece of content. Producing high-quality content will increase the likelihood of people sharing, leading to more exposure and a greater likelihood of established authority sites linking to your content.
9. Become an Authority
No matter what your field, increasing your website’s domain authority relies on you being seen as an expert in that field. In addition to producing great content on topics relevant to your field, becoming an authority requires engaging with your followers on social media in a meaningful way. Doing so will allow you to pick up on the trends and themes most important to the audiences interested in your content, allowing you to create more relevant and up-to-date content for your readers.
You can also improve your brand recognition and authority by writing guest blogs on other websites relevant to your field or industry. Posting on other websites can help bring in new traffic to your own web page through backlinks. By getting your name out there, you’re increasing the likelihood that readers interested in your field will start to recognize you and seek out your writing in other places.
10. Promote Yourself on Social Media
Once you’ve established your website and loaded it up with great content, it’s time to promote yourself by sharing your writing on social media. Regularly providing links to your website through posts on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media pages will increase traffic to your website. The reverse is also true; drawing more eyes to your website will increase followers on social media if your content is well-written and informative.
When it comes to using social media to promote yourself, it’s important to remember the “social” aspect. Social media is a network, and networking with other people requires reciprocating their attention. Follow other creators on social media, including commenting on their posts and amplifying their content on your own social media page. This type of engagement will improve your online reputation, which can lead to an increase in your website’s domain authority down the line.
How BRANDefenders Can Help Improve Your Domain Authority
BRANDefenders offers expert guidance useful in improving one’s domain authority as a premier online reputation and brand management company. These skills can be confusing and difficult to figure out alone, especially if you’re already knee-deep in running your website and generating content. When you work with us, you’ll be able to breathe easy knowing your brand is being managed by the top in the business.
BRANDefenders can also help you if your online reputation has taken a hit recently and needs some damage control. Our experts can scan your website and help you eliminate any problematic or unflattering backlinks that might be driving your domain authority down. We can also develop strategies to improve your website’s rankings in the major search engines, leading to a significant increase in traffic to your website.
The Bottom Line
Creating and maintaining a well-written blog or website is one thing, but developing the skills to expand your domain authority and get more eyes on your content is different.
Fortunately, there are experts like the professionals at BRANDefenders to offer you advice and help you implement key strategies that will allow your webpage to rise to new heights in the search engine rankings. You can start by honing and perfecting these ten strategies to improve your domain authority. You’ll see your engagement climb in no time!