Website authority is a measure of how well your site ranks in search engines and how trustworthy and relevant it is for your target audience. A high website authority score can help you attract more organic traffic, generate more leads, and establish your brand as an industry leader.
But how do you increase website authority? What factors affect it and what strategies can you use to improve it?
In this article, we will answer these questions and provide you with seven practical tips on how to increase website authority in a safe and effective way.
What is Website Authority and How is it Calculated?
Website authority is a metric that evaluates the quality and quantity of the backlinks pointing to your site. Backlinks are links from other websites that direct users to your site. They are like votes of confidence that indicate that your site has valuable and relevant content.
However, not all backlinks are created equal. Some backlinks have more weight and influence than others, depending on the authority and relevance of the linking site. For example, a backlink from a reputable and popular site like Wikipedia or Forbes will have more impact on your website authority than a backlink from a low-quality or spammy site.
There are different tools that measure website authority, such as Moz’s Domain Authority (DA), Ahrefs’ Domain Rating (DR), and Majestic’s Trust Flow (TF). Each tool has its own algorithm and scale, but they all use similar factors to calculate website authority, such as:
- The number of unique referring domains linking to your site
- The authority and quality of the linking domains
- The relevance and context of the linking pages and anchor texts
- The diversity and naturalness of the backlink profile
Website authority is not a static or absolute score. It is a relative and comparative metric that changes over time and depends on the competition. Therefore, you should not focus on achieving a specific or perfect score, but rather on improving your score relative to your competitors and industry standards.
Why is Website Authority Important?
Website authority is important for several reasons, such as:
- It affects your search engine rankings. Search engines like Google use backlinks as one of the main ranking factors to determine the relevance and quality of your site. A high website authority score indicates that your site has a strong and trustworthy backlink profile, which can boost your visibility and ranking in the search results.
- It increases your organic traffic. Ranking higher in the search results means that more people will see and click on your site, resulting in more organic traffic. Organic traffic is the most valuable and cost-effective source of traffic, as it consists of users who are actively looking for information, solutions, or products related to your niche.
- It enhances your credibility and reputation. Having a high website authority score also means that your site is endorsed by other authoritative and relevant sites in your industry. This can increase your credibility and reputation among your target audience, as they will perceive your site as a reliable and trustworthy source of information and solutions.
- It improves your conversion rate. A high website authority score can also help you convert more visitors into leads and customers, as they will be more likely to trust your site and take action. For example, they will be more willing to subscribe to your newsletter, download your ebook, sign up for your webinar, or buy your product or service.
How to Increase Website Authority: 7 Tips for Success
Now that you know what website authority is and why it is important, let’s look at some tips on how to increase website authority in a safe and effective way.
1. Create High-Quality and Linkable Content
The first and most important tip on how to increase website authority is to create high-quality and linkable content. Content is the foundation of your website authority, as it is what attracts and engages your audience and what motivates other sites to link to you.
To create high-quality and linkable content, you should:
- Conduct keyword research and target relevant and low-competition keywords that your audience is searching for.
- Provide valuable and original information that solves your audience’s problems, answers their questions, or educates them on a topic.
- Use a clear and engaging tone and style that matches your brand voice and personality.
- Format your content for readability and usability, using headings, subheadings, bullet points, images, videos, charts, etc.
- Include a compelling and catchy title and meta description that entice users to click on your site.
- Optimize your content for SEO, using your target keywords in strategic places, such as the title, URL, headings, body, and image alt text.
- Update your content regularly and keep it fresh and relevant.
Some examples of high-quality and linkable content types are:
- Blog posts
- Guides and tutorials
- Ebooks and whitepapers
- Infographics and videos
- Case studies and testimonials
- Webinars and podcasts
- Tools and calculators
2. Promote Your Content and Build Relationships
Creating high-quality and linkable content is not enough to increase website authority. You also need to promote your content and build relationships with other sites and influencers in your niche.
To promote your content and build relationships, you should:
- Share your content on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.
- Join and participate in relevant online communities, such as forums, groups, blogs, podcasts, etc.
- Reach out to other sites and influencers in your niche and offer them your content as a resource or a guest post.
- Comment on other sites and blogs in your niche and add value to the discussion.
- Provide testimonials and reviews for other sites and products in your niche.
- Mention and link to other sites and influencers in your content and let them know about it.
- Respond to comments and feedback on your site and social media accounts.
The goal of promoting your content and building relationships is to increase your exposure and visibility, generate more traffic, and earn more backlinks from other sites. However, you should not spam or beg for links, as this can harm your reputation and website authority. Instead, you should focus on providing value and building trust and rapport with your audience and peers.
3. Analyze Your Competitors and Learn from Them
Another tip on how to increase website authority is to analyze your competitors and learn from them. Your competitors are the sites that rank higher than you for your target keywords and topics. They are your benchmarks and sources of inspiration for improving your website authority.
To analyze your competitors and learn from them, you should:
- Use tools like Moz’s Domain SEO Analysis Tool, Ahrefs’ Website Authority Checker, or Linkgraph.io’s Domain Authority checker to check their website authority score and compare it to yours.
- Use tools like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer or Moz’s Link Explorer to examine their backlink profile and see what sites are linking to them, how many links they have, what types of links they have, what anchor texts they use, etc.
- Use tools like BuzzSumo or Ahrefs’ Content Explorer to discover their most popular and shared content and see what topics, formats, headlines, etc.
- Use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer to identify their target keywords and see what keywords they rank for, how much traffic they get, what is their difficulty and search volume, etc.
The goal of analyzing your competitors and learning from them is to find gaps and opportunities for improving your website authority. For example, you can:
- Find relevant and authoritative sites that link to your competitors and reach out to them for a link.
- Create better and more comprehensive content than your competitors on the same or similar topics.
- Target low-competition and high-volume keywords that your competitors are not targeting or ranking for.
- Use different and more engaging formats and headlines than your competitors for your content.
4. Fix Broken Links and Remove Bad Links
Another tip on how to increase website authority is to fix broken links and remove bad links. Broken links are links that lead to non-existent or error pages, while bad links are links from low-quality or spammy sites. Both types of links can negatively affect your website authority, as they can reduce your user experience, damage your reputation, and lower your ranking.
To fix broken links and remove bad links, you should:
- Use tools like Ahrefs’ Site Audit or Screaming Frog SEO Spider to crawl your site and find broken links.
- Use tools like Google Search Console or Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker to monitor your backlink profile and find bad links.
- Fix broken links by redirecting them to relevant and existing pages, updating them with correct URLs, or removing them altogether.
- Remove bad links by contacting the linking site and asking them to remove the link, disavowing the link using Google’s Disavow Tool, or deleting the page that the link points to.
The goal of fixing broken links and removing bad links is to improve your user experience, protect your reputation, and optimize your backlink profile. This can help you increase your website authority and ranking in the long run.
5. Use Internal Linking to Boost Your Important Pages
Another tip on how to increase website authority is to use internal linking to boost your important pages. Internal links are links that connect your pages within your site. They are like pathways that guide your users and search engines through your site and help them discover more of your content.
To use internal linking to boost your important pages, you should:
- Identify your important pages, such as your homepage, service pages, product pages, landing pages, etc.
- Create relevant and high-quality content that supports and complements your important pages, such as blog posts, guides, ebooks, etc.
- Link your content to your important pages using descriptive and relevant anchor texts that match the topic and keywords.
Conclusion
Website authority is a crucial factor for achieving online success, as it can help you rank higher in search engines, attract more organic traffic, enhance your credibility and reputation, and improve your conversion rate. However, increasing website authority is not a quick or easy process. It requires consistent and strategic efforts to create high-quality and linkable content, promote the content and build relationships, analyze the competitors and learn from them, fix broken links and remove bad links, use internal linking to boost important pages, diversify the backlink profile, and track and measure the website authority progress. By following these tips, you can increase your website authority in a safe and effective way and achieve your online goals.
