Website Authority is an SEO metric that measures the overall “strength” of a domain.
The authority of a website predicts how likely it is to rank in the search results for any target keywords compared to the competition.
The higher the authority your website has, the higher you can rank.
The truth is that website authority is more a concept than a specific metric. SEOs know that Google uses different ranking factors to determine the quality of your website.
According to Google’s John Mueller, there is a sitewide score that Google uses to help determine the quality of your website.
This is where website authority comes from.
While website authority is more of a concept, there are a number of different tools that have created metrics to mimic the sitewide authority score.
These include:
These website authority metrics are on a scale of 0-100.
The higher your score, the more website authority you have.
The thing to remember about website authority is that it’s applied to your entire domain. That means every piece of content you write gets a boost in the search results based on your website authority.
What Will I Learn?
Website Authority is important because it strongly indicates how well your website is likely to rank in Google.
Higher authority means better chances of ranking above your competitors. It also means that you can target more competitive keywords.
Think of website authority like trust with Google.
The higher your authority, the more Google will trust you. The more trust you have with Google, the higher you will rank in the SERPs.
Bottom line: Higher website authority = More traffic.
The easiest way to check website authority is by using a trusted SEO tool like Ahrefs, Moz, Semrush or Majestic.
Here’s how to check your website authority for free with each SEO tool.
Head to the Ahrefs website authority checker tool, type in your domain and click “Check Authority.”
Ahrefs will show you your domain rating score out of 100 points. They will also tell you how many backlinks you have and the percentage that are dofollow.
Head over to the Moz domain analysis tool, enter your domain and click “Check Authority”.
Moz will show you your domain authority score out of 100. The higher your domain authority score, the higher your website authority.
Start a 14-day free trial on Semrush, add your site and click on the Domain Overview report.
You can see your website’s authority score in the top left of the report.
Visit the Majestic homepage, add your domain and click the search icon.
Majestic provides 2 types of authority scores:
Trust Flow is generally considered the best measurement of authority from Majestic.
Follow these 4 steps to increase website authority:
Produce high-quality and unique content that provides excellent value to readers.
Other website owners link to quality content that provides their own user’s value. Include elements like:
…to make the content more engaging and shareable.
Build backlinks from other higher authority websites.
This will increase the website authority of your domain and your trustworthiness with Google. Make sure you focus on quality control!
Link building is all about quality over quantity.
Only quality links will increase your website authority in the long run.
If you are struggling with link building, outsource it to a trusted link building service to do it for you.
Clean up your backlink profile by removing or disavowing links from spammy or untrustworthy sources.
This improves the quality of your link profile – Which can positively affect your website authority.
Focus on building inbound links from sites with high domain authority and significant organic traffic.
Getting links from high-traffic websites can be more valuable because Google trusts these websites more than others. Take a look at these recommended guest posting services if you need help with that.
This can improve your website authority while also sending you a steady flow of free referral traffic each month.
Check out our complete increase domain authority tutorial to learn more about each of these steps.
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