What’s Domain Authority and Why Does It Matter for My Manufacturing Company?
If you’re working hard to improve the search engine optimization for your manufacturing company, you’ve likely run into the term “domain authority” before. It’s not surprising, since domain authority can be directly linked to a manufacturing company’s SEO rank. If you’re unfamiliar with domain authority and why it matters for your company, read on. We’ll walk you through what exactly domain authority is and why it matters so much. Let’s unpack this idea of domain authority.
What is Domain Authority?
The best definition for what domain authority is as follows. Domain authority is a metric used to estimate how a website would rank on results pages such as Google. This concept was created by Moz, a software company, using an advanced algorithm that factors in a host of website features. These features include backlinks, keywords, and other content-related factors, but the majority of the influence comes from backlinks. Each website is scored from 0-100. The higher the current score, the better the domain authority.
It becomes more and more difficult to improve domain authority as one’s score gets higher. Why? This process ensures that only the best websites will have outstanding scores because they are established, credible, and are linked to by other highly ranked websites. It can be extremely difficult and time-consuming to influence your domain authority score. Per Moz, affecting a domain authority score is difficult because a huge number of factors are taken into account (but more on that later).
Why Does It Matter?
Domain authority matters for a manufacturing company because you want website traffic being directed to your business. Here’s the thing – outside of Google itself, no one truly knows what the search engine’s algorithm is for SEO rankings. However, over time, online-savvy people have figured out what aspects of an online presence affect SEO rankings. They found a way to work the system. Tweak this, and the ranking goes up. Tweak that and the ranking eventually dipped.
Domain authority takes this idea to the next level by predicting what your online rank will be given what (we believe) Google uses for SEO ranks. However, minor tweaks to a website will not affect domain authority, so adjusting domain authority score may involve a complete strategic approach for increasing backlinks.
How Can I Affect My Score?
As mentioned, this can be a difficult task; however, increasing domain authority score can be huge for online presence success. While there are numerous factors involved in the score, much of it is likely influenced by links, and especially backlinks. One report offered some helpful insight into affecting a domain authority score. It explained that quality is almost always favored over quantity in the eyes of Moz.
This means that though you may have ten links directing to your site from a poorly rated source, your company’s domain authority won’t be impacted all that much. Moz would, though, indicate that two links from trusted sites would be better for your domain authority score. Additionally, domain authority favors certain domains such as “.edu” or “.gov” because such sites are seen as trustworthy sources.
It isn’t all in the links, though. Why? Because of social media. We keep circling back to this concept and for good reason – social media can penetrate every piece of your online presence. Moz takes kindly to content that is being interacted with by unique individuals. The more people are interacting/commenting/mentioning with a post/tweet/pin, the better the domain authority (DA) score in the long run. Learn more about the social media platforms to be on for your manufacturing company here.
DA can be a frustrating concept. However, paying close attention to everything on a website – from links to content to all social media activity – can set you apart from competitors. Pay close attention to DA score and check it often. By doing so, you can be confident that you’re giving Google high quality content that will demand website traffic.