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Increasing the Domain Authority on Your B2C Website
When it comes to running a successful website, it’s important that you focus on the strength and authority of your online domain. You might not realize it, but the robustness of your website actually plays a part in its Google rankings and its impact on your audience.
A slow-loading, lackluster website will turn consumers and brands alike away from your online presence.
And in a world dominated by the internet and online search queries—there are over 72,000 Google searches performed every second—you need to make sure your digital marketing team is doing everything in their power to create an engaging, eye-catching online platform.
It’s this traffic and visibility that will drive sales and conversions, after all.
Therefore, your team should start focusing on website domain authority. But what exactly does this phrase mean?
What does domain authority really mean?
Domain authority is a type of measurement that Google and other search engines use to evaluate and rank a given website for a topic or keyword.
Domain authority refers to the strength of the website overall, not just individual pages. This ranking determines whether or not a website as a whole is sturdy enough to rank well on search engine results pages (SERPs).
This predictive analysis is a valuable tool for brands looking to make their mark in the digital world. With it, brands can strengthen their technical and contextual authority, drive more audiences to their site and boost conversions.
How do you measure domain authority?
There are a number of different factors involved in evaluating domain authority. It’s important that your team is aware of each and every one so that you can build a customized plan of attack and boost your numbers.
Domain authority is scored on a 100-point logarithmic scale. Evaluating factors include links, root domains, keywords, site performance and more.
Increasing domain authority is essential if you want to get your content and your website ranked on Google. Here are a few simple steps to follow to increase that authority and get your website noticed.
5 ways to increase domain authority and drive traffic
1. Give your SEO content strategy a much-needed refresh.
When it comes to increasing your domain authority on your website, the first thing you should do is evaluate your SEO strategy. If your authority ranking is low, it’s probably because there are some gaps in your on and off-page SEO strategies.
This means that you need to reevaluate your content and make sure you’re offering valuable insights relevant to your audience. Get rid of any duplicate content that might be lingering and put in place a strategy for repurposing and updating old content so that it’s fresh with the times.
Similarly, you should roll out a keyword strategy. Identify keywords that are relevant to your brand, find out what phrases you’re already ranking for, and infuse this content throughout the site.
This means that you need to incorporate these head and long-tail keywords into your copy, your headers, your metadata and more. This is a great first step in evaluating your SEO content strategy and optimizing it to increase your overall domain authority.
In order for Google to rank your content, and in order for search engines to see your website as valuable and credible, you need to give your audience what they want. This means that you need to stay on top of emerging trends and breaking news.
Google Trends and Google News are two easy-to-use and free resources that can prepare your content team with new material that will align your brand as a tried and true leader.
2. Focus on link building to establish authority.
Another SEO tactic that is sure to increase your website’s domain authority is link building.
Link building is often the bane of a digital marketer’s existence. And that’s because it’s a time-consuming process that requires great attention to detail and mass amounts of patience.
Domain authority means that your website is a credible, authentic source. Therefore, in order to boost trust in your website, you need to incorporate links from a variety of sources and publications.
These links show search engines that you’re a website that is full of valuable insights because of the top-notch sources you link out to.
You can also perform outreach to get other brands and businesses to link back to yours, thus establishing a beneficial relationship for all parties.
Try writing guest posts, working with influencers, and using resources like Help A Reporter Out (HARO) to get your brand and your website out in front of more people.
Links make a difference when it comes to domain authority. Link-building tactics drive referral traffic too—so they aren’t just good for overall rankings, but the future of your website and the growth of your brand as a whole.
3. Take a mobile-first approach.
By 2022, global mobile internet traffic will far surpass desktop traffic. That means that it’s important for your brand to establish itself on mobile devices.
Not only that, but Google takes into consideration your mobile website when it gives your site a ranking. In fact, Google has said that it prioritizes mobile-friendliness in its ranking algorithm.
That means that in order for your website to remain relevant and impactful, it needs to be a robust, responsive platform across all devices—smartphones and tablets included.
In order to survive in an increasingly evolving technological world, your brand and your marketing team need to be on top of these shifts and changes in the market. With more and more consumers turning to smartphones to complete purchases, that means that your brand needs to be aware of how it needs to grow and adapt.
A smart and effective way to increase your website’s domain authority is by rolling out a responsive, mobile-friendly website that consumers can interact with whenever and wherever.
One brand doing an exceptional job at engaging with audiences through a mobile-first approach is Walmart. Their mobile website is intuitive, responsive and engaging. It leads consumers effortlessly on their journey, providing them with all of the features available on the desktop platform and then some.
This increases its domain authority, establishing itself as a leader in mobile eCommerce.
Source: Walmart
4. Improve your site speed.
A 100-millisecond delay in loading time can reduce conversion rates by 7%.
That might sound fake, but it’s really not. Slow loading times are a major deterrent for most consumers. If your website doesn’t load as quickly as your audience wants, they’ll look elsewhere to get the job done.
Consumers and search engines expect your website to load in under two seconds. Any longer and those conversion rates drop, and your bounce rates increase. This could affect your brand’s good record–and Google takes note.
If the search giant starts to see visitors running from your site, it will have a negative impact on its rankings. And that has a detrimental impact on its domain authority.
To make sure you’re not losing out to lagging loading times, use the free Google PageSpeed Insights tool:
Source: Google Insights
Using popular eCommerce platform Amazon as an example, you can see that the website has been optimized for speed.
This gives its domain authority ranking a boost.
You can do the same for your brand by ensuring the technical backend of your site is up to par, images are the appropriate size and your platform can handle that bandwidth of data it encounters each and every day.
Stay on top of your technical and marketing metrics to ensure that you’re always performing—whether it’s your website or your campaigns—at the best of your ability.
5. Use social media to boost your online presence.
There were 4.021 billion social media users across the world at the end of 2018.
These numbers will continue to rise as the years continue. Social media has radically transformed how businesses interact and market themselves to their audience. It has altered the fate of email, content and digital marketing campaigns over the world. It’s a valuable resource for increasing brand awareness, establishing credibility in the market and facilitating relationships.
You can use social media to boost your website’s domain authority too. There is something to be said about social media traffic and its impact on search engine rankings.
If you can establish yourself and gather an audience on these platforms, you can drive more users to your website with ease. And this increased traffic will set off some flags that will lead to higher rankings in an organic and almost effortless way.
But this then requires a comprehensive social media strategy that relies heavily on social listening, interaction, posting and more.
You have to be creative and innovative with these networks in order to stand out from the crowd. But doing so can put you on the path to brand success in terms of your website’s domain authority.
Wrap up
Increasing your website’s domain authority is a lofty goal, but it’s a necessary task to drive the traffic your brand needs for success. This process involves a number of steps including extensive SEO reconfiguring, content evaluation, social media support and more.
Once you complete these tasks, you’ll start noticing increased rankings, boosted traffic numbers and solid conversion.
