How do I increase my website domain level

 People often ask us, "How do I increase my website's domain-level authority?" And I often avoid this question becausethe score itself shouldn't be your focus. What you should focus on is what causesthat score to rise. And that's high-quality backlinks fromauthoritative websites. So today, we're going to talk about the threecore factors that'll improve your website's link authority in a meaningful way. Stay tuned. [music] So if you're new to the concept of websiteauthority, it's actually a made-up metric from SEO tool companies. Now, whether you call it Domain Rating, DomainAuthority, website authority, or whatever, they all serve the same general purpose. 

They try to measure the relative "strength"of a website's backlink profile compared to other sites in their index. Now, while some tools claim that their websiteauthority metric can predict a website's ranking potential, I'd take that with a grain of salt. Yes, I think SEOs generally agree that websiteauthority does play somewhat of a factor in rankings. In fact, we've found a clear correlation betweenDomain Rating and the number of keywords a website ranks for. But correlation doesn't prove causation. Google ranks pages and not websites. So having a goal to improve Domain Rating istoo broad and could actually make you lose focus from your true goal which is to rankin Google and get more organic traffic. So by putting the focus at the website levelinstead of the page level is like painting your whole house just to make yourbathroom look good. It might work to a certain extent, but 90%of your efforts actually have no effect on the end goal. 

Now, the things that cause an increase inyour website's authority can help you rank higher in Google. And it all comes down to the main thing responsiblefor calculating this metric. And that's links. Now, I can't speak on behalf of other toolproviders because I don't know how they calculate their website authority metric. But I can expand a bit on Ahrefs' websiteauthority metric called Domain Rating. So again, Domain Rating represents the overallstrength of a website's backlink profile. And when I say strength, it isn't just a purenumbers game. We look at both quantity and quality ofthe links pointing at a website. Now, Domain Rating isn't linear. It's plotted on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100. To understand this scale a bit better, thinkof it like gaining status in a video game. You might start off as a "Scout". And to gain your Ranger badge, it might onlytake a few hours. But jumping to the next level could take you months! Then only the truly elite players will getto Epic status. And don't even get me started on Legendary. 

This is reserved only for the "chosen ones." In the same way, increasing a website's DomainRating from 79 to 80 would be a much bigger jump than going from 3 to 4, or even from 3 to 10. In short, you can't say that a website witha DR 40 is twice as authoritative as a website with a DR 20. It'll be more than that. Although improving Domain Rating shouldn'tbe your aim, let's talk about the three main things that impact the score. First are the number of unique websites that link to you. At Ahrefs, we call these Referring Domains. And in our calculations, we only accountfor followed links. Meaning links with nofollow, UGC, or sponsoredvalues won't improve a websites' DR score. Now, since we count referring domains here andnot backlinks, subsequent links from the same website won't improve a website's DR either. The second thing we look at is the DomainRatings of the linking domains. And this is one of the ways we keep DR reliableand tougher to manipulate. For example, if a website has 1,000 followedreferring domains that all come from DR 0 websites, it's unlikely that those links willdo much for the linked page.

 And we want to reflect that by not moverinflatingDR scores based on quantity alone. This also means that a website's DR can increase ifthe Domain Ratings of the linking websites go up. For example, I built a link from a DR 15 siteback in 2017. And today, that same website has a DomainRating of 58. The moral of the story is not to judge a websiteby its DR alone. If there are less authoritative sites, but you seethem grinding and consistently building links to their pages, then the value of your linkcan increase over time. This is the Referring domains graph for thesite I got a link from and this is around the day I got a link from them. The slow and steady increase in referringdomains plus the person's content were good indicators that the site would continue to do well. So I invested my time to get a link froma low-DR site and it paid off.

 And the third thing we look at are the number ofsites the referring website links to with at least one followed link. The more unique websites a site links to,the less so called "DR equity" it can pass. For example, if you had a new website thatgot a link from the New York Times, you might think you'd get a nice pop in your Domain Rating. Afterall, the New York Times has a DomainRating of 94 and it's one of the most well-known sites in the world. But because of the sheer number of externalwebsites it links to with at least one followed link, it won't have that much of an impact on DR. As you can see in the Linked Domains report inAhrefs' Site Explorer, they link to over 280,000 websites with a followed link.

 So how much of an impact would a linkfrom nytimes.com have on a website? Well, it depends. But to give you a better picture, this website only has one link in total, and it's from The New York Times. And it has a DR score of just 2. And remember, DR runs on a logarithmic scale. So if you had a DR 70 site, that link maynot visibly impact your Domain Rating. Now, let's compare that to a site like IMDB,which has a DR of 93. According to the Linked Domains report inSite Explorer, they only link out to around 5,000 websites with a followed link. Now, if we look at this domain which has justa single referring domain from IMDB and no other websites, you'll see the website hasa DR score of 34. 

So does that mean that the DR 34 site is more"authoritative" than the DR 2 site? Or that a link from IMDB is better than onefrom the New York Times? Definitely not! And this is exactly why I don't recommend usingDomain Rating scores as a standalone metric. It's not a good indicator of a website's qualityor legitimacy. It's merely a measure of "link popularity." Instead, it's better if you combine DR withother metrics like domain-level traffic or URL rating, which estimates the overall strengthof a page's backlink profile. So what are the key takeaways here. I'll tell you as it is. Don't obsess over increasing your Domain Rating. Instead, focus on two things. #1. Build links to pages you want to rank. Again, Google ranks pages and not websites. And if you want to rank your pages for popularor competitive topics, you're going to need links. 

In fact, we found that the number of referringdomains to a page is the strongest correlating backlink factor as far as rankings are concerned. So rather than building them to every pageacross your site, focus on the ones you care about most. And #2. Try to get links from authoritativeand high-quality websites. At the end of the day, you want to rank yourpages high in Google. And the links that are going to move the needleare high-quality backlinks from relevant and authoritative pages. I won't expand on these qualities right nowbecause we have a full video that outlines the characteristics of high quality backlinks,which I've linked up in the description. Now, if you focus on these two things, whichwere to build links to pages you want to rank and to get links from authoritative sources,the byproduct is going to be higher Google rankings and an increase in your Domain Rating. 

And we have a ton of step-by-step tutorials onhow to build links to your website, so I highly recommend checking out our link building playlist. And if you enjoyed this video, make sure tolike, share and subscribe for more actionable SEO and marketing tutorials. I'll see you in the next one. 

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