Impact of Domain Authority on Keyword ranking
-
Experts
Please advise if there is any impact on Keyword rankings due to high or low Domain authority?
-
Hi Chris,
There are 2 Definitions of Domain Authority:
1. Domain Authority is a metric used by Moz to predict a website's ability to rank for a given keyword, all other things being equal. It is a predictive metric only, based upon computer modeling and some intellegent guesses, but it in no way effects actual ranking.
That said, there is a strong correlation between DA and rankings. Meaning sites with high DA often rank well, and vice versa. But one does not cause the other. You can read more about it here.
http://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority
2. SEOs use the term "Domain Authority" to refer to the body of metrics Google assigns to a site's value. It's a general term and yes, Google uses some version of "Domain Authority" to determine your rankings, but this is not the same thing as DA that you see used in Moz.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
Yes there's a significant impact on keyword rankings due to domain authority. If your domain has the authority is zero you have zero chance of ranking for your keywords. Anyone with a high domain authority or domain trust has a very good chance of ranking very high
For their chosen keywords. Google is all about trusting websites and relevancy as well. If you don't have both of them combined you do not ever have a good ranking website. Except for a couple exclusions which I will not get into right now.
Without getting inbound links that are relevant to the content you are trying to produce fewer it's for. You will not rank very well for those particular keywords. I hope this answers your question, and I hope I can be of more help to you if you let me know.
Sincerely,
Thomas
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
When domain a buys domain b (whose links direct to c), does domain a has links redirecting to domain c ?
Hi, I really need to know what happens when a company or domain (a) acquires another company with domain (b) with its links pointing to yet another location (c). Does company a then have redirects to c?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Yeshourun0 -
Will "repurposing" a keyword on our website affect rankings gained over time?
Hi team! Thinking of "repurposing" a keyword on our website. Reason: when researching this particular keyword, GMS are quite high, however, the new content we're creating is more up to date, better in general, than the old content this keyword is attached to. How will this affect rankings we've gained over time? (i.e., will any "age" benefits gained as that keyword has been in use on our website for a few years, be lost?) Will Google see the keyword/URL as totally new because it's attached to new content/something that has gone live recently? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MariaPuche-Jimenez_Parker0 -
Keyword keeps fluctuating between a high rank and no rank?
I've searched around and I can't seem to find anyone else describing the issue I'm seeing. Basically for a very long time our website (snappages.com) has always ranked in the tens and twenties for "create a website". It's a high volume keyword and we get a lot of traffic from it. Around May 16th it suddenly disappeared completely from search results on Google and now it will sporadically show back up with a SERP in the twenties every 5-10 days for a few hours and then completely disappear again. This pattern has continued to this day. I've checked and there are no manual penalties and nothing has really changed dramatically from a content perspective or anything like that. I would understand if we got penalized and our ranking dropped, or even if it just completely disappeared? This is the only keyword that this is happening for, all the others remain unaffected. Anyone know how I can find out why this is happening or have suggestions on how to fix it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stestone0 -
Keyword in URL - SEO impact
Hi, We don't have most important keyword of our industry in our domain or sub-domain. How important it is to have keyword in website URL? Most of our competitors pages with "keyword" urls been listing in SERP. What is back-links role in this scenarion? And which URL have more advantage? keyword in sub-domain or page with keyword. Like for "seo" keyword..... seo.example.com or example.com/seo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Wrong page ranking for keyword - should I move the better content over?
We have a page which is outranking another page for a keyword that is very important. The page that is lower in the rankings has far better content. I think this is happening due to links as well as the url structure. domain.com/ranking/notranking Here is the page we want to rank: http://bit.ly/1vqhSoZ Here is the page that is higher in rankings: http://bit.ly/1vA1wXQ So I think I should just move the content over from /notranking, to /ranking. The content is clearly better on the lower ranking page but I think due to links the /ranking page is higher in SERPS. So I guess my question is, would it be wise to move all that content over, and then 301 redirect the old page? Or leave the way it is and hopefully Google will get it right over time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DemiGR1 -
Want to merge high ranking niche websites into a new mega site, but don't want to lose authority from old top level pages
I have a few older websites that SERP well, and I am considering merging some or all of them into a new related website that I will be launching regardless. My old websites display real estate listings and not much else. Each website is devoted to showing homes for sale in a specific neighborhood. The domains are all in the form of Neighborhood1CityHomes.com, Neighborhood2CityHomes.com, etc. These sites SERP well for searches like "Neighborhood1 City homes for sale" and also "Neighborhood1 City real estate" where some or all of the query is in the domain name. Google simply points to the top of the domain although each site has a few interior pages that are rarely used. There is next to zero backlinking to the old domains, but each links to the other with anchor text like "Neighborhood1 Cityname real estate". That's pretty much the extent of the link profile. The new website will be a more comprehensive search portal where many neighborhoods and cities can be searched. The domain name is a nonsense word .com not related to actual key words. The structure will be like newdomain.com/cityname/neighborhood-name/ where the neighborhood real estate listings are that would replace the old websites, and I'd 301 the old sites to the appropriate internal directories of the new site. The content on the old websites is all on the home page of each, at least the content for searches that matter to me and rank well, and I read an article suggesting that Google assigns additional authority for top level pages (can I link to that here?). I'd be 301-ing each old domain from a top level to a 3rd level interior page like www. newdomain/cityname/neighborhood1/. The new site is better than the old sites by a wide margin, especially on mobile, but I don't want to lose all my top positions for some tough phrases. I'm not running analytics on the old sites in question, but each of the old sites has extensive past history with AdWords (which I don't run any more). So in theory Google knows these old sites are good quality.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gogogomez0 -
Rankings disappeared on main 2 keywords - are links the issue?
Hi, I asked a question around 6 months ago about our rankings steadily declining since April of 2013. I did originally reply to that topic a few days ago, but as it's so old I don't think it's been noticed. I'm posting again here, if that's an issue I'm happy to delete. Here it is for reference: http://moz.com/community/q/site-rankings-steadily-decreasing-do-i-need-to-remove-links Since the original post, I have done nothing linkbuilding-wise except posting blog posts and sharing them on Facebook, G+ and Twitter. There are some links in there which don't look great (ie spammy seo directories, which I'm sending removal requests to) although quite a lot of others are relevant. Here's my link profile: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.thomassmithfasteners.com</a> I've tried to make the site more accessible - we now have a simple, responsive design and I've tried to make the content clear and concise. In short, written for humans rather than search engines. As of the end of November, 'nuts and bolts' has now disappeared completely, and 'bolts and nuts' is page 8. There are many pages much higher which are not as relevant and have no links. We still rank highly for more specialised terms - ie 'bsw bolts' and 'imperial bolts' are still page 1, but not as high as before. We get an 'A' grade on the on-page grader for 'nuts and bolts, and most above us get F. I was cautious about removing links as our profile doesn't seem too bad but it does seem as if it's that. There are a fair few questionable directories in there, no doubt about that, but our overall practice in recent years has been natural building and link earning. So - I've created a spreadsheet and identified the bad links - ie directories with any SEO connotations. I am about to submit removal requests, I thought two polite requests a couple of weeks apart prior to disavowing with Google. But am I safe to disavow straight away? I say this as I don't think I'll get too many responses from those directories. I am also gradually beefing up the content on the shop pages in case of any 'thin content' issues after advice on the previous post. I noticed 100s of broken links in webmaster tools last week due to 2 broken links on our blog that repeated on every page and have fixed those. I have also been fixing errors W3C compliance-wise. Am I right to do all this? Can anyone offer any suggestions? I'm still not 100% sure if this is Panda, Penguin or something else. My guess is Penguin, but the decline started in March 2013, which correlates with Panda. Best Regards and thanks for any help, Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stephenshone0 -
Backlinks question: High Domain Authority, Lower Page Authority
We have a possibility of contributing guest blogs (with followed backlinks) to a site with very high domain authority (and highly trafficked), but when we've looked at the blog entires they already have, most of them have a much lower page authority. How do relevant links from a page with a lower PA but on a domain with a really high DA end up impacting our overall backlink profile? Can an expert or two give me some advice on what this may mean for us if we choose to go for it? In your opinion, does having lots of relevant links from a site with a much higher domain authority than ourselves (to give you an idea, our domain authority is in the low 60's, this site has a domain authority of almost 90) worth the time/effort/resources unto itself? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GrowOrganic0