Few business owners are SEO professionals. With so many terms to keep up with things can soon get confusing.
Two SEO terms you might not fully understand are domain visibility and domain authority. With your domain (website URL) being how your customers find your website, and being part of how search engines make ranking decisions, your SEO strategy must help improve all related aspects to your domain. Not to worry, as in today’s post, we’ll explain the differences between domain visibility and domain authority to guide you.
If you still need more help, our SEO experts here at Imaginaire are only a call or a click away!
Domain authority: an overview
Have you ever wondered how search engines determine where to rank results on a search engine results page? SEO (search engine optimisation) considers several algorithms, one of which is domain authority. When a domain is newly purchased (and has never existed before) it will have a domain score of 0. For that website to have a good search presence, it will need to put in work to increase its domain authority score over time.
What is domain authority?
If a credit score measures your overall financial health to signify to banks and lenders how trustworthy you may be for certain products – a domain authority score essentially does the same thing but for your URL. While somewhat subjective based on different tools, a domain authority score tells search engines how trustworthy your domain is considered.
Some of the aspects that make up a domain authority score include:
- Domain age
- Number of individual URLs linking towards a website (backlinks)
- Quality and relevance of backlinks
- Quality of internal links on the site
- Size and depth of website content
What is a good domain authority score?
Domain authority scores run on a scale of 0-100, with the higher the score the better.
However, domain authority is not quite that straightforward. This is because the niche of a website will also determine the typical domain authority. So really the goal is to achieve a domain authority score which is in line with your industry and your main competitors. Some of the websites with the highest domain authority scores have been revealed by Moz. These include the likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft. These websites have a score of between 99-100, sitting at the upper maximum for trust and authority. It’s unlikely a small business would ever reach a domain authority score of 90+ (or even need to). That said, the website would want to aim for a decent domain authority score, with the average domain authority score being between 40 and 50. At the very least, a score of above 20 is what to aim for as a newer website. Though these minimum requirements may be higher depending on your industry and competitors.
How do I improve my domain authority?
Improving your website’s domain authority is the goal of any SEO strategy.
It can be achieved by getting more quality backlinks. However, it’s also important that your website and its content factor in E-E-A-T (expertise, experience, authority and trustworthiness). In short, users want to find a helpful result that factors in their wants and needs. In contrast, what they don’t want is poor quality content, thin content, misleading content or spam. Continue to provide a quality experience and build backlinks from a variety of different domains, and your domain authority will gradually rise. Your domain authority score can be tracked by using SEO software such as Semrush or Ahrefs.
Domain visibility: An overview
Domain visibility is a lesser-known term compared with domain authority. It too is a subjective term created by the likes of Moz and Sistrix. Known as the ‘domain visibility index’, each website will be given a 5-figure score. As with domain authority, the higher the domain visibility score the better.
What is domain visibility?
Domain visibility is calculated based on several data points which have been collected from search engines over time. The score considers the number of ranking keywords a website has, the search volume of these keywords, and the click rate of the position. As you might expect, domain visibility is a complex term to understand. That said, it remains yet another SEO metric to consider when looking at where improvements can be made to your overall strategy.
What is a good domain visibility score and how do I improve it?
There are no fixed ‘good’ domain visibility scores in the same way there are for domain authority scores. A website will start with a score of 000,00. For context, Google has a domain visibility score of 305,34 at the time of writing. So it’s fair to say that the higher the score the better, even though there’s no specific score to aim for. Improving your domain visibility is simple. It requires that new content is created with keywords added, existing content is improved, and that a website ranks for keywords with a higher search volume.
Given an SEO strategy will look to achieve these aims regardless, it could well be the case your domain authority increases naturally without specifically trying to do so. This is especially the case if you put in a solid effort with your SEO strategy, focusing on E-E-A-T within your content as we mentioned above.
Imaginaire – SEO services in Nottinghamshire
Need help improving your website’s domain authority, domain visibility or any other aspect of your SEO strategy? Get Nottinghamshire’s leading SEO agency on your side when you work with us here at Imaginaire. Let us know more about your project by dropping us a message, or by giving us a call on 0115 697 1367. We also cover areas including Derby, Leicester and Sheffield.