How to Increase Domain Authority - 10 Proven Ways to Rank in the Top
Many business owners and SEOs are obsessed with one metric: **Domain Authority (DA)**. This is a metric developed by Moz that predicts your site's ability to compete and rank in search results. I often hear: "My site is new, why can't it outrank a competitor with a DA of 60?". The answer is simple: DA 60 is not an accident. It is the result of hard, systematic work on quality, authority, and technical excellence. In over 10 years in SEO, I've helped dozens of clients raise their DA, opening the door to highly competitive queries. In this comprehensive guide, I'll share my proven methodology: 10 practical steps that are guaranteed to lead your website to a high Domain Authority. We will analyze how to get valuable backlinks, how to clean up toxins, how to structure your content, and why patience is your main weapon. Ready to turn your domain into a real authority? Let's get started! 🚀
📖 Recommended reading:
What is Domain Authority (DA) and how to increase it
If you want to get a deeper understanding of Moz's Domain Authority metric, its exact calculation methodology, and key differences from other SEO metrics, check out this basic guide.
Article content:
- 1. Building quality backlinks: The key to DA
- 2. Regular cleaning of toxic links
- 3. Creating regular and high-quality content
- 4. Improving internal linking
- 5. Increase the site loading speed
- 6. Mobile adaptability and Mobile-First Index
- 7. Correcting critical technical errors
- 8. Social signals and social media activity
- 9. Being patient: The time factor
- 10. Domain Age
- My Experience: Figures and Cases
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- Conclusions and CTA
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1. Building quality backlinks: The Key to DA
Domain Authority (DA) is essentially a measure of the respect your site has earned in the eyes of the web, and backlinks serve as these "vote ballots". According to my experience, success in increasing DA by 70% depends on the quality of your link profile, not its size.
Imagine that your site is a businessman. A single handshake from Elon Musk (a site with a DA of 90) is much more important than a hundred favorable nods from random passersby (spammy sites). The more weighty and relevant a source is, the more "authority" (Link Equity) it conveys to your domain. Our goal is to focus on the strategies that bring such valuable recommendations.
Strategies for getting authoritative backlinks
- ✅ Guest posts on authoritative blogs: This is one of the most effective tactics. Focus on niche sites that have a DA of 40 or more and high traffic. Your content should be exclusive and valuable to their audience. It should be a partnership, not just a link placement.
- ✅ HARO (Help A Reporter Out) and PR platforms: This is a direct route to links from highly reputable media and news portals. Act as an expert in your field, provide journalists with unique comments and data. As a result, you will receive mentions and links from domains with DA 70-90.
- ✅ Broken Link Building: This tactic requires effort, but has a high conversion rate. Algorithm:
- Find an authoritative website in your niche.
- Find links on it that lead to 404 pages (broken links).
- Create the best and most relevant content on the same topic.
- ✅ Infographics and your own research: Visual content and unique data (statistics, surveys) have a high potential for getting natural, editorial links. People link to the original source, which automatically increases your credibility.
- ❌ Do NOT buy links on exchanges: I categorically warn against this. Artificial link building leads to quick but temporary results, after which Google inevitably applies filters (for example, Penguin), which negates all efforts and can collapse your DA.
⚠️ Important: Relevance comes first. A link from a tech blog about AI will carry many times more weight for your SEO site than a link from a cooking forum, even if the latter has a higher DA. Always prioritize niche relevance. Strategies for getting authoritative backlinks
- ✅ **Guest posts on authoritative blogs.** Focus on niche sites with a DA of 40 or higher. It should be real, valuable content, not just a link "registration."
- ✅ **HARO (Help A Reporter Out) and PR platforms** This is a fantastic way to get links from the media. Act as an expert, comment on industry news, and get mentions from major portals.
- ✅ **Broken Link Building.** Find sites that link to 404 pages (broken links). Create the best content on this topic and offer the administrator to replace the broken link with yours. It's a win-win.
- ✅ **Infographics and research.** Visual content and unique data are readily shared and cited. Create one in-depth study a year and the links will flow. I always warn clients against dubious PBN networks and "cheap" links.
⚠️ **Important:** Focus on **relevance**. A link from a site about gardening will not give much weight to your IT blog, even if its DA is high.
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2. Regularly clean up toxic links
Even if you didn't buy the links, your site can be spammed by competitors or random bots. These **toxic backlinks** can harm your Domain Authority.
How to find and reject malicious links
- **Analysis via Ahrefs/Semrush:** Look for domains with abnormally high Spam Score or suspicious Asian/pornographic content.
- **Check in Google Search Console:** Sometimes GSC can show spikes in low-quality links.
- **Use Disavow Tool:** Make a list of domains you want to disavow. This is the only way to tell Google: "I don't want anything to do with these sites."
I always say it's better to have 100 quality, relevant links than 1000 toxic ones. Cleaning your link profile is like a detox for your website.
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3. Create regular and high-quality content
Content is the fuel for your Domain Authority. DA cannot grow on external links alone; it requires a strong internal foundation that shows search engines that your site is a valuable resource. High-quality, in-depth content attracts attention, increases the time users spend on the page (a critical behavioral factor), reduces bounce rates, and, most importantly, gets natural backlinks from other authoritative resources that want to cite you.
Conceptual characteristics of content that increases DA
- ✅ Long articles (1500-3000 words): It's not just about word count, but about comprehensiveness. Long guides, pillars of content, and detailed research cover the topic better, answer all related questions (LSI keywords), and attract experts to be cited as primary sources.
- ✅ Regularity: Maintain a stable publication schedule (for example, 1-2 high-quality articles per week). This is an important signal for Google: your site is alive, constantly updated, and a relevant source of information. Irregular, chaotic publications reduce the trust of search engines.
- ✅ Uniqueness (Originality): Create content that is not available anywhere else. It can be your own research, unique cases, interviews with experts, or personal experience backed by numbers. This positions you as an opinion leader, which is a key feature of high DA.
- ✅ Variety of formats: Don't just use text. Infographics, videos, podcasts, calculators, and interactive elements increase engagement, which indirectly has a positive impact on your authority. A person who spends 5 minutes on your page is more valuable than someone who leaves immediately: Instead of "What is SEO" (a short article), create a "Complete Guide: SEO Strategy from A to Z in 2025" (3000 words) with infographics and custom tables. It is the second option that will get backlinks and increase DA.
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4. Improve internal linking
Internal linking distributes Link Equity between pages within your site. This helps to raise the "weight" of less authoritative pages.
Rules of effective internal linking
- **Keyword anchors:** Link to pages using relevant anchors (link texts).
- **Hierarchical structure:** Ensure that important pages (categories, content pillars) are linked from many other articles.
- **Depth:** Don't hide important content more than 3-4 clicks from the home page.
👉 **Example:** From the article "How to increase DA" link to the article "Broken Link Building Guide" with the anchor "link building strategy".
📖 Recommended reading:
Internal Linking: A Step-by-Step SEO Guide with Practical Tasks
High DA is impossible without a strong internal structure. Find out how to distribute link weight, improve indexing, and increase Page Authority of key pages with the help of proper linking.
📖 Recommended reading:
Fix Keyword Cannibalization: An SEO Guide
Are your own pages competing with each other for the same queries? Find out how to find the "cannibals" on your site, estimate traffic losses, and implement an effective strategy for consolidating or splitting content.
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5. Increase the site loading speed
Speed is not a direct DA factor, but it critically affects **behavioral factors** (bounce rate, time on site), which indirectly affect domain authority.
How to speed up your site for better DA
- ✅ **Image optimization:** Use **WebP** formats, compress images without losing quality.
- ✅ **CDN (Cloudflare):** Content delivery network provides fast loading for users anywhere in the world.
- ✅ **Caching:** Use caching plugins (if you have WordPress) or configure server-level caching.
- ✅ **Core Web Vitals:** Reach the green zone for LCP, FID, and CLS as required by Google.
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6. Mobile responsiveness and Mobile-First Index
Since Google uses Mobile-First indexing, your mobile experience is crucial. A site that breaks on a smartphone will never get a high DA.
Make sure your site works perfectly on mobile devices
- ✅ **Responsive design:** Use flexible layouts that automatically adapt to any screen.
- ✅ **Google Mobile-Friendly Test:** Make sure your site passes Google's mobile-friendly test.
- ✅ **Ease of navigation:** Breadcrumbs, which we discussed in another guide, should be easy to use on mobile as well.
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7. Fixing critical technical errors
Technical flaws block your site from being crawled by search bots and interfere with link weight transfer, reducing DA.
Domain technical health checklist
- ❌ **Broken links (404):** Check and fix them regularly or set up 301 redirects.
- ❌ **Duplicate content:** Use **canonical URL** to point to the main page from duplicate pages (for example, in product cards).
- ❌ **Poor hosting:** A slow or unstable server is a red flag for Google. Invest in a quality hosting service.
- ✅ **Sitemap.xml and Robots.txt:** Make sure these files are configured correctly and don't block pages that are important for indexing.
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8. Social media activity
Although social signals (likes, shares) are not a direct ranking factor, they are critical to **reach** and **getting first links**.
Use social media to indirectly increase DA
- **Content distribution:** Actively share your new articles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.
- **Traffic:** Social media can generate quality traffic that improves behavioral factors.
- **Native Advertising:** Successful viral content can grab the attention of industry media and bloggers who will link to you (which is already a direct DA factor).
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9. Be patient: Time is of the essence
I always compare raising Domain Authority (DA) to growing a strong tree. You won't see results in a week or even a month. It's a long-term investment in search engine trust. The biggest mistake I see business owners make is expecting instant results. When DA doesn't grow within 30 days, they start to panic and change their strategy, which only harms the process. Real growth takes time, consistency, and resilience to initial slowness.
How long does it really take to increase Domain Authority
The timeline depends heavily on your niche, competition, and initial site health, but there are general guidelines based on my experience:
- ⏱️ Raise DA from 20 to 30: This is the basic phase, which usually requires 3-6 months of systematic and intensive work on quality content and getting the first but reliable links (from local media, industry directories).
- ⏱️ Raise DA from 30 to 50: This stage is the most difficult. It takes 6-12 months and requires a transition to highly competitive strategies: HARO, Broken Link Building, and creating content that generates links on autopilot.
- ⏱️ Raise DA from 50 to 70: This is the level of niche leaders. Achieving such a high authority requires 1-3 years of continuous work, intensive "branded" link building, PR activity, and dominance in organic search results.
⚠️ Important: DA fluctuations are normal. Don't panic if your DA suddenly drops by 1-2 points. Moz updates its index irregularly, and a temporary drop is often due to the algorithm's re-evaluation, not your mistakes. Keep an eye on the overall growth trend over a 3-6 month period rather than daily numbers.
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📖 Recommended reading:
The complete guide on how a new site can get out of the filter and get TOP rankings
If your new site has been sanctioned or can't break into the TOP, this guide is for you. Learn a step-by-step strategy for getting out from under the filters, analyzing errors, and methods for achieving high rankings faster.
10. Domain Age
While you can't change the age of your domain, you should know that it is a strong factor that Moz takes into account. Older, stable domains that haven't changed their niche in years have a higher DA by default.
Why Older Domains Have an Advantage
Domain age is a powerful, albeit indirect, factor that significantly affects Domain Authority and Google Trust. It is an indicator of reliability, stability, and predictability. Google considers domains that have existed for 5-10 years to be less risky than those that were registered only yesterday.
The advantages of old domains:
- Accumulated link mass: Over the years, such a domain naturally accumulates organic, "clean" link mass (backlinks), often without the conscious efforts of the owner. This creates a solid foundation of authority.
- History without penalties: A domain that has existed for a long time without serious violations of Google's rules has a high level of trust (Trust Flow). A new domain must "earn" this trust.
- Faster indexing: Google bots crawl old authoritative sites more often and more willingly. New pages on such a domain are indexed and ranked much faster.
If you are launching a new site (up to 1-2 years old), just know that you need to work twice as hard on content and backlinks to overcome Google's sandbox and catch up with old domains. This requires a greater investment of time and resources in the early years to compensate for the lack of history.
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My experience
I can confirm the effectiveness of this strategy with my own numbers. In 2023, I was working on a project in the B2B SaaS (software) niche. At the beginning, the domain's DA was **21**.
We focused on two key areas:
- **Content:** Publishing 3 content pillars (4000 words each) and 10 supporting articles.
- **Link Building:** Using HARO and the Broken Link Building strategy. We received 15 quality links from domains with DA 55.
⚡ **Result:** After 8 months, Domain Authority rose to **38**. This allowed us to enter the TOP 5 for the competitive query "CRM for small business" and provided an increase in organic traffic by **120%**.
⚠️ **Client's mistake:** In the middle of the project, the client wanted to save money and stopped cleaning toxic links. This led to a temporary stagnation in DA growth for 2 months until we restarted the Disavow Tool.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Is Moz Domain Authority important to Google? They have their own internal authority metrics, but they are not disclosed. However, DA is an excellent **prediction** and correlates with the quality of the site. A high DA usually means a high quality site, which is good for Google as well.
How often should I check my site's DA? DA is not a metric for daily or weekly monitoring because its growth is slow and it is not updated in real time. Keep an eye on the trend, not the daily fluctuations.
What's better: high DA or lots of traffic?
While high DA usually leads to high traffic, **traffic is the ultimate business goal**. DA is a tool to achieve traffic. I always prioritize content that drives conversions, not just DA metrics.
Can Internal Links increase DA? Domain Authority is an indicator of external authority. However, strong internal linking can increase the Page Authority (PA) of individual pages, making them more capable of ranking and indirectly supporting domain DA.
If my competitor's DA is 60, should I compete with them? Don't try to overtake them on their strengths. Look for "long-tail keywords" where your competitor doesn't have quality content. You can win the battle for traffic, even with a lower DA, by targeting queries.
Does translating a website into another language affect DA? Translating content and placing it on a new domain requires building authority from scratch.
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Conclusion
To summarize, increasing Domain Authority (DA) is not a one-time action, but a marathon that requires strategic endurance and a systematic approach. We have proved that high DA is a direct result of the synergy of three key elements:
- Expert Content: Regularly creating in-depth, unique, and useful content that solves user problems. This attracts natural links and increases behavioral factors.
- Clean Authority: Systematic strategic link building (HARO, Broken Link Building), backed by the equally important regular cleaning of toxic backlinks.
- Technical Excellence: Ensuring perfect speed, mobile responsiveness, and the absence of critical errors (404s, duplicates).
By following these 10 step-by-step recommendations, you won't just increase your Moz metric score. You'll create a powerful, reliable, and authoritative resource that will earn Google's trust, start dominating your niche, and provide a steady organic flow of customers.
Ready to order a service and accelerate your DA growth? If you don't have the time or resources to monitor backlinks, optimize your website, and create a content plan on a daily basis, leave it to me. I will develop a customized DA boosting strategy focused on real results, minimizing risks, and growing your business. We'll turn your domain from an "average" to an industry leader.
Author: Webscraft team | Last updated: 10.10.2025
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