How to Increase Domain Authority in 2025: 9 Proven Strategies

If your website is stuck below page two of Google, a weak domain authority could be the root cause. In an era where Ahrefs found that 90.63% of pages get zero organic traffic, learning how to increase domain authority is one of the most impactful long-term SEO investments you can make.

The English language defines authority as having legitimate power or influence over something. 

In other words, it means earning the right to have dominion over something or someone. 

This term also applies to the SEO world because websites with a reputation for good, trustworthy, and reliable content are held in high esteem and ranked higher than the rest.

A well-known and well-published website like “The Wall Street Journal” or “The Times” will most likely get higher rankings when they write and publish content on the Internet, as opposed to a freelance writer just starting their blogging journey.

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through exactly what domain authority is, how it’s calculated, and most importantly, the nine strategies that actually move the needle.

These are the same methods I use with SARMLife clients to grow DA scores consistently and sustainably and you can use it too.

9 Strategies to increase domain authority in 2026

1. Earn high-quality backlinks
2. Write good, quality content
3. Build topical authority
4. Optimize for mobile and Core Web Vitals
5. Establish strong E-E-A-T signals
6. Fix your technical SEO foundation
7. Audit and remove toxic backlinks
8. Pursue broken link building and digital PR
9. Improve yor internal links

What Is Domain Authority?

Domain authority (DA) is a score from 1 to 100, developed by Moz, that predicts how likely a website is to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).

It is vital to understand what domain authority (DA) is and isn’t to know how to increase domain authority for your website.

In simpler terms, it is a scoring system to show how high or low a website will likely rank as an answer to a user’s query.

It is calculated based on the quality and quantity of backlinks, content quality, and overall SEO health.

Domain authority, however, is not used by Google as a direct ranking factor as confirmed by Google’s John Mueller. It works independently of Google rankings and does not interact with SERPs in any way. 

Instead, it serves as an indicator to reflect the ranking potential of your website relative to competitor’s in your niche. It is able to do this because it closely tracks the same underlying signals that Google uses (backlink quality, content depth, technical health).

Improving your DA almost always means improving your actual rankings.

How Is Domain Authority Calculated? 

Tools like Moz and Ahrefs calculate DA by combining multiple factors, including link profile, referring domains, content quality, and so on, into a single domain authority score. 

This score can be used for competitive analysis or tracking a website’s “ranking strength” over time. 

However, it is important to note that domain authority is calculated relative to other websites in the same niche.

For example, suppose a food blogging website suddenly gains many backlinks or becomes more popular with searchers due to external factors that cause its domain authority to rise.

In that case, it will likely cause a decline in the domain authority of other food blogging websites that revolve around the same content without them doing anything wrong.

How to Check Your Website’s Domain Authority

Moz allows you to conduct a limited number of monthly free domain authority queries. Its free tool shows the DA level, number of links, and top pages for the site.

To start, type in your domain name. You’ll then be prompted to make a free account. Once you’re done, click on the activation email to get started.

When checking your website’s domain authority using tools on the web, there are different tools to use to check your DA, and the results from each one may vary.

Now that you know how domain authority is calculated, you may wish to determine your website’s score using any of these tools. Still, it is crucial to consider the following factors when choosing a tool to check your DA score:

• Index size: How many URLs are contained within the software’s index?
• Frequency of index crawling: How often is the index refreshed?
• Correlation with actual rankings: Does a higher domain score equate to better rankings?

What Is a Good Domain Authority Score, and What Isn’t?

It is easy to think of DA as a grade from 1 to 100, and it may seem reasonable to aim for the highest score possible. Still, as mentioned before, domain authority measures your “rankability,” so you need a score higher than your competitors.

The benchmark that actually matters is your competitors’.

If you’re in a niche where the top 10 results average a DA of 30, a DA of 35 puts you in a strong position. If your niche averages 60, a DA of 35 means you have work to do.

For example, a 78 DA score may not hold weight in a niche where the average DA score is 86, but a score of 35 may be celebrated in a space where the average DA is 20. So, when checking your DA, always compare it with your competitors.

DA Score	General Assessment	Typical Profile
1–20	New / low authority	Brand new sites, personal blogs, niche sites just starting out
21–40	Developing authority	Growing blogs, small businesses with some backlinks and consistent content
41–60	Established authority	Well-known niche sites, regional businesses, established blogs
61–80	Strong authority	Major publications, large e-commerce sites, industry leaders
81–100	Exceptional authority	Wikipedia, New York Times, Forbes, Amazon

Why Is Domain Authority Important?

According to Wildfireconcepts, a recent study found that domain ratings and keyword rankings are closely linked, proving that domain authority can be helpful when estimating if a website will appear in SERPs.

Understanding your site’s organic traffic and how likely it will rank in SERPs makes you more equipped to build your brand and create an engaging website. It also shows areas where your SEO efforts are lacking and what you can do to improve them.

Regularly checking your DA is an excellent way to monitor the effect of your other SEO efforts and ensure you are heading in the right direction.

How to Increase Domain Authority on Search Engines

There are several ways to increase DA, but here are seven (7)  tried, tested, and foolproof methods to increase your domain authority:

1. Earn high-quality backlinks.

Your link profile is the most crucial metric for your domain authority. If your website has a strong link profile, it is likely to get a higher DA score than one that doesn’t. 

A website is said to have a good link profile when:

• It has incoming links (backlinks) from high-authority websites.
• Incoming links from sites that are topically relevant to your niche.
• Absence of toxic, spammy, or paid links.
• It has links from several unique domains (not 50 links from the same site).
• It has natural anchor text variation (branded, naked URLs, and keyword-rich).

There are several ways you can strengthen your link profile by getting backlinks.

The most effective ways to earn these links include guest posting on industry blogs, creating original research or data studies that journalists reference, and reaching out to sites that already link to similar content.

You can look at your top referral sources and find similar sites for backlink opportunities you haven’t yet contacted.

You could also contact businesses with websites posting content similar to yours to build relationships with them and encourage mutual linking to each other’s content for mutual benefit.

READ MORE: Link Building for SEO: The Ultimate Guide + Email Template

2. Write good, quality content. 

While domain authority is not necessarily part of the usual SEO strategies, it still relies on the same fundamentals as the others to rate websites.

Writing content that is accurate, current, easy to understand, and relevant is a surefire way to build your credibility online, which may, in turn, lead to other blog posts linking back to you for their readers to get more insight into what they’re writing about; this upgrades your link profile and domain authority.

Also, correctly formatting and optimizing your content are helpful tips to keep in mind. 

The list below helps to have your website properly indexed and generally makes your work seem more appealing to the searcher, which is the primary goal of SEO:

• Optimize your metadata (meta title, meta descriptions, etc.).
• Use correct header tags (h1, h2, h3).
• Use sitemaps.
• Optimize your permalinks.
• Utilize proper image optimization strategies.
• Keyword optimization.
• Format your content to increase your chances of ranking in Google’s featured snippets.

3. Build Topical Authority

Google’s Helpful Content system increasingly rewards sites that demonstrate deep expertise in a specific topic area. This is what is called topical authority.

A site that has 30 high-quality, interlinked posts on SEO will outrank a site with one SEO post, even if that post is excellent.

To build topical authority:

• Create a content /topic cluster: one comprehensive pillar page (like this one) supported by several detailed supporting posts
• Cover every sub-topic your audience searches for within your niche
• Update content regularly: freshness signals matter for competitive keywords
• Format for readability: clear headings, short paragraphs, bullet points, tables
• Cite authoritative, up-to-date sources (studies, original data, expert quotes)

Pro tip: Before writing a new post, check if a competitor already ranks for that keyword with a thin article. If so, write a clearly superior, more comprehensive version.

4. Optimize for mobile and Core Web Vitals.

One of the factors to consider when calculating domain authority (DA) is your site’s structure and mobile friendliness.

Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning the mobile version of your site is what Google primarily crawls and evaluates.

If your site is not optimized for mobile, you are actively penalizing your own rankings and, by extension, your ability to earn backlinks and traffic that build authority.

Core Web Vitals are Google’s new page experience metrics as of 2024 and they include:

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — page load speed. Aim for under 2.5 seconds
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — visual stability. Aim for under 0.1
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — replaced FID in March 2024. Aim for under 200ms

Use Google PageSpeed Insights to check your scores. Common fixes include compressing images to WebP, using a CDN, deferring non-critical JavaScript, and choosing a lightweight WordPress theme.

5. Establish strong E-E-A-T signals

Since Google’s Helpful Content updates, E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) has become one of the most important quality signals for ranking.

Sites that demonstrate real-world experience and established expertise earn more trust from both Google and readers, which translates into more backlinks, more sharing, and higher DA over time.

How to strengthen your E-E-A-T:

• Get your content cited by other authoritative sites
• Add visible author bios with credentials, LinkedIn profiles, and professional history
• Include first-person experience in your content, not just what the research says, but what you have seen in practice
• Cite recent, authoritative sources (not undated blog posts)
• Display trust signals: client testimonials, case studies, press mentions, certifications
• Ensure your About page clearly explains who you are and what makes you qualified

6. Fix your technical SEO foundation.

Once you get your technical SEO right in the early stages of your blog, you won’t have to bother about it again.

However, bad technical SEO, or one that isn’t correctly done, can harm your domain authority and ranking.

Here are a couple of things you can do to improve your technical SEO:

• Register your site with Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Webmaster tools.
• Create and optimize your XML sitemaps.
• Check your robots.txt to ensure the crawlability of important pages on your website.
• Switch from HTTP website to HTTPS.
• Include structured markup data for your web pages.
• Use an optimized breadcrumb menu on all your pages.
• Use hreflang tag attributes for multilingual websites.

Utilizing these few tips will help maximize your domain authority.

7. Audit and remove toxic backlinks

Regarding SEO generally, link building is an essential strategy because your domain authority, ranking potential, and sustainability depend on the strength of your link profile.

However, not all backlinks help you.

Links from spammy directories, link farms, irrelevant foreign-language sites, or sites penalized by Google can actively suppress your domain authority and, in serious cases, trigger a manual penalty.

You should check your website for harmful links and eliminate them immediately. 

How to identify and handle toxic links:

• Run a full backlink audit using Moz Link Explorer, Ahrefs, or Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool
• Look for high spam scores, unnatural anchor text patterns, or links from clearly irrelevant niches
• Try to contact the linking site and request removal first
• If removal is not possible, submit a disavow file in Google Search Console

A clean link profile with 50 high-quality backlinks will always outperform a messy profile with 500 mixed-quality links. Quality beats quantity, consistently.

Pro tip: Moz’s Spam Score is a quick filter — flag any linking domain with a spam score above 30% for manual review. Don’t disavow blindly; some high-spam-score sites are legitimate (forums, community sites).

Always check the actual page before disavowing.

8. Pursue broken link building and digital PR

Two underused but highly effective tactics for building high-authority backlinks:

Broken link building involves finding pages on authoritative sites in your niche that link to dead URLs (404 pages), then reaching out to suggest your relevant content as a replacement. Site owners are usually grateful — you’re helping them fix a real problem while earning a backlink.

Use Ahrefs’ “Broken Backlinks” report or the Check My Links Chrome extension to find broken link opportunities.

Digital PR means creating content assets including original research, surveys, data studies, or expert roundups. These content assets are specifically designed to earn press coverage.

A single mention in an industry publication can deliver more link equity than months of manual outreach. Tools like HARO (Help A Reporter Out) and Qwoted connect you with journalists actively looking for expert sources.

9. Improve your internal links.

Another way to increase your domain authority is to improve your internal link structure. You can keep your visitors engaged by providing links to other informative web pages on your site.

In addition to helping index your pages, internal links facilitate search engine bots’ crawling of your website.

An additional benefit of having a well-thought-out internal link structure is the flow of link juice between pages.

Link juice refers to the SEO value of a page passed to other web pages. It validates your website for the search engines, as more links pointing toward a page show that it’s trustworthy. 

All of these add up to increase your site’s domain authority.

Several SEO plugins are available to help with these strategies, like keyword research, link building, mobile friendliness, etc.

For instance, the Link Assistant addon from AIOSEO will automatically create an internal link report for your website and recommend relevant pages you can link to. 

FINAL THOUGHTS

The sites that dominate search results are not the ones that tried the hardest for 30 days. They are the ones that showed up consistently for 12 months, built real relationships for links, and created content that genuinely served their audience.

Now that you understand how domain authority works, its effect on your website, and how to calculate and improve yours, you can use this knowledge to take your SEO strategies to a different level.

Domain authority can be challenging to understand initially, but keeping it in mind when going about your other SEO activities is foolproof to increase your ranking and your website’s exposure to searchers.

Start with the strategy that fits your current situation: if your technical SEO is broken, fix that first. If you have good content but no backlinks, prioritize outreach. If you already have links but a weak content library, build topical authority. Then stack the strategies over time.

Your domain authority will follow.

Ready to grow your domain authority faster?

SARMLife offers SEO consulting, link building, and content strategy services tailored to help your site climb from obscurity to authority. Let’s look at your site together.

SEO Consulting

READ ALSO: 9 TOP WAYS TO BUILD QUALITY BACKLINKS FOR SEO IN 2024